Holy Mother: Work and Purity of Mind

One must do some work. Through work alone one can remove the bondage of work, not by avoiding work. Total detachment comes later on. One should not be without work even for a moment.  -Sri Sarada Devi 

Religion is expressed in action- Sri Ramakrishna

Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.

Swamiji on the essence of worship

This is the gist of all worship — to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva; and if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary.
The prayees of those that are pure in mind and body will be answered by Shiva, and those that are impure and yet try to teach religion to others will fail in the end.

Song sung by Swamiji: Chant the sweet name of God

With a joyful face chant the sweet name of God,

Till, like a wind, it churns the nectar sea; Drink of that nectar ceaselessly.

If ever your heart goes dry, repeat God’s name.

Be watchful, that you may never forget to chant His mighty name: when danger stares in your face, Pray to your Father Compassionate. Snap sin’s bonds with a shout of joy.

Come, let us be mad in the bliss of God, Fulfilling all our hearts’ desires,

And quench our thirst with the yoga of love.

Happy Now Here!

Prakritim Paramam: Hymn to Holy Mother

Salutations at the feet of the Holy Mother. 1st January 2016 is Sri Sri  Sarada Ma Jayanti. This is the English translation of the hymn- Prakritim Paramam dedicated to Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother, writ­ten by Swami Abhedananda. It sung at many cen­ters of the Rama­kri­shna Order, as the fourth hymn of the evening prayer.

To the Divine Shakti embod­ied in human form, the giver of boons and dis­peller of fear, who quenches the fire of mis­ery and fills with joy the hearts of those who take refuge in Her; to Thee my salu­ta­tions, O Supreme Being, O Mother of the worlds!

Redeem Thy chil­dren, bestow­ing Thy mercy, full of faults, deluded, and with­out merit as we are! A ver­i­ta­ble ship fer­ry­ing us across the ocean of Sam­sara art Thou;
To Thee my salu­ta­tions, O Supreme Being, O Mother of the worlds!

Aban­don­ing the flow­ers of worldly enjoy­ment, always drink, O hon­ey­bee of my mind, the nec­tar of eter­nal peace at the lotus of Mother’s feet—the sure panacea for the dis­ease of world­li­ness. To Thee my salu­ta­tions, O Supreme Being, O Mother of the worlds!

Bestow Thy grace, O great Divin­ity, on us Thy chil­dren, bow­ing in pros­tra­tion before Thee, and grant us shel­ter at Thy feet, O Com­pas­sion­ate One. To Thee our salutations!

Though ever cov­ered with the veil of mod­esty, Thou, O Mother Sarada, art really the Power that bestows spir­i­tual illu­mi­na­tion on human beings. Pro­tect us from sins ever­more, O grace embod­ied! To Thee our salutations!

To Her whose life is fused into one with Ramakrishna’s, whose delight con­sists in absorp­tion in thought and talk of His glory, whose per­son­al­ity is soaked and suf­fused with His spirit; to Her our salutations!

To Her whose nature is sanc­tity, to Her whose life is sanc­tity, to Her who is the very embod­i­ment of sanc­tity; to Her I bow down, again and again!

To the gra­cious Mother Sarada, the embod­i­ment of mercy and the granter of devo­tion and knowl­edge, to Her who is wor­shipped by the chief of yogis, to Her who (with Sri Rama­kri­shna) has given a new rev­e­la­tion for the present age, and who assuages the mis­eries of devo­tees tak­ing refuge at Her feet; to her do I ever bow down in worship. 

Bind­ing our mind to Thee with the bonds of Thy love, Thou does trans­mute our very vices into virtues. Com­pas­sion­ate as Thou art with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion of merit, Thou dost, lo! Take even unwor­thy ones into Thy lap!

Mother, be pro­pi­tious and grant what I in humil­ity beseech. May Thou be ever affec­tion­ate to us, Thy chil­dren; and cast­ing even a drop of Thy love on our long-parched heart, ren­der it cool and peaceful.

Tak­ing shel­ter at the lotus feet of the Mother, Sarada Devi, and Rama­kri­shna, the teacher of the world, I salute them again and again.

Swami Vivekananda on the condition of poor in India

Yesterday Mrs. Johnson, the lady superintendent of the women's prison, was here. They don't call it prison but reformatory here. It is the grandest thing I have seen in America. How the inmates are benevolently treated, how they are reformed and sent back as useful members of society; how grand, how beautiful, You must see to believe! And, oh, how my heart ached to think of what we think of the poor, the low, in India. They have no chance, no escape, no way to climb up. The poor, the low, the sinner in India have no friends, no help — they cannot rise, try however they may. They sink lower and lower every day, they feel the blows showered upon them by a cruel society, and they do not know whence the blow comes. They have forgotten that they too are men. And the result is slavery. -Letter to Alasinga, CW Vol. V

Swami Vivekananda on troubles and tribulations

This is an excerpt from a letter  written by Swamiji to Deewan Sahibji in May 1893.

Often and often, we see that the very best of men even are troubled and visited with tribulations in this world; it may be inexplicable; but it is also the experience of my life that the heart and core of everything here is good, that whatever may be the surface waves, deep down and underlying everything, there is an infinite basis of goodness and love; and so long as we do not reach that basis, we are troubled; but having once reached that zone of calmness, let winds howl and tempests rage. The house which is built on a rock of ages cannot shake.

Ramakrishna's practice of Christianity and Islam

 At a time when the nineteenth century was just seeing the rise of “comparative study of religions” in the modern sense, Ramakrishna ventured into verifying the major religions of the world with the touchstone of experience. He embarked upon experiencing God in and through the paths laid down in the different religions. From now on for more than a decade he was to pass through many a fiery ordeals. He had earlier realized Rama as an incarnation of God. Now he underwent the difficult Tantric disciplines and realized the Divine Mother; then through the path of knowledge he attained the acme of Vedantic realization, a state in which he remained absorbed for almost six months; then he realized God through the path of Islam, and also vindicated the path of Christianity by having a vision of Jesus and realizing him to be an incarnation of God. He would take up one path, remodel himself according to its needs, and see s end; and then he would take up the next, and so on; one after the other lie experientially researched the different paths to God. Finally, his more- than-a-decade long trailblazing experiential researches in religion made him declare, “As many faiths, so many paths.” He pronounced. (Western Disciples of Sri Ramakrishna)

Merry Christmas : Swami Vivekananda on Jesus and Christianity

The Messenger came to show the path: that the spirit is not in forms, that it is not through all sorts of vexations and knotty problems of philosophy that you know the spirit. Better that you had no learning, better that you never read a book in your life.
These are not at all necessary for salvation--neither wealth, nor position nor power, not even learning; but what is necessary is that one thing, purity.

"Blessed are the pure in heart," for the spirit in its own nature is pure. How can it be otherwise? It is of God, it has come from God. In the language of the Bible, "It is the breath of God." In the language of the Koran, "It is the soul of God." Do you mean to say that the Spirit of God can ever be impure?
But, alas, it has been, as it were, covered over with the dust and dirt of ages, through our own actions, good and evil. Various works which were not correct, which were not true, have covered the same spirit with the dust and dirt of the ignorance of ages.

It is only necessary to clear away the dust and dirt, and then the spirit shines immediately. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." Where goest thou to seek for the Kingdom of God, asks Jesus of Nazareth, when it is there, within you? Cleanse the spirit, and it is there. It is already yours. How can you get what is not yours? It is yours by right. You are the heirs of immortality, sons of the Eternal Father.
(Christ the Messenger: Delivered at Los Angeles, California on January 7, 1900)