# Gospel | Chapter 7: Dec 14, 1882 (Part 4) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

An episode of [Vedanta Talks - Swami Sarvapriyananda](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247628265), 7 Sep 2026, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/80c7fe9e-82f3-4bac-a2e4-c21d36e8b547/stream.mp3

Swami Sarvapriyananda reads and discusses the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna is an English translation of the Bengali spiritual text Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita by Swami Nikhilananda. The text records conversations of Ramakrishna with his disciples, devotees and visitors, recorded by Mahendranath Gupta, who wrote the book under the pseudonym of "M." This session was recorded on Jan 17, 2023. 🙏 Please Support the Vedanta Society of New York http://www.vedantany.org/donate 🌐 Please Visit Us • Website: https://vedantany.org • Apple & Spotify Podcasts: https://www.vedantany.org/media-channels • YouTube (Main Channel): / @vedantany • YouTube (Archives): / @vedantanyarchives • Facebook: / vedantany • X / Twitter: / vedantany 📙 Books by Swami Sarvapriyananda • https://www.vedantany.org/swamis-books Lecture Series by Swami Sarvapriyananda 📓 Introductory Lectures: https://www.vedantany.org/introductor... 📚 Vedanta Scriptures: https://www.vedantany.org/by-scriptures 🧩 Lectures by Topics: https://www.vedantany.org/by-topic 💬 AskSwami Q&A: https://www.vedantany.org/ask-swami-qa 📖 Scriptures Taught by Swami Sarvapriyananda • Aparokshanubhuti | Swami Sarvapriyananda • Bhagavad Gita | Swami Sarvapriyananda • Brihadaranyaka Upanishad | Swami Sarvapriy... • Dṛg Dṛśya Viveka | Swami Sarvapriyananda • The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna | Swami Sarv... • Isha Upanishad | Swami Sarvapriyananda • Katha Upanishad | Swami Sarvapriyananda • Kena Upanishad | Swami Sarvapriyananda • Mandukya Upanishad | Swami Sarvapriyananda • Mundaka Upanishad | Swami Sarvapriyananda • Vedantasara of Sadananda | Swami Sarvapriy... 🪔 About Vedanta Vedanta is among the world’s oldest spiritual philosophies and one of its most inclusive. Rooted in the Vedas, India’s sacred scriptures, Vedanta upholds the unity of all existence, the divinity of the soul, and harmony among religions. 🏛️ About This Channel This is the official channel of the Vedanta Society of New York, a spiritual institution affiliated with the Ramakrishna Order of India and holds the distinction of being its first established Center, founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1894. Swami Sarvapriyananda currently serves as the Resident Minister and Spiritual Leader of the Vedanta Society of New York.

## Transcript

[0:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Oum, dhava katham, ritham, dhapta jiwanam, kavi vritam, kalmasa paam, shavanamangalam, shri madatam, bovigrinandhi, buri dha chana.
[0:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So in this class, we study the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, which is an English translation of Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, which are the recorded dialogues of Sri Ramakrishna, conversation, actually.
[0:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Sri Ramakrishna, recorded by Master Mahasaya, who comes in this book as M.
[0:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So in this class we do a little bit of reading and any time if you have questions, if you have observations, just anytime to raise your hand, speak up.
[1:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So we are doing this particularly long conversation.
[1:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is
[1:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: On 14th December 1882, Thursday 14th December 1882, and in my book, in this edition, they were on page 168, 168.
[1:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Vijay Krishna Goswami, who was,
[1:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: a very devout person, a spiritual practitioner, a teacher in the Brahma Samaj.
[1:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he has come to visit Sri Ramakrishna and he is having this conversation with Sri Ramakrishna.
[1:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: A lot of subjects, yoga, devotion, a gianna, a path of knowledge, all of them come up for discussion.
[1:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And why is it so difficult to become enlightened?
[1:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: How does one go beyond sorrow?
[1:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What are the obstacles?
[1:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And how does one tackle them and so on?
[1:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So we were reading to Vijay, Sri Lanka Krishna says, this is on page 168, the second paragraph.
[2:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We're just starting up there to Vijay.
[2:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Come here now and then I'd like to see you very much.
[2:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Did you find it?
[2:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, come here now and then I'd like to see you very much Vijay.
[2:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I have to do my duties various duties in the Brahma Samaj, that is why I can't always come here.
[2:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But I shall visit you, whenever find it possible.
[2:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Master, to Vijay, the task of a religious teacher is indeed difficult.
[2:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One cannot teach men without a direct command from God.
[2:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: People won't listen to you, if you teach without such authority.
[2:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One must must first of all attain God through spiritual discipline or some other means.
[2:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Thus armed with authority from God, one can deliver lectures.
[2:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: After receiving the command from God, one can be a teacher and give lectures anywhere.
[3:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He who receives authority from God also receives power from Him.
[3:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Only then can he perform the difficult task of a teacher.
[3:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: An insignificant tenant was once engaged in a lawsuit with a big landlord.
[3:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: People realized that there was a powerful man behind the tenant.
[3:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Perhaps another big landlord was directing the case from behind.
[3:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Man is an insignificant creature.
[3:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He cannot fulfill the difficult task of a teacher without receiving power direct from God.
[3:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Vijay, don't the teachings of the Brahma Samaj bring men salvation?
[3:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Master.
[3:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: How is it ever possible for one man to liberate another from the bondage of the world?
[3:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: God alone, the creator of this world bewitching Maya, can save men from Maya.
[4:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There is no other refuge but that great teacher Satjidhananda, which is Brahman, the absolute
[4:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: How is it ever possible for men who have not realized God or received His command and who are not stranded with divine strength to save others from the prison house of the world?
[4:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One day as I was passing the punch of a tea on my way to the pine grove, I heard a bull frog croaking.
[4:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I thought it must have been seized by a snake.
[4:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: After some time as I was coming back, I could still hear its terrified croaking.
[4:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I looked to see what was the matter, and found that a water snake had seized it.
[4:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The snake could neither swallow it nor give it up.
[4:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So there was no end to the frog suffering.
[4:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I thought that had it been seized by a cobra, it would have been silenced after three
[4:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: As it was only a water snake, both of them had to go through this agony.
[5:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: A man's ego is destroyed after three crooks as it were.
[5:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If he gets into the clutches of a real teacher, but if the teacher is an unripe one, then both the teacher and the disciple undergo endless suffering.
[5:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The disciple cannot get rid either of his ego or of the shackles of the world.
[5:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If the disciple falls into the clutches of an incompetent teacher, he doesn't attain liberation.
[5:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Sir, Vijay says, Sir, why are we bound like this?
[5:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why don't we see God?
[5:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Master.
[5:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Maya is nothing but the ego-tism of the embodied soul.
[5:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This ego-tism has covered everything like a veil.
[5:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All troubles come to an end when the ego dies.
[5:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If by the grace of God a man realizes but once, if a man but once realizes that he is not the doer, then it he at once becomes a G1mukta.
[6:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Though living in the body, he is liberated.
[6:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He has nothing
[6:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This Maya that is to say the ego is like a cloud.
[6:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The Sun cannot be seen on account of a thin patch of cloud.
[6:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: When that disappears, one sees the Sun.
[6:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If by the grace of the Guru, one's ego vanishes, then one sees God.
[6:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Rama, who is God himself, was only two and a half cubits ahead of Lakshpana.
[6:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: but Lakshmana couldn't see him because Sita stood between them.
[6:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Lakshmana will be compared to the Jiva and Sita to Maya, man cannot see God on account of the barrier of Maya.
[6:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Just look, I am creating a barrier in front of my face with this towel.
[6:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now you can't see me, even though I am so near.
[6:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Likewise, God is the nearest of all, but we cannot see him
[7:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All right, let's go back and discuss it a little bit and then we'll read more.
[7:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There's so much packed in here as usual.
[7:17] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So to Vijay Sri Ramakrishna says, come here now and then I like to see you very much.
[7:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is the Arunary Guru, says, is he's three kinds of gurus, he compares with three kinds of doctors.
[7:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So the Arunary doctors say, says, look, here's the medicine, take it, okay?
[7:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And that's it, that's the end of it.
[7:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: No more follow-up, but the better doctor, the superior doctor, calls up and says, look, you must take this medicine, it's for your own good, are you taking the medicine, why aren't you taking the medicine?
[7:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This has been said to you for your own good and persuade him with love and affection.
[8:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the best doctor,
[8:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: he says that what you're not taking the medicine and jumps on the patient and forces is mouth open towards the medicine down the patient's throat is this strangration describes very vividly pushes knees on the chest of the patient and forces is mouth open towards the medicine down similarly the three kinds of gurus so the more ordinary guru tells you what is right and shows you the right path and that's it
[8:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The better guru is the one who affectionately counsels us and inspires us and follows up.
[8:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the best one is the one who makes sure that we get enlightenment.
[8:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I told you, I think last time about Swami Tribunatith and in this bird is coming up.
[8:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, some, he was like that.
[8:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you did sign up for realization and enlightenment, if you did take mantra Diksha from him, then you were in for it.
[9:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I told you about that American lady who wrote a letter, we don't have that letter but it was a kind of, we can guess from the reply which is presumed that must have been a complaining letter and the reply was, Madam, you have taken refuge in me, it is now my duty.
[9:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: to make sure that you attain enlightenment and immortality.
[9:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I shall drag you willingly or unwillingly to the shores of the ocean of immortality and throw you in there.
[9:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If on the way I break your bones, I cannot.
[9:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that's the best kind of guru.
[9:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's very difficult.
[9:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is why I don't have that good idea.
[9:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I wonder how many of us would stick it out than that kind of treatment.
[9:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: read reminiscences of our gurus who were disciples of the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna.
[10:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You know, all these youngsters who were sitting with Sri Ramakrishna, 16 of them became the monks, many of them had disciples.
[10:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But how this coded their disciples?
[10:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are many such reminiscences.
[10:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And once I asked Swami Suhita and Inditi, who was the Vice President now, who was the head of the
[10:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: our gurus who were youngsters at that time.
[10:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why did they get so much coding?
[10:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I'm so into and you told me that look, they were impetent.
[10:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They realized we have very little time.
[10:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And these people these youngsters had to become ready, which means they have to become spiritually illumined and ready to pass it on and teach others.
[10:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And they were impatient.
[10:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are so many such stories.
[10:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One particularly striking one is Swami Shivananda.
[10:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He was the second president of the Ramakrishna order, another disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.
[10:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: At that time he was a president in the 1920s, this was.
[11:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he was elderly in that time.
[11:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In his room there was a monk who would stay with him at night in case he needed anything to serve him.
[11:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And Swamishivaananda hardly got any sleep at night.
[11:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He would spend often nights all together in meditation or in spiritual moods.
[11:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: At that time, Swamyea, Akhandananda had come.
[11:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Another disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, and he was visiting Beludma at the main monastery, he was visiting from Sargati, which is from the orphanage, which he established.
[11:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he was given the room next to Swami Shivananda.
[11:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And this young monk was supposed to attend to the old Swami's.
[11:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he laid in the night, he had a little bed which he made on the floor, and he went to sleep.
[11:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: and send me work to a sound of pounding, he's pounding the door.
[12:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I'm here, I can't run down on the pounding the door, I'm connecting it to Swami Shivan and this room, saying, Dada, that means elder brother, wake up, wake up, are you there?
[12:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And so I'm Shivan and also was awake.
[12:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So she comes, what's the matter?
[12:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: She's mocked this young monk,
[12:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Tell me, brother, when we were, you know, his age in our young days in Baranagar, but the first monastery did we ever sleep night?
[12:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Has he realized God that he can sleep at night?
[12:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And so I'm issue one on the console.
[12:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: No, it's all right, you know, he'll take his time, but he will get there.
[12:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don
[13:00] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So that's the best kind of guru.
[13:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's amusing at this distance, but it's not fun, it's not fun, I can tell you that.
[13:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: A little bit, I have seen very good monks and they've done it with the best of intentions, but there's coldings I cannot forget in my whole life.
[13:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All done with the best of intentions.
[13:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, and serving your office.
[13:25] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So it's, you have to withstand that.
[13:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One month I know very interesting Swami.
[13:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He lived high up in the Himalayas.
[13:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: His name was, um, his name was, um, I'm forgetting his name.
[13:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Sundaranda.
[13:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I'm his Sundaranda.
[13:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He passed up a few years ago.
[13:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He lived most of his life 40 to 50 years high up in 10,000 feet in the mountains in a little hut, an incredible life.
[14:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I didn't know about him.
[14:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I just chanced upon him when I was traveling there.
[14:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I was staying there.
[14:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In fact, I was staying in the cottage just down from his cottage.
[14:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I didn't even know about this amazing Swami.
[14:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, he is at the very least spiritually, very advanced.
[14:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But, my point here is what's relevant here is,
[14:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Local people were scared of him because he had a hot temper.
[14:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You might say, how can a hot temper go with spiritual advanced spirituality?
[14:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It can go with advanced spirituality when the person is not under the control of that hot temper.
[14:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Whether a hot temper is used only for a spiritual purpose, where they cannot say it is only the fool who cannot get angry.
[14:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The wise do not get angry.
[14:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So anyway, he had a hot temper and to get anything out of him that the first barrier due to the overcome was really rough handling.
[15:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I, I, the first time I went into the ashram was, it was not, it was not, the most welcoming because I went in and this other person was leaving the ashram.
[15:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: She was rushing out of the ashram weeping.
[15:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, I received as particularly hot scolding, I think.
[15:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, I went and talked to that Swami and I really liked him.
[15:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And you have to be careful.
[15:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One little thing, in my case, what triggered the scolding was, she, he was talking about, you know, Brahman pervading everything that God is everywhere.
[15:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: living background, his guru was one of the greatest teachers of Vedanta in those days, long way back in the 40s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 1930s, 40s, 50s, 50s.
[16:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He was in fact his guru was Tapavan Maharaj, who was the guru of Swami Chinmayananda, who established a Chinmay mission, so that Tapavan Maharaj, very well known, great Vedanta teacher, but very strict.
[16:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So Surndar and Jitu told me that because I was not very studious, I didn't know Sanskrit, and I was not very studious and top of one heart just thought to be done.
[16:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's all.
[16:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He didn't give mantras and he did not initiate anybody into Brahmacharya Sannyasa, a powers of anesthesiism.
[16:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: No.
[16:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You already had to be a monk, just the minimum qualification was you had to be a monk already and you would have to come and stay there with him 10,000 feet up in the Himalayas, find a, he will not give you quarters to stay.
[16:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So you have to find your own hut or cave and you beg for your food and all you get from him are two classes, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, that's it.
[17:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You can't even ask questions, not like here, questions, sub-objections, remarks.
[17:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Nope.
[17:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: After the classes, you go straight back to your cave or heart and may you meditate.
[17:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Anyway.
[17:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So because this person, sooner or later, was not scholarly, the proven Swami told him, what will you do?
[17:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Here, you go away.
[17:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's not for you.
[17:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Sooner on the said, I liked him so much that I said, let me just stay here.
[17:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'll serve you and all the other disciples who are here.
[17:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'll clean the place.
[17:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'll warm up the food and let me just sit and listen to you.
[17:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And that's what he did all his life.
[17:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He took care of the Ashram and the Guru.
[17:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And when I was there, I saw him in his 80s.
[17:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Still taking care of the Ashram.
[17:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Nobody's there anymore.
[17:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: His Guru is long gone.
[17:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It is maintained perfectly.
[17:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And give it to examples.
[17:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: monks have a water pot.
[17:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he pointed out, look at the water pot.
[17:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I used to keep it ready every day at any time he could come and ask, give me water in my hands.
[18:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And when I always have this feeling that any time I can hear his voice, come give me some water in my hands.
[18:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then he showed me, look, goosebumps.
[18:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: My very hair is rising and it was.
[18:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: and his guru has passed away what?
[18:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: 50 years ago.
[18:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And so that's one example of his seriousness.
[18:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The second example I found was there was a little storm.
[18:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So every cottage, every ocean there was, it was thrown with leaves and little branches and everything, including mine and all of the places.
[18:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I went out after the storm.
[18:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There was only one cottage which was pick and span, that was this old swami, just after the storm blew over, first thing he did was he got up and he cleaned the whole place, not one leaf out of place there.
[18:50] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So this was his dedication, but strict.
[18:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now the story goes this way, because he didn't understand Sanskrit or
[19:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: His guru told him, gave him a teaching from Kabir Das.
[19:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Kuleen Aende Khusahabko, with open eyes, I see my Lord.
[19:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he told him, his guru told him, that you see God in the Himalayas and the Ganga.
[19:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Then he got it from the Vedas from the Rig Vedas.
[19:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: poetry which neither decays nor dyes.
[19:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What is the poetry of the Lord this universe?
[19:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And especially something as spectacular and spiritual as the Himalayas.
[19:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is your sazhana, your spiritual.
[19:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then he so this is the background and the Swami was telling me with this background that you see everywhere is the Lord blazing forth.
[19:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now I made the mistake of being little skeptical and I said
[20:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Well, it's all right for you, you know, you've been here in the Himalayas in these wonderful surroundings all your life, but we stay in cities, you know, I was saying in Calcutta, I mean, in the better I mean, monastery, we stay in these cities, you know, and it's, and that was it.
[20:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: A memorable scolding which I remember till today, every word of it is a sound, I will not tell you
[20:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is rank insincerity, and this is, he tells me, it will be in India, translate.
[20:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Kahan, he has a lot, do maybe way or which time he will be.
[20:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You eat the lead to the sweets, the Lord is there, and what comes out in the toilet, the Lord is there also, in the temple and in the toilet the same Lord shines.
[20:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This attitude, I mean, he said, this is the sign of insincerity, I'm using a very polite word.
[21:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He, and so I took it.
[21:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I took the songs, which I just sat through that power through it.
[21:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: As said quietly, and it didn't resist.
[21:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And when he was done, but then he was full of blessings.
[21:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He was full of blessings.
[21:17] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then he opened up.
[21:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So then he opens up.
[21:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And he tells us so many things about his back practices, about his realizations, his visions, about his guru.
[21:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So many wonderful things which are treasures.
[21:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I remember that particular day, hurrying back to my cottage because there's no electricity at those days.
[21:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So it was all, it was going to get dark.
[21:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So if you had to go in the writing,
[21:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I remember, I had a book, I still have it, and then the back of that book, I quickly scribbled in the fading light a few lines from what he had said, just a few of the core teachings.
[21:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Not the scolding, which I am not likely to forget.
[21:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So why did this code so much, best guru, best guru?
[22:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: even there's a story about Swami Chinman and then do some of you may have heard his name, the Chinman mission which is there all worldwide now, almost at the end of his training and this, so Swami told me, he was there, so the part of the training was
[22:17] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The class is where he's teaching the Upanishads.
[22:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So you come, the Upanishad is taught, the class next class, you're expected to be ready to recite what was said in the last class, the text from memory.
[22:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you slip up, you're banned for the rest of this life.
[22:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Come back next life.
[22:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And Jin Man and the one slipped up.
[22:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And of course, top one swam, he said, get out.
[22:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And he had a particularly special scolding for Jin Man and he because Jin Man was a reporter and a newspaper.
[22:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And Jin Man just written a very nice account of this in his own remissance.
[22:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says, he had gone there to debunk the monks of the...
[23:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: in the Himalayas.
[23:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He had contrator, like a long newspaper report about the monks in the Himalayas.
[23:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And he became a monk in search.
[23:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But, so that Tapovanswami, his special scolding for the man there was, this is not journalism, this is not your newspaper, it's the openishats.
[23:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he, the same scolding came, this is not your, this is not writing the newspaper article, this is the openishats.
[23:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Go, don't show me your face again.
[23:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the other is the pitch tin for Chinmau, and it is so... Chinmau, and it acknowledges that.
[23:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They pleaded my case that, see, he started late.
[23:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, we all know he's a slow student, he started late, but he's almost finished, under course, and just let him be.
[23:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And so, that one's funny, relented.
[23:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Anyway, all those stories just to show,
[23:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: the best gurus.
[23:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What do you get for withstanding all that's coding and all that toughness?
[24:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You get enlightenment.
[24:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You get the goal of life.
[24:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You are you're through another monk.
[24:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I met whom I considered to be a G1mukta traditional wondering monk.
[24:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he told us about how his guru treated him in the Ashram where he studied long ago in the 1940s.
[24:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He was a Bremacharya novice.
[24:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So in those days, the Ashram days to where Karam, I don't know how to translate that.
[24:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They are wooden clogs.
[24:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So they are not sandals like nice rubber sandals of whatever.
[24:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They are wooden clogs.
[24:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And you can't walk about in a wooden clog without cracking, making sounds.
[24:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And so, he says one day, I came up to my guru early in the morning that Swami told me that when he was a Bramachary and the guru scolded me harshly so don't you aren't you mindful why are you Clarking about all over the classroom and making so much sound.
[25:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There's no other way either you can walk barefoot or you can walk on that and since your prescribed is what else can I do.
[25:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's so it's so patently unfair.
[25:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Because another brahmacharya, another novice, who was sleeping in the next room, in the morning, like seven o'clock, it's it's it's sacrilege to sleep in an ashram at seven o'clock, you're sleeping and the guru goes to him and says, my child, wake up, wake up, would you like a cup of tea, bed tea?
[25:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the Bromachary got up and this was a daily affair.
[25:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He stretched and said it so early.
[25:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'm adding that part.
[25:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I didn't tell me that.
[25:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he got up.
[25:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And this was too much for us.
[25:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I'm going to be this was too much for him.
[25:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So we can take a lot of rough treatment.
[25:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But unfair treatment is very difficult to treat.
[25:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: you, someone who obviously deserved scolding, he don't deserve scolding that person, and he pick on me unfairly, that is the little more difficult to take.
[26:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he, he, he protested, this one, he said, I protested, why completely unfair treatment?
[26:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I do everything as best as I can, and you are completely unsatisfied with me every day.
[26:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: and look at him.
[26:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He's like, if I didn't do a thing, neither the work, nor the studies.
[26:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Then the Swami said something to him and when the Swami told me that something that happened 60, 70 years ago, he said this, his ideas came to his eyes.
[26:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He said, you know what my guru told me?
[26:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: My guru told me, I'll tell you in Hindi.
[26:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: To Mara, Hogai, Celia, Tungkopol, Tene,
[26:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You will attain God-realization in this life.
[26:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's why I tell you.
[26:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What about him?
[26:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Not in this life, time.
[26:55] \[SPEAKER_02\]: It is our only affection.
[27:07] \[SPEAKER_02\]: So, anyway, all that far.
[27:09] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Come here now and then.
[27:10] \[SPEAKER_02\]: I like to see you very much.
[27:17] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, they're like that, long explanations of one line or two line, but one mustn't be impatient.
[27:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One mustn't be like, when are you going to finish at this rate you're never going to finish?
[27:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I remember one, the same Swami who told me the story about his guru and the wooden clogs and not, he used to teach and it is all towards the end one of the classes he was teaching the Mandukya, Mandukya Karika, the four-volved four chapters, he was beginning all over again.
[27:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's one more cycle, somebody asked him that, when are you likely to finish it?
[27:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And he said, finishing it is not the point, in Hindi he said, when the Sash chalei ji mandu kechalei ga, as long as your breath is going, as long as you're breathing in and out, mandu kevel ga.
[28:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And a more impatient Swami, who's teaching Sanskrit Grammar, which is very boring for a lot of people.
[28:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he started a text, a blackussed down the comb of the Sanskrit Grammar text.
[28:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the first class, somebody asked, in the back that, how long is this going to take?
[28:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And this Swami said, leave, leave just now.
[28:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: His answer in Hindi.
[28:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The question in Hindi was, um, uh, Kaptop tilleghi.
[28:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: How long will it go on?
[28:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the Swami said, you have to leave now.
[28:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You leave just now.
[28:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Just leave the class now.
[28:44] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yeah.
[28:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So what we do with the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and the Gita, we cycle back again.
[28:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We finish and we cycle back again.
[28:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All right, this is a little personal touch.
[28:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I just remembered, once my grandmother told me that she had read the Gospel of Sri Ram Krishna original Bengali some 10 or 12 times.
[29:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I was so impressed, it was a big book for a little boy, they were like, big book.
[29:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I went and told my father, you know, grandma said that she has read it 10 times or 12 times or something.
[29:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I still remember my father's sharp reply.
[29:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Only 10 times, she was always lazy.
[29:27] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Master to Vijay.
[29:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The task of a religious teacher is indeed difficult.
[29:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One cannot teach men without a direct command from God.
[29:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: People won't listen to you if you teach without such authority, such teaching is no force behind it.
[29:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One must first follow a Tain God through spiritual discipline or other some other means, thus armed with authority from God, one can tell you the lectures.
[29:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So this is something, it's important because we think, so everybody gives, if you have a church father, you give servants, if you're upon it to teach the scriptures, if you're a Swami, you give lectures and classes, but here's the Ram Krishna saying something important.
[30:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Vijay says, I don't have time to come here.
[30:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I have work and what is his work teaching in the Brahma Swamaj.
[30:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Sriramakrishna says, you're making a mistake.
[30:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You are missing out something very valuable if you don't come here.
[30:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Just Sri Ramakrishna.
[30:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The goal is God-realization.
[30:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And what he's indicating is if you come here, he will be greatly enabled and very soon this opportunity will be gone again.
[30:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We'll be gone within two or three years because he'll be gone.
[30:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So to make best use of this opportunity when it's there, teaching will come later, not only that, what you are doing is a waste, that doesn't mean that the Brahmo Samaj teaching is a waste or all the scholars teaching the Upanishads or the pastors getting talks and services based.
[30:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: No, it's a good way of carrying on religion, religion preserving it and people coming to contact with religion spirituality, with the spiritual traditions of a great world religions, that's great.
[31:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But it will not translate into God-realization, enlightenment, liberation in this lifetime that requires great spiritual power and one's own effort.
[31:17] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The such people can also teach and that teaching will be very powerful.
[31:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That will actually transform lives.
[31:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That will catch on like wildfire, but that requires a special commission from God.
[31:32] \[SPEAKER_02\]: special force behind it.
[31:34] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Otherwise, it won't work.
[31:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, one must first of all attain God through spiritual discipline, or some other means, which means the grace of God, or someone like Sri Ramakrishna will come to come close to Him by that power.
[31:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Thus, I am with authority from God, one can deliver lectures, and that will make a huge difference.
[31:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: After receiving the command from God, one can be a teacher and give lectures anywhere.
[32:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He who receives authority from God also receives power from him.
[32:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Only then can he perform a difficult task of a teacher.
[32:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'm insignificant tenant, so I engaged in a lawsuit, remember, in those days, the big people in society, especially in Bengal, rural Bengal, rural India, where people called Zamindars, Leandlords, and they would, of course, always be litigating this part, this is mine, or that is mine.
[32:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now, the tenant who has no power before a landlord, assumes the landlord, so everybody understands, they must be some other powerful landlord behind him.
[32:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What does that mean?
[32:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The answer is a question in some of some of your minds, it might be in that case, Swami.
[32:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Have you got the command from the Lord?
[32:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why are you teaching?
[32:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why are you inviting us all to classes?
[32:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Do you have it or not?
[32:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Here he gives another option.
[33:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I am that insignificant tenant, but behind these are very powerful and Lord.
[33:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He cannot, man is an insignificant creature.
[33:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He cannot fulfill the difficult task of a teacher, without receiving power direct from God.
[33:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Vizier doesn't quite get it.
[33:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says, don't the teachings of the Brahma Swamaj bring men's salvation?
[33:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Nasiwam Krishna doesn't answer this question.
[33:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Of course, spiritual teachings will take people to salvation, but not by themselves.
[33:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Otherwise, books could take people to enlightenment and God realization, so many lectures talks everywhere, teachers everywhere, no, by itself it's not enough.
[33:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Master, how is it ever possible for one man to liberate another from the bondage of the world?
[33:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But then I went to a great teacher.
[34:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You said, great teachers can liberate us.
[34:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yes, but teachers with the power of God behind them.
[34:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What is this power of God behind them?
[34:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says, there is no other refuge by the great teachers such Idaananda.
[34:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Such Idaananda means the absolute reality.
[34:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Bramman, God, the ultimate spiritual reality of this universe, existence, consciousness, place.
[34:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What's the connection between that and teacher?
[34:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's why the teacher is so important and Indian traditions, all Indian traditions.
[34:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In Vedanta teacher, Guru is called the Anograha Shakti of Ishwar, Shakti Power, Anograha Grace.
[34:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are people all ask, what is the role of grace in Advaita?
[34:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What is the role of grace in spiritual life?
[34:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Well, one form in which grace comes is the teacher.
[34:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If the teacher is coming to our lives, there is some grace flowing towards us.
[34:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: God has given His grace, that's one.
[34:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The grace of God, Sri Ram Krishna says, is always blowing.
[34:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's like the wind which is always blowing.
[35:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Raise your sail.
[35:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Then it manifests especially as a teacher in your life.
[35:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Somebody who introduces you to spiritual texts, inspires you on this path, or a guru initiates you.
[35:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: and become a lifelong relationship with the Guru.
[35:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It may not be actually in contact with the Guru.
[35:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's a spiritual relationship.
[35:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's always there.
[35:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the final grace, so Ramakrishna says, is this a old version of a saying, the grace of three is necessary for enlightenment.
[35:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Actually, four is sure Guru Shastro.
[35:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, it's sure Kripa, grace of God, Guru Kripa, the grace of the Guru, and Shastro Kripa, but it's just, Shastro means the text.
[35:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: By staying with the text, which means basically staying with the teaching, one can become a human.
[35:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But the grace of the teacher one becomes a human and most of all the grace of God one becomes a human.
[35:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then the question of a teaching says, even with the grace of these three, God, Guru and the Shastu, the text, without the grace of the one, the Jeeva goes to Rakan ruin.
[36:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What is the grace of the one, the grace of one's mind?
[36:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Which basically means ultimately I must be willing to do it.
[36:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I must be up and doing.
[36:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I've got the best things, the highest teachings.
[36:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the grace of God is already to help me.
[36:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now I must be up and doing.
[36:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Satjidananda is Guru.
[36:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: How is it ever possible for men who have not realized God or received His command?
[36:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Would not strengthen with divine strength to save others from the prison house of the world?
[36:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Many gives an example of Guru who is not competent.
[36:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: She says, I heard the croaking of a frog, and I realized the frog must have been caught by a snake.
[37:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: When he comes back some time later, he can still hear the frog croaking, which is weird.
[37:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says, I went to see what was happening.
[37:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is not normal.
[37:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: the frog should have been finished up by now and then he saw that it was a water snake and a frog so needed the frog is dying not the water snake is able to swallow the frog not can it let it go and so it's a long slow torture for both of them for guru and disciple so long slow problem because the guru is not competent and an example he gives is the cobra
[37:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: three crocs and it's gone at most three crocs and the frog is finished.
[37:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There's no chance of survival.
[37:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now the competent guru is like that who can
[37:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Actually, I was just reading this book, waking up by Sam Harris, you know, he is an atheist, one of the leading atheists of the world.
[37:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But he has this book where he talks about one kind of spirituality which he agrees to, which he thinks is valuable.
[38:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says, it's a Daita Vedanta and Zokchan Buddhism, the core of Tibetan Buddhism, which basically is the same teaching approaches a different.
[38:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he says there, it is talking about his teacher, a Tibetan lama who has passed now, a living Nepal.
[38:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So he says, after going to the teacher, a suddenly realized that teachers come in different ways.
[38:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Some of them are incompetent, some of them are only partially competent.
[38:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Only after you meet such a teacher, you suddenly realize, some of them can mislead you with wrong
[38:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: knowingly or unknowingly, wrong or confusing in information, some of them can not do in the right direction.
[38:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And some of them can give you such precise instructions that is always impossible not to break through some sorrow and to through Maya.
[38:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that's, but that's rare.
[39:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We'll also have to be ready.
[39:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If to be ready, it will not work for everybody.
[39:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They have to be of the right temperament and you also have to prevent it because there was reading up on him and there was a time before he went to the teacher.
[39:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There was a time when he spent 12 to 18 hours a day meditating.
[39:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Day after day, week after week, month after month for two to three years.
[39:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: that kind of immense effort he has put in.
[39:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That is the effect.
[39:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He said, it didn't work for me, but then this teacher did it instantaneously for him.
[39:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But instantaneously, I would say, Sam, you put in three or three years of superhuman effort.
[39:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You really, really tried.
[39:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's a good work for everybody.
[39:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, and also this great of him, it doesn't claim to be enlightened.
[39:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, I'll come to you.
[39:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says that I had this breakthrough, but then I am still continuing on my journey.
[39:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yes, very difficult to judge, but the Upanishads gave us three criteria.
[40:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Shwelptria, Bhammanishta, Akama, Hata.
[40:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, Shrutri means that Guru must be literally Shrutri means well versed in the Shruti Vedanta.
[40:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Shruti means Vedanta, but you can expand it more and say that person must be an authentic member of teaching lineage.
[40:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Not a fly-by-night operator.
[40:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I came upon this myself.
[40:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Good well-have.
[40:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Good well-have, but you can't trust that.
[40:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I would always look for an established spiritual tradition centuries, if not millennia old, which has a record of many saintly people over the centuries coming through that and all the great world religions they do have at their core many such traditions.
[40:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So at least part of that must be well versed in that tradition.
[41:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are genuinely enlightened people.
[41:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: but who do not have that competence in teaching, in that handing over the tradition?
[41:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that person cannot be a teacher, but a person who's well-versed in Vedanta, for example, was well-versed in Vedanta, to be able to teach that.
[41:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's one.
[41:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Second, Bhamma Nishita, which really means centered in dedicated to Bhamma Nishita.
[41:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This word, Nishta, is a Sanskrit word and a common Indian word also.
[41:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In all the Indian languages, it means dedication, sincerity, sustained, consistent effort in something.
[41:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In something, now is this person dedicated to spiritual life or is it like a part-time thing which I do?
[41:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'm dedicated really to making a million bucks on Wall Street and I can also give you enlightenment on weekends.
[41:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Maybe you could, but that doesn't signal confidence.
[42:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: After all, what are you talking about?
[42:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Enlightenment, God Realization is supposed to be the final thing in life.
[42:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So your life also must reflect that.
[42:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That you are, this is the end game in your life.
[42:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why would you be involved in a dozen different things?
[42:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: one more point about two things about Nishta.
[42:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Nishta means this dedication.
[42:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So what begins as shadda?
[42:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In our, we are all practitioners, we have shadda.
[42:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Shadda means faith, a sincerity of purpose, a kind of belief that there is something to spiritually.
[42:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And we all had that already.
[42:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's why we are here.
[42:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So we had that and that more of that is necessary.
[42:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that's the beginning of spiritual life.
[43:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The feeling that this is really worthwhile and I must pursue this.
[43:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I must do something about it.
[43:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's very, very important to me.
[43:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This shrub, the faith.
[43:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Very important without that no spirituality is possible.
[43:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It cannot begin and it cannot be sustained.
[43:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I mean, Vivekananda gave great stress on this.
[43:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In the Katopanishad, it begins with a very interesting line that Shadda, the Vesha, the little boy, was filled with Shadda.
[43:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Nachiketa, the story of Nachiketa, and Vivekananda points out that's why spiritual life starts.
[43:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Most important quality.
[43:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now why I'm saying this, for an advanced seeker, or for a person who has become enlightened or ghost enlightenment or has made a breakthrough, no longer is it shut down, no longer is it faith, no longer is it the belief, now this person he or she knows, it's knowledge has found it.
[43:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now what will happen?
[44:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you're looking for something, you believe it's here, you look, you look, you look, with the belief, it's here, it's here.
[44:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you don't have the belief, you won't look.
[44:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If the belief it's here, you look, look, then you find it.
[44:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Then what happens?
[44:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All right, that's it.
[44:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We lose interest and move on to the next thing.
[44:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That should not happen in the individual life.
[44:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah, this person has found it.
[44:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That Shradha now becomes Nishita.
[44:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That Shradha becomes Nishita.
[44:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You have found it the most important thing in life.
[44:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Again, just because I was reading Sam, we might be thinking, why is he reading Sam Harris?
[44:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One reason is, it's like homework.
[44:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I have this dialogue with him next week.
[44:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So as reading Sam Harris and he says, that instruction that Tibetan Lama gave me in a cave in Nepal, that a couple of sentences is the most valuable thing I've heard from anybody in my whole life.
[45:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: the single most valuable spiritual instruction.
[45:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So once you get it, it's so valuable.
[45:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You've found it.
[45:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Gita says, having found that after which nothing greater can be gained.
[45:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Having found that, after that, given the greatest of sorrows cannot shake you.
[45:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that's most valuable thing.
[45:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Have you found it?
[45:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What will you do?
[45:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You'll still get it.
[45:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's staying with that saying which has been found is called Brahmanishtha.
[45:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So the Guru must be a Brahmanishtha.
[45:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Full blown-blown entertainment, we don't know.
[45:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Nobody to judge, we can't judge.
[45:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But at least that much advancement should be there.
[45:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The person must know what he or she is talking about.
[45:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: and must stay with it.
[45:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Ghusubli, these are things which we can see.
[45:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Does the person competent to teach?
[45:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yes.
[45:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Is the person staying with it?
[45:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Is dedicated to spiritual life?
[45:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yes.
[45:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And third, there must not be akhama-hata.
[46:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Literally, it means not injured by wounded by damaged by desire.
[46:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Hata means destroyed.
[46:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So worldly desire.
[46:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Does this person, okay, the spiritual teacher, does this person have another angle to it?
[46:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: making money, is it about money, is it about a cold and power, is it about influence, is it about popularity, desire, is there some desire, worldly desire, should not have this worldly desire.
[46:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So, three things, short three are well-versed at least that tradition should be able to hand it over to you.
[46:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Second, centered in spiritual life, can I see that this person is centered
[46:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: third, there is no worldly side to it.
[46:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Any kind of worldlyness is at least a person may be genuine, but at least it's a red flag.
[46:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's not a good sign.
[46:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yeah.
[46:56] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But one of the one that's had one, one is young and dramatic here, realized that it has been a worldly person and give a
[47:09] \[SPEAKER_01\]: you reject at this moment.
[47:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But the problem is that a lot of the mind has been formed because of that guru, how to challenge all of that.
[47:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yes, and this is, it can be traumatic.
[47:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I came across this dialogue with the Dalai lama, I think it stands in palm of this English woman who became a Tibetan nun and she lived in a Himalayan cave for 10 years or 12 years, I think.
[47:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Anyway, in one of her conversations interviews with Dalai lama, she asks his holiness exactly this question.
[47:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's some of the llamas that I accused of, you know, being grossly wrong things.
[47:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But if you're being associated with such a teacher, I'm not just saying this about um, type it in a book, but I heard this, so that's what I'm saying.
[48:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It is in every tradition.
[48:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What do you do?
[48:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The Lala Amas answer was very interesting.
[48:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says, clean break with that person.
[48:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I have nothing more to do with that person.
[48:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: However,
[48:11] \[SPEAKER_03\]: the teachings are right and and valuable.
[48:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You can take the help of other persons and if you've got the teaching for a long time, you are basically you are already equipped.
[48:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Don't let go of this spiritual path because of the short coming subs of somebody.
[48:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Consign that.
[48:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I mean, if that was what the Dalai Lama said that much, but I would say also if you're on if you're a devotional, if you're like, if you worship God,
[48:37] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Then, consign the shortcomings of the Guru at the feet of the Lord and hold on to God.
[48:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Devah other teachers also, and especially somebody who has studied and practiced for years, you're pretty well equipped now to carry on your spiritual practices by yourself.
[48:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'm sure you will and you will continue to stop because of the shortcomings of a particular Guru.
[48:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One must be mature enough to go ahead, forgive, forget, let go, and go ahead in spiritual life.
[49:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: often people who are very competent in worldly life would not be taken in.
[49:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In spiritual life, sometimes they are like children, the kids.
[49:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They can be taken in by anybody and everybody, but this is especially a lot of what you call crooked people, sometimes they take advantage of others.
[49:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Sometimes it might be deliberate, crookedness, sometimes it might just be human weakness.
[49:34] \[SPEAKER_04\]: Yes, I want to understand if we should always stick to one teacher or is it fine to the old teachings from one.
[49:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's fine to hear teachings from at least in our tradition.
[49:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It depends on your tradition.
[49:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In our traditions, we are very, very open.
[49:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You can tell listen to teachings from as many people as you want.
[49:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But, it must be centered on something.
[49:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There must be something which is your home to home tradition.
[49:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So in our Ramakrishna Mahatma, this is the way we do it is.
[50:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And in many Hindu organizations also, what we do is, there is a home tradition.
[50:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: and the guru gives you a mantra and indicates the form in which you are to worship and seek God.
[50:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that is what is called Ishtar Devata, that which is your chosen idea and there is a mantra connected to it.
[50:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So that becomes your center, your home tradition.
[50:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: After that, you want to listen to Tibetan Buddhism, you want to go for a Vipassana class, you can, and in that home tradition also,
[50:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Suppose you are in the Ramakrishna tradition, you are there.
[50:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are, in a number of teachers, there is one here.
[50:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There is one across the park in the East Side Center.
[50:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There is one in a past, a Boston and Providence.
[50:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are so many Swami's teaching all the teaching in different ways.
[50:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You are welcome to all of them.
[50:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What about outside?
[50:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Certainly outside the Ramakrishna order, of course.
[50:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: There are any number of great Vedanta teachers.
[50:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Well, what about outside Vedanta?
[50:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why not?
[51:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: all up to you.
[51:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But, and do I have to?
[51:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: No, you don't have to.
[51:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you're satisfied by focusing on one thing, good for you.
[51:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Initial period of seeking and exploding, I think it's really good in today's world.
[51:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's good.
[51:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Spend some time, few months, few years.
[51:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Or if you get the feeling, no, this is it.
[51:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is what I want to do.
[51:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Then you're blessed.
[51:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you don't get that feeling, keep looking.
[51:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Keep studying, looking around.
[51:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's a super market of spirituality,
[51:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: However, let me share with you one thing which a monk in the Himalayas said.
[51:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Very important thing.
[51:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In this day and age because of two reasons there's a great danger.
[51:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One danger is because of the serfete of what is available.
[51:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's a buffet of spiritual food.
[51:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So we tend to, you know, dabble here and there.
[51:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We tend to become, it becomes a real problem.
[51:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What is that word for?
[52:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Deletant, deletant, spiritual deletant.
[52:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Go here and the time goes away.
[52:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And not only time goes away, it takes time to develop what is in Sanskrit called a bow.
[52:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: My guru, my ishda, devotion, focus, it takes time, it doesn't happen instantly.
[52:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That time is going away, if I keep, you know, as I straight somewhere, the psychologist says, the natural condition of the human mind is wandering.
[52:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: First and second, the wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
[52:38] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So focus at one point is important.
[52:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So this is one problem with too much availability today on the internet, everywhere.
[52:45] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So many things are, everything is available basically.
[52:49] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I saw in Barnes and Noble, one of the most well-stocked shelves is the role of the role of spiritual books.
[52:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Even more than that positive psychology and self-help.
[53:03] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Science, I saw half a shelf.
[53:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Alright, so that's one problem.
[53:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The second problem is this is the age of free thinking.
[53:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I trust my own intellect by understanding.
[53:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: which is good, which is good.
[53:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The great thing about our age, but this is a deep weakness that I am thinking for myself.
[53:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So what could be wrong in that?
[53:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You must think for yourself, but this is what the statue of me in the Himalayas told me.
[53:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He said, I come across people here back packing in Himalayas.
[53:36] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'm sorry to say he said most of them are Westerners.
[53:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The back packing around in Himalayas, why?
[53:42] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Looking for a guru, very good.
[53:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: 20 years later, the same person backpaggy little older little slower, what happened, looking for a good aim.
[53:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Have you not met any gurus or plenty of them?
[53:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now what has happened to see?
[53:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is the subtle thing, the trick that our mind plays on me.
[54:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I am thinking for myself, now none of these gurus are good enough for me.
[54:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That means I, this mind is tricking me.
[54:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's not allowing me to begin anywhere.
[54:13] \[SPEAKER_03\]: None of these philosophies are good enough for me.
[54:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: None of these teachings, Vedanta, Vishestad Bhaita, Dwaytha, Tibetan, Zokchen, Vipassana, whatever it is.
[54:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: None of them are good enough for me.
[54:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What's happening here?
[54:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That Swami told me very beautifully.
[54:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I've seen the foolishness of it.
[54:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They intellect is important.
[54:35] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But the ideas and convictions and questions of this one intellect supersede for me.
[54:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The thoughts and the teachings and the conclusions and the realizations of millions and billions of other people.
[54:53] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is intellect not just for thinking, it's combined with a tremendous ego.
[55:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All these gurus, all these texts, all these arestrams, all these teachers whom I've met talked with, none of them are really good enough for me.
[55:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: To late.
[55:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: River of time is flowing very fast, which for nobody.
[55:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And the Bible says, who amongst us with all our efforts could add one day, one hour to
[55:37] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yes, two people, I'll come to you next.
[55:38] \[SPEAKER_06\]: Yeah.
[55:41] \[SPEAKER_06\]: We actually mentioned that are they just general guidelines or kind of hard and fast.
[55:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: General guidelines, all of these general guidelines.
[55:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Because we can't apply it very strictly.
[55:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: We don't know really.
[55:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: These are good things to look for.
[55:55] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Good things to look for.
[55:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Very much.
[55:58] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Ticks all the boxes.
[55:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You don't have to be a monk.
[56:00] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The drumman is not mean monk.
[56:03] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's very interesting.
[56:04] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The criteria in the Upanishad does not say monk.
[56:07] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It says, Grumman is the center in God, the center in Brahman.
[56:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It was Lairi Masha, the center in Brahman.
[56:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Oh, all the time.
[56:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Was he a householder or wife children everything?
[56:17] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yes.
[56:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Was he a part of an accepted tradition?
[56:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Yes, very, very great.
[56:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: A part of a great, great, great, tantric tradition.
[56:27] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now, you might say, what about desire?
[56:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I have to see that the whole his whole spiritual project was it a money-making project was it like the engine of his corporate empire, no, it wasn't, so that's good enough.
[56:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I would say, I'm a monk, I would say good enough.
[56:46] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And look at the disciples he produced.
[56:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Before I come to your questions, so the Nishita, the other thing I wanted to tell you was I wanted to talk to me, there was a monk whom I saw, a disciple of Swami Shivaan and the same Shivaan that I mentioned, his name was Nishitaan and the one who takes his joy in Nishita, and he really lived up to his name.
[57:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I remember he was this huge man dark and powerfully built, and when I saw him he was in his 80s, and we were to be scared of him because he always called it us.
[57:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I remember one of the rough my friends once they shared the same room.
[57:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I managed to turn on that room and the next bed, this other monk, was young monk visiting, he told me.
[57:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I didn't even know who he was.
[57:41] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He was in the next bed early in the morning.
[57:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I thought I was tired from a train journey.
[57:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You can't sleep.
[57:48] \[SPEAKER_03\]: But then I thought I wouldn't go to the temple to meditate and I can always meditate sitting on my bed, you know.
[57:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So everybody got up and I also got up washed my face and came down and sat down on the bed.
[57:57] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And that's why he shouted at me into the dark monasteries.
[58:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: This is what it has come to among you young monks.
[58:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: What is that big temple for?
[58:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: See the danger of sitting on your bed and meditating his.
[58:10] \[SPEAKER_03\]: After some time the bed is very tempting.
[58:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So I will lie down and meditate.
[58:17] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah.
[58:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So the nishtan on the isa.
[58:21] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Every day, not for one day, did he miss the early morning Mangalarathi, which is at 4am in the morning.
[58:28] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now what's so difficult about it?
[58:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: See, I saw it arthritis.
[58:33] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He has all his joints, but clogged in his, to put the cloth on in the morning to come 15 minutes.
[58:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then from his room to the temple, it took him 15 more minutes to just walk, which would have taken us two minutes.
[58:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If slowly walk painfully there, and then he would sit down there and meditate as long as the youngest ones of us meditate it.
[58:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And then he would get up and go to do pronoms, salute the temple of Vivekananda, the temple of Brahmananda, the temple of Mashar, the Holy Mother, and the place, you know, the Samadhi cart where the direct disciples were cremated, he would go there, the whole routine, which we all did.
[59:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It took us 10 minutes, 15 minutes, it took him an hour, one and a half hours,
[59:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: year after year after year.
[59:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Nishtananda.
[59:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: till his death.
[59:22] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One day I remember this was resort touching.
[59:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: One day they got what had wheelchair for him and one of the guys in the office, he wheeled him along on the wheelchair to the temple so that he could bow down in each of the temples.
[59:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: You just see in the delight of that old monk, he was too close.
[59:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He looked like this huge baby sitting on the wheelchair
[59:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: would actually give him a wheelchair and somebody to wheel him along.
[59:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He was embarrassed and delighted and overcome with joy.
[59:59] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That was a lesson to us, which we'll never forget.
[1:00:01] \[SPEAKER_03\]: How for such a little thing, how grateful a person can be.
[1:00:07] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Nishtananda, Nishtananda.
[1:00:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Manohar Maharaj's name was Manohar Maharaj.
[1:00:15] \[SPEAKER_03\]: If you ask any monk of our order, my age or older,
[1:00:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All right, we just dig the questions.
[1:00:27] \[SPEAKER_05\]: That's what I mean, yeah.
[1:00:29] \[SPEAKER_05\]: Darling, my mom always on his Twitter, talks about compassion.
[1:00:32] \[SPEAKER_05\]: Yeah, so frequently.
[1:00:35] \[SPEAKER_05\]: In the invite of the data, I was wondering if you could give share anything on compassion and outlook of compassion.
[1:00:43] \[SPEAKER_05\]: I don't remember.
[1:00:44] \[SPEAKER_05\]: My heart she says, you help someone, you're helping yourself, you're right, so I'm going to help them just help with all your scenes.
[1:00:52] \[SPEAKER_03\]: that is the Advaita approach to it.
[1:00:54] \[SPEAKER_03\]: It's not a discompassionate path or uncompassionate path, it sounds cold, but it's Vivekananda says, what is the basis for compassion?
[1:01:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The Dalai Ramasese is it because it's a fundamental teaching of Buddhism, not just Tibetan Buddhism, all Buddhism, so Karuna compassion, which sometimes translated as loving kindness to all beings.
[1:01:18] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Now, in Adwaita Vedanta, Vedicant is said, the basis of all Essex is this oneness.
[1:01:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why should I be good to somebody else?
[1:01:26] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why should I not defraud somebody else if it suits my purpose?
[1:01:30] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why should I love somebody else?
[1:01:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Why?
[1:01:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Exactly.
[1:01:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: And Adwaita Vedanta called Vedicant is, it provides the rational for it, the metaphysical foundations for ethics.
[1:01:47] \[SPEAKER_03\]: art from and is is is how the world is from that can you derive ethical principles and the general understanding and philosophy is that you cannot but ultimately you must our ethics must be based on reality so avoid the way down to provide that basis why should
[1:02:13] \[SPEAKER_02\]: that we cannot overcome.
[1:02:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That self is expanded from the smallest to the biggest.
[1:02:20] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All everybody else is literally you yourself.
[1:02:23] \[SPEAKER_03\]: When I harm somebody else, I'm harming myself.
[1:02:29] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'm sorry for quoting Sam so much, because I'm reading him.
[1:02:32] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I just read another line he has.
[1:02:34] \[SPEAKER_03\]: He says, enlightened self-interest and selflessness.
[1:02:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In the end of the day, there's not much difference between the two.
[1:02:44] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Selflessness and enlightened self-interest.
[1:02:50] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Practically, if you see the policy implications and our behavior, both will do the same thing.
[1:02:56] \[UNKNOWN\]: There.
[1:02:58] \[SPEAKER_02\]: Yes, the last question there.
[1:03:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You mentioned earlier that you have to be ready to use vinyl goods.
[1:03:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: You're interested in the spiritual path.
[1:03:06] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So at one point, if I say, say, for example, I speak from our tradition.
[1:03:09] \[SPEAKER_03\]: At one point, if you feel, I need a practice of my own, which I will practice.
[1:03:14] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I'll follow this particular path.
[1:03:16] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I like the teachings of the Ramakrishna Vivekantha tradition, which is a Vedanta tradition, but a sort of expanded, more liberal Vedanta tradition.
[1:03:24] \[SPEAKER_03\]: I like this path.
[1:03:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In our order, what you would do is, now I will go and ask for initiation,
[1:03:31] \[SPEAKER_03\]: So the guru will give you a mantra riksha, not all the swamis are empowered to initiate So you'd have to go to somebody who is empowered to initiate and then ask request And that's why we will not automatically give it to you will ask Most typically have you read what exactly do you need what exactly do you want Why are you taking a mantra riksha and so and so forth and then you've taken a mantra riksha
[1:03:56] \[SPEAKER_03\]: In India in our order, it would be the President or the Vice President of our order, four of them are there, five of them all together, they can initiate you.
[1:04:05] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Here there are a number of Swami's and different centers who are empowered to initiate.
[1:04:08] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That's what you would do in our tradition.
[1:04:12] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Outside you have to go and depending on the organization or the lineage, it's a different place to place.
[1:04:19] \[SPEAKER_03\]: a very strict Advaita Vedanta lineage, they will not initiate you with a mantra, may not.
[1:04:25] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They will teach you the Upanishads, the Gita, the tech manuals of non-dwellism, and ask you to learn it, reflect upon it, and contemplate it.
[1:04:39] \[SPEAKER_03\]: That would be the way it.
[1:04:40] \[SPEAKER_03\]: They are the teacher and the Guru will be the same person.
[1:04:43] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Here, for example, you would take mantra diksha from a guru, and then you could come to my class, you could come to somebody else's class, the teacher and the guru are different.
[1:04:51] \[SPEAKER_03\]: The teacher need not be the guru, Guru need not be the teacher.
[1:04:55] \[SPEAKER_03\]: All right, on that note, that means to the peace chant,
[1:05:02] \[SPEAKER_03\]: Oh, shanti shanti, shanti hari yon tatsat shri rana Krishna Rupana Mastu.

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