THIS IS NOT MY ORIGINAL WORK, I HAVE ONLY PLAYED THE ROLE OF A SCRIBE
Once again, with Guruji's permission, presenting Swamiji's book 'The Purpose of Prayer'.
We begin, as always, with an invocation to Saraswati Ma, for the successful completion of this book.
saraswati namastubhyam varade kAmarUpini
vidyArambham karishyAmi siddhir bhavatu mE sadA
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PRAYER ALWAYS HAS A PURPOSE
A prayer is centred on a self conscious and self-judging person relating to an altar. The mode employed by the person praying is never the same- it differs from prson to person. Even for a given person it differs from time to time. And also, a prayer can be a simple mental or oral chant or a strict elaborate vedic ritual.
There can be three different forms of karma, action, in prayer: physical, kAyika, oral- vAchika, and mental, mAnasa. Perofrming a ritual is a physical form of prayer. Singing in praise of the Lord is an oral form of a prayer while chanting a mantra silently is a mental form of a prayer
Prayer always has a purpose, just as any action has. You pray because you want something. Without an object of desire, there is no prayer. You may want something specific or you may want clarity of mind, antah-karana-shuddhi. You may also pray that the Lord be pleased with your prayer because you want to be in his good books; you want Him to glance at you now and then. He seems to cast his blessings on others all the time, but when it comes to you, something happens. Either he blinks or closes his eyes altogether
Further it looks as though you cannot pray for another person just as you cannot eat for another person. However although prayer is an action, it is not like eating. It is more like bathing. Not only can you bathe, you can also bathe your child. Thus you can pray to achieve something either for yourself or for someone else. Yet even when you pray for another person, it is still your prayer. When you se someone unhappy, who is suffering, you also suffer because you are human. You are affected by the other person's condition and you cannot stand it. You want the person to be happy which really means that you want to be happy. Therefore a prayer for others is also for the sake of one's own happiness.
All prayer therefore is only for my sake. When I pray for my wife or child, when I say "may my family be protected", there is an extended 'I", an 'I' that is affected all the time. I am affected by everything that goes on around me, be it caused by nature or by other human beings. I need not be an american to be affected by an american being taken hostage. Every human being will be affected, one he or she knows the possible consequences of such an action. My prayer, therefore, is to help prevent or bear these experiences.
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THE TWO RESULTS OF A PRAYER
Prayer is effective, whether it is prayer for one's own sake or for another's sake. To see how such a prayer is effective and how it produces results, we have to analyze the nature of prayer itself.
One result of your prayer is immediate, drashta-phalam. By praying for something, such as clarity of mind- antah-karana-shuddhi, you recognize another power higher than yourself. You are also accepting the limitation of your own power and knowledge. This is simple pragmatism. To be objective you must know your limitations. Even when you know your limitations often you do not want to accept them.
The fac that you can pray is wonderful because it implies an acceptance on your oart, not only your limitations, but also the existence of a limitless source. This acceptance is a very beautiful thing; it is the immediate result of prayer. You may call it psychological if you wish, but the result is very evident. It is not easy to sit and pray; but when you do, a kind of melting happens. Otherwise the ego will not let you sit and pray.
There is also an unseen result of prayer, adrashta-phala, which involves faith.
The one who prays, the agent of action of a prayer, says "this is what I want" the action and the expressed desire bring about a result which is subtle in nature, unseen. This unseen result which we call grace will manifest in time. It is produced by action of prayer and accrues to the one who prays.
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KARMA AND PRAYER
If you accept the law of karma, you can come to appreciate that most problems are brought about by the results of actions done in this life and in past lives. An acute stomache ache or cancer, for instance can be understood as the result of past karma. You could attribute the problem to heredity or genes which is just using a different model to explain it; either way it is the same thing
If you go one step further, you would ask the reason why you were born with these particular genes. Why should you be in this situation? Why do you not have a different set of parents? If you ask these questions to a biologist, he or she will give up and say "go and ask a Swami. It is not my field!"
We say that there is a natural selection of parents that takes place in accordance with certain laws. If there is such a thing as the soul surviving death, there must be laws that govern the huge network of possible combinations that determine the sou;'s next birth.
Many aspecs have to be arranged such as time and place of birth, parantage, social position and culture, economic situation and so on, all of which in some way affect the child who is born. Thus each person has a particular type of karma
Karma is a huge network of laws, which operates purely mechanically. From the standpoint of karma your stomach-ache may be a result of either past karma done long ago or more recently. It may be due to any number of reasons- over-eating, alcohol or the conditions of your mind- all of which can be viewed in terms of either the immediate or remote past.
if you worry about karma, you merely add to your misery. Therefore worrying is useless. The past has already happened and cannot be changed.You accept it and pray. Certain damage may have been done to your stomach because of past events. If so, is there anything you can do about it now? Yes, you can pray,
"let this prayer produce results that will neutralize the past karma".
The law of karma is subtle. We do not know our past karma. We only know that when something occurs, it may be due to past karma. When extraordinary events take place we cannot immediately account for the causes, we fall back on some past karma to explain them. Therefore you win a lottery and call it punia, or lose something and call it bad luck; all this may be past karma at work
In spite of all your efforts and plans, situations that we call bad luck keep happening. Karma unfolds every day. What you are doing right now may be due to past karma. It is just that you cannot see it.
Even the most die-hard atheist explains events in terms of luck. Whenever the person catches a bus, for instance, and is the last person on, before the bus starts off, he or she exclaims "how wonderful! what luck!". Similarly when the person misses the bus, he or she calls it bad luck
People do miss buses in life, and there are a lot of buses. No matter how carefully we plan, at the last minute something can happen which we think of as bad luck. When such events happen, they indicate the existence of something that we are not able to lay our hands on. We do not know what it is or how it unfolds. We only know that it keeps happening and there is some pattern to it. The law of karma explains that "something."
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PRAYER NEUTRALIZES ONE'S PAST AND DAILY WRONGDOINGS.
How can I nutralize the effects from the past, both immediate and remote past? There are certain options available to me, but I have to make the effort to exercise those options. Along with effort I require enthusiasm, courage, knowledge, resources, readiness and capacity to face obstacles. However despite all these six factors, I can miss the bus, which is why I require prayer. If these six factors are present, the Lord can help if I pray. All six must be there for my prayer to work. I cannot simply sit quietly and pray, I have to act.
There is a story about two boys who were traveling to a neighbouring village. On the way they happened to see a Ganesha temple. One of the Hindu customs is that you should not pass a temple without offering your prayers. One of the boys went into the temple but the other walked on saying "I will not go to the temple because I do not believe in all that"
While the first boy was leaving the temple after praying to the Lord, he stepped on a scorpion and was stung. He held his toe, shouted and screamed for his friend. The second boy, while walking past the temple, saw something shining on the ground. He picked it up and found it was a gold coin Just then he heard his friend yelling and ran back to find out what happened
The first boy said "I have been stung by a scorpion. Please help me".
The second boy said, "this is the prasada, gift, from your Lord. You went in to the temple and got a scorpion sting. Do you know what I got for not hoing to the temple?" He showed him the gold coin. "Why do you go to temples? it's all useless".
The boy was already in pain and now his friend's words stung him to the quick. He felt that it was so unfair and was very disheartened.
As they were talking, a sadhu passed by. The first boy called out to him and requested his help. He told him all that had happened, the scorpion sting, and how painful it was. The sadhu gave him some medicine to relieve the pain.
The boy then asked him "maharaj ji I went to the temple according to our custom. I have real devotion. As I was coming back, a scorpion stung me. My friend just walked past the temple and he found a gold coin on the road. What justice is this?"
The sadhu was an astrologer. He asked the date and time of birth of both the boys. He calculated their horoscpe and told them all that had happened in their lives. He described their past events, their parents, the number of brothers and sisters and so on. Since all that he said was true, the boys had to believe him.
The Sadhu said to the boy who had a scorpion sting, "You should have been bitten by a very poisonous cobra or met with an accident of some kind, but you got away with only a scorpion sting."
To the other boy he said "you should havee got a huge treasure, instead you had to settle for just one gold coin"
The story is to illustrate the point that our efforts can affect the flow of the law of karma.
The purpose of prayer is to eliminate or neutralize one's daily wrongdoings. Our prayer helps to tap some of the grace of the limitless that is the Lord. This is one of the reasons why we should pray at different times of the day, sunrise, noon, and again at sunset. Even though we may not have done anything wrong that day, there is always the past karma unfolding each day.
Each person's karma is a mixture of the results of good and bad deeds, punya and pApa. Punya means that which unfolds conducive or pleasant situations, pApa means that which unfolds painful or unpleasant situations.
To deal with the pApa that unfolds daily, minute-by-minute, we have to keep gathering punya to neutralize the pApa. Prayer does this. It is not just for gaining mental clarity. By producing unseen results, it can also take care of previous wrongs
Life is a mixture of punia and pApa and brings pleasant and unpleasant experiences. We also know that we do not dictate all terms in life and some of us may even develop our own personal philosophies to help us deal with this fact. Sometimes we may find either punia or pApa coming in waves for a period of time, a few years, a few months or a few weeks, one after the other.
There may be nothing but pApa for a period of time and later we may find everything goes well, generally speaking. But within any given day, we will always find a combination of the two
The morning may have been wonderful because the sun was shining, you went out to play tennis, but sprained your ankle on the court and for the next five days you could not do anything.
Sometimes everything appears to be going well, but the car will not start. Alternately, the car starts, but stops in the middle of the freeway in the dead of night, six miles from a gas station; it would have been better if it had not started in the first place. Such situations may be due to omissions and commissions in the immediate past or may be due to old pApas, which you want to neutralize or tone down. One unseen result can be counteracted by another unseen result. This is the purpose of prayer
Suppose, you fall asleep with your pockets stuffed with cash and credit cards and you dream that you are starving, that you have nothing to eat for three days, and that you have no money. Of what use is the money in your pocket? It cannot even buy you a coke in the dream. To buy a dream coke, you need dream omoney. Similarly, to neutralize the unseen results gathered from prevous wrong actions, you need the unseen results of prayers done in the present
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THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER
Prayer is efficacious. However, you may say that you have been praying but nothing ever happens for you.
I will counter that by saying "if you did not pray, a lot of other things could have happened"
There was an old woman who used to tell her beads all day long. Even though she did this faithfully, she created problems for her daughter-in-law. She would stop just long enough to order the girl to do one thing or another. The poor girl, a new bride in the household, had a difficult time
After several years of living in the same house, the daughter in law complained that even though her mother in law had done so much japa, there was no change in her attitude. "for the past ten years I have seen only her beads change! they have become smooth, while her mind and behaviour are as rough as before"
I told her, "imagine her behaviour if she had not been doing japa. It could have been mch worse, perhaps even impossible to live in the same house with her". The old woman's prayer in the form of japa did produce results, however small.
Prayer definitely produces result according to law of karma. In any situation, an intelligent person takes into account the various factors before undertaking an action. Prayer is one such action. When we take our limitations into account and offer a prayer, the law of karma takes care of the results. Prayer invokes Lord's grace
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ALL ABOUT GRACE
I thought I would think aloud about what is said to be grace. Everybody uses the word. In india it is very common to say "it is all his grace it is your grace.” These are very common expressions. In the Western culture also, I see the word grace being used often. The source of grace is always assumed to be the Lord, the one who is beyond our empirical purview. Even though people really don’t understand what this Lord, or God
or ishvara is, that person is accepted as the source of grace by those who recognize that there is grace in one’s life. In the Indian tradition there is a lot of thinking about this grace (anugraha). We don’t simply accept things without inquiry. Our whole tradition is a tradition based on inquiry. Even the cultural forms are connected to religion and the religious forms are connected to the wisdom and the wisdom is born of inquiry (vichara). The vichara is inquiry into the source books, , inquiry into them as a means of knowledge
What Is Grace?
Suppose the grace comes from ishvara, the Lord. In that case, he has to choose. How is he going to choose to whom he is going to give grace today? Getting up in the morning he has to ask Lakshmi, “Today, to whom should I give?”
He should use some method of choosing, a lucky-dip perhaps. How is he going to choose the person who deserves the grace? We always think that grace is something that comes to us from somewhere—sometimes asked and sometimes unasked, now and then. Really speaking grace is the result of karma. But we do not know when we did the karma to earn the grace.
Nor do we know which karma is the cause for this particular grace. When I am not able to pinpoint which karma is responsible for this desirable thing which is with me now, I gracefully say that it is grace. It is the result of action, (karma-phala) gracefully expressed. The result of karma earned by you, either in this birth or in a prior birth, that produces grace, is definitely not a simple karma which is self-centered. It is not centered on a small self that is confined to yourself the individual, or to your small family.
That karma is not going to win grace. But when you reach out to do something to help another person, to help the community, to help other living organisms in this world, when you do something which implies a self which accommodates more than the small unit called the family, that karma, called pirta-karma, earns grace. In days gone by, people established things for public use like a well, a pond, even a temple of worship, a place where people can go and relax.
All these are called pĂrtakarma. Doing any of them wins grace. But we don’t know which karma produced which grace. Similarly, our daily prayers, rituals, and so on, also win grace
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SOURCE OF GRACE
Grace is not something that the Lord distributes to some chosen people. It is something that we earn as a result of our actions (karma-phala). The Lord, of course, is very much present in it as the one who gives the results of actions (karma-phala-data). The laws produce the result of action, and those laws are not separate from ishvara.
The world (jagat) cannot be entirely different from the cause, the maker. If this jagat, the world, has a certain reality, this reality cannot come into being without some material. The maker has got to have not only some material, but an appropriate material. The appropriateness is in terms of what is contained in the product, and also in terms of its reality.
Thus, a certain appropriate material is inevitable in the hands of ishvara, the maker. Further, the material cannot be separate from the maker. If the material is separate from the maker what separates is space or time, but space and time themselves are products. They are part and parcel of the whole
the jagat. Therefore space does not yet exist to separate the material from ishvara. Both the material and the maker are identical. ishvara “created, he himself became. This is a very important message from the Veda. “He desired, ‘May I become many. May I produce.’ He reflected (on the previous creation). Having reflected, he created all this, whatever is here.
He himself became everything. As a maker he is ‘he’, as the material, ‘she’. Thus we have an ishvara whose manifestation—not even creation, because we have a creation only when the material is different from the creator—is the jagat. If he has become the jagat, if he is manifest in the form of jagat which includes your body, mind, sense complex, then there is no question of the material being separate from ishvara. This a very important thing to know.
What is grace? The maker and the material being identical, and the jagat being not separate from the Lord, the laws, which are also the Lord, produce the results of action.
Some of these laws are known to me partially. And many laws are unknown to me. We don’t even understand in-laws, let alone natural laws! But one thing we know is that the laws, being what they are, don’t err. They don’t transgress themselves. Therefore, I can relax in the awareness that the laws cannot cheat me.
In keeping with the laws, for all those special actions that I have done I have earned some favorable result (karma-phala) which is called punia. But I cannot pinpoint the karma that brought this to me. In life you have to be at the right place at the right time, and I cannot say what accounts for that happening.
I don’t know whether it is true, but definitely you all think that being in America you are at the right place. Some of the new-comers, however, think they are not here at the right time—unless they are engaged in an internet startup company and can sell it for a windfall. Others always think that they have come a little late. You are at the right place, but at the wrong time. To be at the right place at the right time is not in our hands.
It is very funny how we have a lot of plans. If you want to make God laugh—because he is a serious guy—all you have to do is tell him your plans for the future. Between the cup and the lips there are always slips. Therefore, to be at the right place at the right time is not in my hands. I don’t call all the shots.
One’s whole life is a percentage game, like baseball. We don’t call the shots. When this kind of human predicament is there, the self-conscious human being recognizes his helplessness. When one recognizes one’s helplessness and then one finds oneself in a favorable situation, the pragmatic, objective human being cannot but recognize and acknowledge something unknown which shaped this situation in his favor. One has to acknowledge that fact.
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RECOGNIZING GRACE
People who acknowledge grace are objective people. They are pragmatic. Grace is a graceful acceptance of a situation. It is also grace that keeps us going. You see the green light and drive on assuming that the other fellow saw the red light. This assumption is purely rooted in grace, because you have no basis to make such an assumption. It is pure trust. The other fellow may be seeing many lights, because he had one too many Lights–Bud’s Light. How do you know that even after having seen the red light he won’t drive through it?
When you breathe out, definitely there is the hope that you will breathe in, that the air that you breathed out will come back. You breathe out thinking it will come back, for if you have a doubt you will try not to breathe out. When you breathe out hoping the breath will come back, there is the possibility that it may not come back at all. And look at this pumping heart. It is the greatest blessing.
Even though it is a simple pump, it is much more than a mere pump. How sturdy it is. It started even before you were born, before you had seen the light of day. And it has been pumping all the time without any rest. If I ask you to clench your fist and open it again for fifteen minutes, after ten minutes you will want to have a tea break. But this blessed heart has got to work all the time.
It has no respite at all. Even if you go into a coma it goes on. It is an amazing organ. It is just tissues, but definitely between lub and dub I see a certain grace. After lub there need not be dub at all. It can be lublub. It is lub grace dub. Grace lub grace dub grace lub.
What I am saying is that there is this unpredictability, and that is what grace is about. It is not something that visits us occasionally. It is there very much with us between lub and dub. That we are alive is a miracle. That we are still sane is another miracle. That we remain married and each one admires the other is the miracle of miracles.
It is called Ashcharya, a wonder. That you are blessed with children is another miracle. Every time you go out and come back in one piece, it is a miracle. We hear of accidents every day, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.
I was an avid reader of the news, and then one day gave up reading the newspaper. Three years later, when I picked one up again, I found no difference at all. And when I looked into the sports page, I found that India had lost the test match! That we are able to retain our sanity in spite of this, is due to grace.
The grace seems to work overtime. It is such a beautiful thing to recognize the beauty of living, to appreciate that I am alive and kicking. Every moment is a reality. It unfolds something precious to me. And if I am with the moment I enjoy. To recognize grace one has to recognize the meaning, the profundity, the miracle, in fact, of just living.
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EARNING GRACE- BY RECOGNIZING FREE WILL
We earn grace by actions which are deliberate, not by our reactions. Actions that reach out, actions of prayer, earn grace. Most of us are busy day after day, with our time consumed by our reactions and reactions to reactions. First we react in anger and say things which are inappropriate. Then we regret what we said. That is another reaction. It is through actions alone that we can express ourselves.
What really makes you different from any other living being on this planet is your capacity to choose. That capacity to choose is what is called free will. If a cow is a vegetarian it is not by choice, but if you are one it is by choice. That is will. You choose. And this freedom that our will seems to have is an inhibited freedom.
It is not total freedom because you are always in a situation where you are called upon to do something appropriate to the situation. I may not like to do it, but I have to do it because it is my duty. Indians invariably have this concept of duty, (kartavyam).
Even with regard to work they say, “I’m going for duty,” “I have resigned my duties,” or “I have joined duty.” I receive letters all the time saying, “Swamiji I have fulfilled all
my duties. I want to come along with you.” Now it becomes my duty to take care of this fellow! The concept of duty imposes a pressure on you unless you love to do what needs to be done. If you have to do it, whether you like it or not, then it is better to learn to like it.
That is how I learned to like a few things. I never liked karela, bittergourd. And I never could understand why anybody would like it. After I became a sadhu I decided I would eat this bittergourd. I made a resolve, sankalpa
Once you have made a sankalpa you have to keep to it. I was invited to lunch and this vegetable was served. Since I had made the sankalpa I quietly ate it. It was difficult, but I ate it. But the hostess thought I liked the bittergourd, and served a second helping. Since I had decided to eat bittergourd, I ate that serving also.
The third time I had to say, “Enough.” Then somebody else invited me to lunch. That person phoned the other person and asked, “What does Swamiji like?” The answer was, “Swamiji loves bittergourd.” Then the information jumped cities also. Before I went to a place, bittergourd was waiting there. I ended up eating bittergourd all the time. Wherever I went, there it was. In the process I learned to like it.
This an effective example to show that when I am constrained to do a certain thing, it is better that I love that thing. I have to learn to like it. Then I have no pressure. Because of pressure my free-will is always inhibited. With a murmur, having lodged a complaint I do something. With a dissatisfaction I do it
Then free-will becomes a hostage in the hands of your own raga dvesa, likes and dislikes. Even when you reach out it does not come from your heart. It is because you are pressured.
Suppose you happen to drive in the city of Madras. You stop for a red light. Then the beggars come and beg. There is a newcomer in that group of beggars. He asks once, very matter-of-factly, does not get any response, and goes to the next person and to the next person and so on.
He asks once and moves on. He doesn’t know how to beg. He has to learn from the others. The experienced beggars make you feel so wretched by their whining, that you end up giving. The giving is more to get rid of your wretchedness than to help the beggar. This is not giving. You have to give with all your heart; then only is there grace. There is no other way of earning grace.
It has to come out of you. Be bigger than you think you are. You are as much as you think you are. You can have millions of dollars and still feel small because you can’t open up. A rich man is that person who has one rupee. He is begging for his living. When another beggar comes to him and says, “I am hungry,” he gives away that one rupee because he is richer by a rupee. He is the rich man, not the millionaire who cannot part with a penny.
Only when you reach out and do something do you win grace. Prayer also is like that. It is not that easy to pray and it is very difficult to pray heartily. The ego will not let that happen.
Even though the person knows that he is helpless, still, there is something that makes him incapable of praying. Why? It is some kind of an authority problem. Those who cannot pray may have some real problem with their father. It is a psychological issue.
Grace is something you have to tap. It is not distributed by God. It is like underground water in that you have to tap it, and the tapping is done by action alone. Grace is always there. It is a possibility like any other possibility. There are many things that are manifest, surfaced, in this universe. There are also many potential possibilities lying there for you to tap. Every piece of software is a possibility. Every piece of hardware is a possibility
Nobody prays simply because he or she is under pressure. People think that when you are in trouble you will pray. No. When you are in trouble you hit your head on the wall. You phone somebody and cry.
Or you go on a buying spree and purchase a lot of things you cannot use. You need not pray. Prayer is the only action where the will is totally free, because you need not pray. It is an action, karma. It is a physical, oral or mental action (kAyikam, vAchikam, mAnasm karma). Mentally you pray, deliberately; orally you pray, or ritually you pray. Prayer is a deliberate action where the free-will is totally free—an uninhibited free-will. It is that kind of action that wins grace.
This is why we say, “I perform this karma to win the grace of parameshvara . It is not to please ishvara. If ishara has to be pleased, we’ve had it. Then we have to keep him in good humor. No, we win the grace.
There are varieties of grace. We first identify grace from the original source as God's grace. There are subsets also. There is the guru’s grace, the elders’ grace, which we earn by doing seva etc. Besides the grace of God (ishvara -krupa), and of the guru (guru-krupa), we require the grace of the shastra (shastra krupa).
The guru may be there, but when you pick up the book you go to sleep. The shastra has to reveal itself. That is also ishvara’s grace, but a subset of it. Finally, there is Atma-krupa—you should be deserving of grace.
You should be earning that grace. Sometimes we don’t recognize the grace. It is like the flowers that bloom in your own garden, after so much work by your wife. Yet you don’t even look at them because you are so busy; your mind is occupied completely by the problems that are to be solved. Naturally, therefore, you have no eyes to see. Grace is available. Acknowledge it. In the eyes of your child you can see the grace. When you open your mouth and say a good word there is grace flowing. You have to be aware of it. You find that your life is one of grace
That is Atma krupa. You earn that grace by reaching out, by recognizing a cause and doing what you have to do. Recognize a situation where you have got to do something. See whether the cause is worthwhile. Don’t fritter away your energy, your resources, the money you have earned. Identify a worthy cause, reach out and be bigger than you think you are. This is how we grow. This is how we earn grace
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INNER GROWTH
Human life can become very complex if one does not keep it simple. There are enough reasons to make one's life complex, but there are enough reasons, also, for us to be more humble, to be simple.
If I look at myself as one who is in charge of everything, then I will have to face myself and the situations also with regret, with a self of guilt, for I do not control all the situations.
One cannot. Evey your weight you cannot control, what to talk of situations. I am not talking about grey hair, if there is hair. There you have no control whatsoever. If in aging you have no control, what control can you have in changing people? It is impossible.
Each one has some agenda for everybody else. One does not really pause and tink that: "If i have an agenda for everybody in my life will they not have an agenda for me?" They are bound to have. If you analyze others' agenda, then you will have new problems to deal wth. You will feel that nobody understands you
That is exactly what others also think; that you do not understand them. So, problems become more and more complex when you do not understand that you cannot change people and you do not call all the shots.
Life is a percentage game, to make any headway, one has to be at the right time at the right place, and that is not always possible, for that is not under one's full control, therefore one just remains humble
This does not mean subservience, but an enlightened humbleness, that comes out of appreciation of our own capacities, skills, virtues, and at the same time our own limitations.
The limitations I have are greater than the skills that I am endowed with. So what I cannot do is much greater than what I can.
Naturally, therefore, what I can do is also given to me. It is not something that I ahve created, after coming into the world. The very body is given to me. My mind, senses are given to me. The capacity to know is given to me.
An infrastructure in which I can create things is given to me. The laws that I can explore and use to invent are also given to me. Everything, in fact, is given to me. What I cannod di is a given fact that I have to live with, and, of course, I have to face it And that is not an easy thing
People always have reasons to complain. When one has nothing else to complain about, one can always say "I have no wings". It is the same thing with reference to others too
We do not look for what others have. We always look for what they do not have, what we think they should have, or should not have. It is amazing how we look at and relate to people. It is just inviting problems.
This is what I call a 'proof reader's psychology'. Looking for mistakes, the omissions as well as the commissions of others. That is a particular psychology. It makes one's life complex and more and more complex as days pass by, and years pass by. When we celebrate a New year, we should also know what one year has gone. That means you are aging
Time is such a severe force. It ages us, and does not make exceptions, even the mountains. It is severe and ubiquitous, and is not going to leave anybody, anywhere, out of its handiwork. Every wrinkle you have is the handiwork of time. Therefore age you will, it is certain.
But you can celebrate a New Year if you have grown up by one year. Everybody ages, but if, in one year, you have grown up, if you have one more year of inner growth, you can celebrate. This growth can only take place by one's own initiative.
I look upon growth not in terms of skills and so on, evey though they also characterise one's growth.
Real growth is how simple one has made one's life. From being complex one has to make it simple. When I say 'simple', I do not mean you have to live in a hut. Even in a hut you can lead a complex life. I know a person who moved from a mansion to a cottage. He takes all the people there to show how simple he lives, and throws parties there
I am not proposing that we should cut anything down; we just have to be simple. In being simple and avoiding complexity one has to be very alert. Just in time, life becomes very complex with every passing year. But emotionally, you can be more simple, more cheerful. Physically you will be aging, but when you are growing emotionally in the reverse proportion, then we can celebrate. You can keep your life simple because it is simple. It is very simple.
I have a world and it is full of possibilities. It has many probabilities, not just possibilities, and they are all open for me. I am self conscious and becase of that I can make it complex. I make it complex because all the conditions are there for me to have complexes
To keep it simple I have to be alert, appreciate my own limitations and my virtues. Some people appreciate their limitations and their cirtues. Some others appreciate only their limitations and not their virtues. There are others who do not want to acknowledge their limitations because they cannot handle that.
Therefore, one who is conscious of oneself with the innate intelligence has to be aware of the limitations and the endowments given to one. Then one can be very humble. This enlightened humbleness makes you very prayerful
Ambitions are beautiful, and they, again, are given to you. Only a human being can have such ambitions. An ambition, being what it is, one can fulfill them. But it need not be fulfilled. On New Year's day, you may have certain goals that need to be accomplished. Maybe this is a good time to think about that. It is good to know all the things you want, and to think about what you want ultimately
What are things you want to accomplish in the near future? One has to have some clarity. But remember one thing. These are things that I want, these are ambititions that I have, I may fulfil them, I may not be able to fulfil them. If i do not fulfill them, that does not make me a failure. That only confirms the fact that it is not possible to fulfil all wants. That is a fact because I am limited. Having done all the homework, there are hidden variables. There is nothing you can do about them. But if you do not do anything about them, there may be any number of obstacles that can come in the way of your accomplishing your goals.
If I do not do anything about them, because you think you cannot, that really makes you helpless. That will definitely stagnate your efforts, because it will inhibit your thinking, and also your clarity. Therefore you have to acknowledge and address the hidden variables as well.
How to address? Since you do not know what the hidden variables are, you can offer a prayer for the sucess of your pursuit without impediment. Prayer is a deliberate karma you undertake to address the hidden variables.
You pray and you are prayerful. To pray is easy. In a given time and place you pray, but to be prayerful, you have to change. There can be a lot of difference between a person who is prayerful, and a person who prays at a given time. one may pray at a given time and the rest of the time prey on others. That is an entirely different thing altogether.
To pray at a given time is also important, but then you should be prayerful until you sit for prayer again. The day is spent prayerfully.
Life has to be prayerful. Being prayerful means having an awareness of everything that is given, and the awareness of a giver. The more awareness you have of the presence of a Giver, the one who obtains in the form of the given, whom we call the Lord, Ishvara, the more prayerful you are
If we analyze it, nobody can say that he or she is lonely
That is because you feel that you are not understood. "nobody wants me, nobody likes me, and I want people to understand me, to claim me". It is very childish. If a child says this, it is valid. If an adult says it, we consider it childish.
In this vast world, how can you feel lonely? But one does feel lonely because, as a child, perhaps one felt that one was not understood, not included. That is the problem
But then, you may find that one person, a therapist, perhaps, understands you. It is possible, but that person also needs to be understood by others, and he/she also needs to understand himself or herself a lot. One cannot pretend to be God and also say, now and then "I am sorry, I did not mean that at all". When the therapist says sorry, naturally your trust in him or her becomes very limited and the validation from th therapist is not going to be complete for you.
Even then, the therapist will validate you because the person is paid for that. The therapist is a specialist and knows exactly what he or she has to do as a therapist. The therapist will validate you; there is no question about that. but th eproblem is, you have an eroded trust. You have pain inside. The people whom you thought were infallible proved to be fallible. The therapist is also fallible. Therefore, I cannot even say that my therapist totally understands me, validates me.
So I have to appoint a therapist for myself in whose eyes I will be totally, absolutely validated. That person is not going to come by. That conscious being is whom we call the Giver, the Lord, and the one who is all knowledge. In his eyes, therefore I am always validated, because he is all knowledge. I am not going to spring any surprise on Him.
If you cannot surprise the Lord, it means he is all knowledge. If you are going to surprise him, the he is "small knowleding". If I am not a surprise to anyone, then I am exactly what I could be. In no other way could I be. That is the rigor of the law or order
You are exactly as you should be at this time and place. In your life, this is exactly what you are expected to be at this time and place. The Lord is the only one who knows it. And in order to say this, you have to know the Lord to be so. And in order to say this, you have to know the Lord to be so. You are appreciating an omniscient being in whose knowledge you are totally accepted. You do not need anybody else to approve of you, to accept you. You need not go and ask the Lord "Lord please accept me. I may have many ommissions and commissions, but please accept me"
He is not a limited individual, like an uncle. In my vision of Ishvara, I am totally acceptable. It is not enough to say that in the vision of Ishvara you are acceptable. That is all "iffy" because it depends on how much you understand Ishvara
That is why I say that it is not enough to say God is infallible, you have to discover the infallible God. In his vision, I am totally acceptable. There I can relax
The one who counts is only the Lord. When I say that everything is non separate from the Lord, then all that counts is one. The one who counts, in his presence, I am totally acceptable. That I am acceptable in his vision is my understanding, and that understanding is a must. I have to see that I am an individual given this body-mind-sense complex, and as an individual I have limitations, I have virtues. Both I acknowledge, and I am prayerful.
I pray in order o be prayerful also. We pray for things we want, and one of the things we pray for is to be prayerful.
Thus the whole life is one prayerfulness. I can look back and say that time, of course, rung out. But it brought in a lot for me. Therefore I can say it was a very good year. I look forward to the next year, because in the growth, there is a joy. In simplicity, there is a joy.
The simpler you are, the more people will love you, because people are complex. Everybody has lots of problems, therefore they look for a simple person
People want to relate to a simple person, not a simpleton, but a simple person, who is a wise person. If a wise person is not simple, he is "otherwise". The more simple you are, the more profound, you will find, are things, that you come to discover as you pray, "Let my whole life be prayerful"
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Thus I conclude this book, with the blessings of Lord Dakshinamurti, Bhagwan Adi Shankaracharya, Pujya Swamiji, and Pujya Guruji. With their blessings we will always stay prayerful
harih om shri gurubhyo namah, harih om
