Sri Ramakrishna, who was born in 1836 and passed away in 1886,
represents the very core of the spiritual realizations of the seers and sages
of India. His whole life was literally an uninterrupted contemplation of God.
He reached a depth of God-consciousness that transcends all time and place and
has a universal appeal. Seekers of God of all religions feel irresistibly drawn
to his life and teachings. Sri Ramakrishna, as a silent force, influences the
spiritual thought currents of our time. He is a figure of recent history and
his life and teachings have not yet been obscured by loving legends and
doubtful myths. Through his God-intoxicated life Sri Ramakrishna proved that
the revelation of God takes place at all times and that God-realization is not
the monopoly of any particular age, country, or people. In him, deepest
spirituality and broadest catholicity stood side by side. The God-man of
nineteenth-century India did not found any cult, nor did he show a new path to
salvation. His message was his God-consciousness. When God-consciousness falls
short, traditions become dogmatic and oppressive and religious teachings lose
their transforming power. At a time when the very foundation of religion, faith
in God, was crumbling under the relentless blows of materialism and skepticism,
Sri Ramakrishna, through his burning spiritual realizations, demonstrated
beyond doubt the reality of God and the validity of the time-honored teachings
of all the prophets and saviors of the past, and thus restored the falling
edifice of religion on a secure foundation. Drawn by the magnetism of Sri
Ramakrishna's divine personality, people flocked to him from far and near --
men and women, young and old, philosophers and theologians, philanthropists and
humanists, atheists and agnostics, Hindus and Brahmos, Christians and Muslims,
seekers of truth of all races, creeds and castes. His small room in the
Dakshineswar temple garden on the outskirts of the city of Calcutta became a
veritable parliament of religions. Everyone who came to him felt uplifted by
his profound God-consciousness, boundless love, and universal outlook. Each
seeker saw in him the highest manifestation of his own ideal. By coming near
him the impure became pure, the pure became purer, and the sinner was
transformed into a saint. The greatest contribution of Sri Ramakrishna to the
modern world is his message of the harmony of religions. To Sri Ramakrishna all
religions are the revelation of God in His diverse aspects to satisfy the
manifold demands of human minds. Like different photographs of a building taken
from different angles, different religions give us the pictures of one truth
from different standpoints. They are not contradictory but complementary. Sri
Ramakrishna faithfully practiced the spiritual disciplines of different
religions and came to the realization that all of them lead to the same goal.
Thus he declared, "As many faiths, so many paths." The paths vary,
but the goal remains the same. Harmony of religions is not uniformity; it is
unity in diversity. It is not a fusion of religions, but a fellowship of
religions based on their common goal -- communion with God. This harmony is to
be realized by deepening our individual God-consciousness. In the present-day
world, threatened by nuclear war and torn by religious intolerance, Sri
Ramakrishna's message of harmony gives us hope and shows the way. May his life
and teachings ever inspire us.
Some sayings of Sri Ramakrishna:
He is born in vain who, having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realize God in this very life.You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man, because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.One cannot have the vision of God as long as one has these three – shame, hatred, and fear.Be not a traitor in your thoughts. Be sincere; act according to your thoughts; and you shall surely succeed. Pray with a sincere and simple heart, and your prayers will be heard.Do not let worldly thoughts and anxieties disturb your mind. Do everything that is necessary in the proper time, and let your mind be always fixed on God.You should remember that the heart of the devotee is the abode of God. He dwells, no doubt, in all beings, but He especially manifests Himself in the heart of the devotee. The heart of the devotee is the drawing room of God.Pure knowledge and pure love are one and the same thing. Both lead the aspirants to the same goal. The path of love is much easier.Who is the best devotee of God? It is he who sees, after the realization of Brahman that God alone has become all living beings, the universe, and the twenty-four cosmic principles. One must discriminate at first, saying 'Not this, not this', and reach the roof. After that one realizes that the steps are made of the same materials as the roof, namely, brick, lime, and brick-dust. The devotee realizes that it is Brahman alone that has become all these — the living beings, the universe, and so on.Live in the world like a waterfowl. The water clings to the bird, but the bird shakes it off. Live in the world like a mudfish. The fish lives in the mud, but its skin is always bright and shiny.I tell you the truth: there is nothing wrong in your being in the world. But you must direct your mind toward God; otherwise you will not succeed. Do your duty with one hand and with the other hold to God. After the duty is over you will hold to God with both hands.The breeze of His grace is blowing day and night over your head. Unfurl the sails of your boat (mind), if you want to make rapid progress through the ocean of life.One should constantly repeat the name of God. The name of God is highly effective in the Kaliyuga. The practice of yoga is not possible in this age, for the life of a man depends on food. Clap your hands while repeating God's name, and the birds of your sins will fly away.
UNIVERSAL TEACHINGS OF SRI
RAMAKRISHNA
SEE GOD IN ALL
I have now come to a stage of
realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and
manifesting Himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the
vicious. Therefore when I meet different people I say to myself, "God in
the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the
righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous."
GOD IS WITHIN YOU
Do you know what I see? I see Him as all. Men and other creatures appear to me only as hollow forms, moving their heads and hands and feet, but within is the Lord Himself.
Do you know what I see? I see Him as all. Men and other creatures appear to me only as hollow forms, moving their heads and hands and feet, but within is the Lord Himself.
PERSEVERE IN YOUR
SEARCH FOR GOD
There are pearls in the deep sea, but one must hazard all to find them. If diving once does not bring you pearls, you need not therefore conclude that the sea is without them. Dive again and again. You are sure to be rewarded in the end. So is it with the finding of the Lord in this world. If your first attempt proves fruitless, do not lose heart. Persevere in your efforts. You are sure to realize Him at last.
There are pearls in the deep sea, but one must hazard all to find them. If diving once does not bring you pearls, you need not therefore conclude that the sea is without them. Dive again and again. You are sure to be rewarded in the end. So is it with the finding of the Lord in this world. If your first attempt proves fruitless, do not lose heart. Persevere in your efforts. You are sure to realize Him at last.
TRUST COMPLETELY IN
GOD
What are you to do when you are placed in the world? Give up everything to Him, resign yourself to Him, and there will be no more trouble for you. Then you will come to know that everything is done by His will.
What are you to do when you are placed in the world? Give up everything to Him, resign yourself to Him, and there will be no more trouble for you. Then you will come to know that everything is done by His will.
LOVE OF GOD IS
ESSENTIAL
Unalloyed love of God is the essential thing. All else is unreal.
Unalloyed love of God is the essential thing. All else is unreal.
Today, Sri Ramakrishna
is revered by millions of people of all faiths the world over. Some look upon
him as a great teacher, some as a saint, and some as a divine incarnation.
Great thinkers of the East and West find in his teachings the ring of universal
truth and pay tribute to him. We present below excerpts from some of their
tributes to Sri Ramakrishna.
"The time was ripe for one to be born, who in one body
would have the brilliant intellect of Sankara and the wonderfully expansive,
infinite heart of Chaitanya; one who would see in every sect the same spirit
working, the same God; one who would see God in every being, one whose heart
would weep for the poor, for the weak, for the outcast, for the downtrodden,
for every one in this world, inside India or outside India; and at the same
time whose grand brilliant intellect would conceive of such noble thoughts as
would harmonize all conflicting sects, not only in India but outside of India,
and bring a marvelous harmony, the universal religion of head and heart into
existence. Such a man was born, and I had the good fortune to sit at his feet
for years. Let me now only mention the great Sri Ramakrishna, the fulfillment
of the Indian sages, the sage for the time... For the first time I found a man
who dared to say that he saw God, that religion was a reality to be felt, to be
sensed in an infinitely more intense way than we can sense the world. I began
to go to that man, day after day, and I actually saw that religion could be given.
One touch, one glance, can change a whole life. I learnt from my Master that
the religions of the world are not contradictory or antagonistic. They are but
various phases of one eternal religion... The first part of my Master's life
was spent in acquiring spirituality, and the remaining years in distributing
it... His life is a searchlight of infinite power thrown upon the whole mass of
Indian religious thought. He was the living commentary to the Vedas and to
their aim. He had lived in one life the whole cycle of the national religious
existence in India."
- Swami Vivekananda
"In a recent and unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the
divine realization, taking, as it were, the Kingdom of Heaven by violence, and
then seizing upon one Yoga method after another and extracting the substance
out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the
whole matter, the realization and possession of God by the power of love, by
the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the
spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be
generalized. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the
great and decisive experience of a Master-soul the truth, now most necessary to
humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is
with difficulty laboring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single
integral truth and all disciplines labor in their different ways towards one
supreme experience... Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is the epitome of the whole. His
was the great super-conscious life which alone can witness to the infinitude of
the current that bears us all oceanwards. He is the proof of the Power behind
us, and the future before us."
-Sri Aurobindo
"Ramakrishna was a living embodiment of godliness. His
sayings are not those of a mere learned man but they are pages from the Book of
Life. They are revelations of his own experiences. They therefore leave on the
reader an impression which he cannot resist. In this age of skepticism
Ramakrishna presents an example of a bright and living faith which gives solace
to thousands of men and women who would otherwise have remained without
spiritual light. Ramakrishna's life was an object-lesson in Ahimsa. His love
knew no limits, geographical or otherwise. May his divine love be an
inspiration to all."
- Mahatma Gandhi
"The man whose image I here evoke was the consummation of
two thousand years of the spiritual life of three hundred million people.
Although he has been dead forty years, his soul animates modern India. He was
no hero of action like Gandhi, no genius in art or thought like Gandhi or
Tagore. He was a little village Brahmin of Bengal whose outer life was set in a
limited frame without striking incident, outside the social and political
activity of the time. But his inner life embraced the whole multiplicity of men
and Gods. It was a part of the very source of Energy, the Divine Shakti, of
whom Vidyapati, the old poet of Mithila, and Ramprasad of Bengal sing."
- Romain Rolland
To the Paramahamsa Ramakrishna Deva
"Diverse courses of worship
from varied springs of fulfillment
have mingled in your meditation.
The manifold revelation of the joy of the Infinite
has given form to a shrine of unity in your life
where from far and near arrive salutations
to which I join my own."
from varied springs of fulfillment
have mingled in your meditation.
The manifold revelation of the joy of the Infinite
has given form to a shrine of unity in your life
where from far and near arrive salutations
to which I join my own."
- Rabindranath Tagore
"The fervent love of God, nay, the sense of complete
absorption in Godhead, has nowhere found a stronger and more eloquent
expression than in the utterances of Ramakrishna. They show the exalted nature
of his faith. How deep he has seen into the mysteries of knowledge and love of
God we see from his sayings... These utterances of Ramakrishna reveal to us not
only his own thoughts, but the faith and hope of millions of human beings..
.This constant sense of the presence of God is indeed the common ground on
which we may hope that in time not too distant, the great temple of the future
will be erected, in which the Hindus and non-Hindus may join hands and hearts
in worshipping the same Supreme Spirit -- who is not far from every one of us,
for in Him we live and move and have our being."
- Max Muller
"Sri Ramakrishna made his appearance and delivered his
message at the time and the place at which he and his message were needed. This
message could hardly have been delivered by anyone who had not been brought up
in the Hindu religious tradition. Sri Ramakrishna was born in Bengal in 1836.
He was born into a world that in his lifetime was, for the first time, being
united on a literally worldwide scale. Today we are still living in this
transitional chapter of the world's history, but it is already becoming clear
that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian
ending, if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race. In the
present age, the world has been united on the material plane by Western
technology. But this Western skill has not only 'annihilated distance'; it has
armed the peoples of the world with weapons of devastating power at a time when
they have been brought to point blank range of each other without yet having
learnt to know and love each other. At this supremely dangerous moment in human
history, the only way of salvation for mankind is an Indian way. Sri
Ramakrishna's message was unique in being expressed in action. Religion is not
just a matter for study, it is something that has to be experienced and to be
lived, and this is the field in which Sri Ramakrishna manifested his
uniqueness... His religious activity and experience were, in fact,
comprehensive to a degree that had perhaps never before been attained by any
other religious genius, in India or elsewhere."
- Arnold Toynbee
"Sri Ramakrishna was completely beyond the average run of
men. He appears rather to belong to the tradition of the great rishis of India,
who have come from time to time to turn our attention to the higher things of
life and of the spirit."
- Jawaharlal Nehru
(About The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna) "Never
have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set
down with so minute a fidelity. To Western readers, it is true, this fidelity
and this wealth of detail are sometimes a trifle disconcerting; for the social,
religious and intellectual frames of reference within which Sri Ramakrishna did
his thinking and expressed his feelings were entirely Indian. But after the
first few surprises and bewilderments, we begin to find something peculiarly
stimulating and instructive about the very strangeness and, to our eyes, the
eccentricity of the man revealed to us in "M's" narrative. What a
scholastic philosopher would call the "accidents" of Ramakrishna's
life were intensely Hindu and therefore, so far as we in the West are
concerned, unfamiliar and hard to understand -- its "essence,"
however, was intensely mystical and therefore universal. To read through these
conversations in which mystical doctrine alternates with an unfamiliar kind of
humour, and where discussions of the oddest aspects of Hindu mythology give
place to the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate
Reality is in itself a liberal education in humility, tolerance and suspense of
judgement. We must be grateful to the translator for his excellent version of a
book so curious and delightful as a biographical document, so precious, at the
same time, for what it teaches us of the life of the spirit."
- Aldous Huxley
"This is the story of a phenomenon. I will begin by calling
him simply that rather than 'holy man,' 'mystic,' 'saint,' or 'avatar;' all
emotive words with mixed associations which may attract some readers, repel
others. A phenomenon is often something extraordinary and mysterious.
Ramakrishna was extraordinary and mysterious; most of all to those who were
best fitted to understand him. A phenomenon is always a fact, an object of
experience. That is how I shall try to approach Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna's
life, being comparatively recent history, is well documented. In this respect,
it has the advantage over the lives of other earlier phenomena of a like
nature. I believe, or am at least strongly inclined to believe, that he was
what his disciples declared that he was: an incarnation of God upon
earth."
- Christopher Isherwood
JANUARY 1st: THE DAY OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA'S SELF-REVELATION
"'I
shall make the whole thing public before I go,' the Master has said some time
before. On January 1, 1886, he felt better and came down to the garden for a
little stroll. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Some thirty lay
disciples were in the hall or sitting about under the trees. Sri Ramakrishna
said to Girish (Ghosh), 'Well Girish, what have you seen in me, that you
proclaim me before everybody as an Incarnation of God?' Girish was not the man
to be taken by surprise. He knelt before the Master and said with folded hands,
'What can an insignificant person like myself say about the One whose glory
even sages like Vyasa and Valmiki could not adequately measure?' The Master was
profoundly moved. He said: 'What more shall I say? I bless you all. Be
illumined!' He fell into a spiritual mood. Hearing these words the devotees,
one and all, became overwhelmed with emotion. They rushed to him and fell at
his feet. He touched them all, and each received an appropriate benediction.
Each of them, at the touch of the Master, experienced ineffable bliss. Some
laughed, some wept, some sat down to meditate, some began to pray. Some saw
light, some had visions of their Chosen Ideals, and some felt within their
bodies the rush of spiritual power."
From the Introduction to THE GOSPEL OF
SRI RAMAKRISHNA,
by Swami Nikhilananda
"Those words words
of profound blessing, untouched by the slightest tinge of selfishness, directly
entered the devotees' hearts where they raised high billows of bliss. They
forgot time and space, forgot the disease of the Master and forgot their
previous determination not to touch him till he recovered, and had the
immediate feeling that sympathizing with their misery, and heart overflowing
with compassion, had come down to them from heaven and called them
affectionately to Him for protection, like a mother sheltering her children
against all ills."
From SRI RAMAKRISHNA, THE GREAT MASTER
by Swami Saradananda
No comments:
Post a Comment