Sri Ramakrishna went to Calcutta
when he was 16 years old as his brother Ramkumar wanted assistance in his
priestly duties. Sri Ramakrishna describes in his own words the City life of
India (Calcutta) in the early 1850s.”Greed and lust held sway in the higher
levels of society, and the occasional religious practices were merely outer
forms from which the soul had long ago departed”.(What to say about our cities
now?) Gadadar (As Sri Ramakrishna was called in his young days) had never seen
anything like this at Kamarpukur among
the simple and pious villagers. The sadhus
and wandering monks whom he had served in his boyhood had revealed to him an
altogether different India. He had been impressed by their devotion and purity,
their self control and renunciation. He had learnt from them that the ideal of
life as taught by the ancient sages of India was the realization of God.
When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadar
for neglecting a bread winning education, the inner voice of the boy reminded
him that the legacy of his ancestors was not worldly security but knowledge of
God. So Gadadar asked Ramkumar, “Brother,
what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?” Ramkumar could hardly
understand the import of his brother’s reply. In the late eighteenth and early
nineteeth centuries, time honored beliefs and traditions of Indian society were
breaking due to the English traders and British rule. Today the world knows the
contribution of Sri Ramakrishna to human society by reviving the ancient Vedic
wisdom and culture to the extent possible in this modern world.
A few gems from Sri Ramakrishna for sincere seekers of God:
·
He is born in vain, who having attained the
human birth does not attempt to realize God in this very life.
·
Those who wish to attain God should guard
themselves against the snares of lust and wealth. Otherwise they never attain
God.
·
The tree laden with fruit always bends low. If
you wish to be great be humble.
·
Devotion of God increases in the same proportion
as attachment to the objects of the senses decreases.
·
Brahman is above and beyond knowledge and
ignorance, good and evil, dharma and adharma. It is indeed beyond all dual
throngs.
·
When Brahman, the absolute and unconditioned is
realized it is all silence. There remains, then only ‘Is-ness’ (being), and
nothing else. For verily the salt doll tells no tale when it has become one
with the infinite sea. This is Brahma gnana.
·
When all personality is effaced, one realizes
the knowledge of the Absolute.
·
It is true that God is even in tiger, but we
must not go and face the animal. It is true that God dwells even in the wicked,
but it does not mean that we should associate with the wicked.
·
The vultures soar high up in the sky, but all
the time their eyes remain fixed on charnel- houses in search of putrid
carcasses; similarly the minds of so called scholars are attached to the things
of the world, to lust and wealth, in spite of their erudition in sacred lore, and
hence they cannot attain true knowledge.
·
If one worships God all the time, that is
preaching enough. He who exerts himself to attain liberation from birth and
death preaches without words. To him hundreds of people come from all sides to
learn as when rose blossoms, bees come from all sides uninvited.
·
The nearer you come to God, the less you are
disposed to questioning and reasoning. When you actually attain Him as the
reality, then all noise, all disputations, come to an end.
-Arasu Ramanujam
No comments:
Post a Comment