May 24, 2013
Speech of HH Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji during welcome function – May 24, 2013 - Jesus Datta Retreat Center, West Sunbury PA, USA
Jaya Guru Datta. Sri Guru Datta.
Srī Mahā Ganapatayē Namaha
Srī Sarasvatyai Namaha
Srī Pādavallabha Narasimha Sarasvati, Srī Guru Dattātrēyāya Namaha
Om Namō Hanumatē Namaha
Today is the last day of very auspicious festival Narasimha Jayanti. There are so many Jayanti (birthday) celebrations of many deities. There are many stories in our scriptures about all these festivals. Only if you understand the inner meaning, you will realize the importance. There are seemingly funny stories about Gods, Goddesses in our Purānas and other scriptures that we sometimes don’t understand. If we go through these stories and the inner meaning, only then we will gain an understanding of the Hindu deities. Their appearances may look funny. Why do people worship this Monkey God? If you think about Dakshinamoorti (a form of Lord Śiva), His head looks different from the rest of the body. Dattatreya has 3 heads, Brahma has 4 heads, Goddess Gayatri has 5 heads. Lord Ganapathy also is described and shown with different faces, different heads; sometimes He is shown with six hands, sometimes four hands, sometimes 8 hands. Each deity has a different specialty and each form has its significance. And then Vishwaroopa, the gigantic Universal form of Lord Vishnu vision that (warrior King) Arjuna had, was very different. So many heads and so many hands were in the vishwaroopa. Many children ask their parents, “why does this God have so many hands and so many heads?”. There is only one answer that many parents always give “That is God. God has so many forms. He’s capable of taking on even more forms. He can also be without form."
But if you go through the stories and their inner meanings, you will understand why this is so. First you must learn the stories so you can teach your children. Sometimes we cannot give easy answers. It is necessary to read the scriptures.
Nowadays, kids are interested in seeing animated movies of these mythological stories. They begin to slowly understand the different energies, the different forms, and different festivals. Each religion has its own stories that are slightly different. As kids intellect develops, they will be interested in knowing more. So, children these days are asking a lot of questions. Adults should handle such questions carefully. First, you (the adults) must learn our Dharma, and our serious stories from our scriptures like Bhagavatam, Ramayana etc. Then you understand a little. Various organizations are bringing out a lot of small books on different stories. Carefully purchase and download these books.
Nowadays, children are very interested in these stories. There is a lot of information in these videos. Their intellect is grasping these stories. So, we need such spiritual Dharma. We are wasting time. Be careful. First, you learn what Guru Pūrnima is, what is Guru’s birthday. What is the significance of your birthday? What is the difference between our birthday, Guru’s birthday, father’s birthday, mother’s birthday etc. If we analyze like this we can understand ourselves. Understand the serious, inner meaning.
What is the significance of different festivals? In Hinduism, Lot of festivals such as Ganapathy festival, Sivaratri festival, Ekadashi etc. are observed. Similarly, there are festivals in all Dharmas. Some festivals are created for the environment, for happiness and other reasons. What is the necessity for these kind of festivals? There are different types of practices followed during these festivals. For example, you are fasting and staying awake all night for Śivarātri. Some practices have connection to holistic health and spirituality. For example, occasional fasting is good for your health per doctors. For some treatments, the doctor advises you to observe fasting and/or to limit sleeping. Ayurvedic treatment gives such advice. That connection with health, with spirituality exists in Ayurveda. If you go for any other form of treatment too, they do some observation, recommend fasting. Not only Ayurvedic, but other forms like Allopathy as well recommend these types of practices along with medicines.
Some people like to eat round the clock. They always want to be chewing something. Their mouth is always moving like a dance. They don’t want to chant any names, they just want to let their mouth dance with chewing gum. If you have the practice of chewing gum, practice chanting a mantra when chewing. By doing this, you get two types of benefits. One, you enjoy chewing the gum and second, chanting mantra gives you immense spiritual results. Slowly, after some time, you can start chanting without chewing gum. I know it is very different to practice mantra at first. First, good physical training can be given to your tongue and to your mouth. In the first three months, it may be difficult to control. After continuing for six months, change to just keeping a small chewing gum in your mouth without chewing and practice with mantra. Practice for one year. Chewing gum can be dangerous for your teeth. Then practice without touching the gum with your teeth. You can definitely practice this. It will clean your mouth. If you always use your teeth, your gums will die. Definitely, after one year, without chewing gum you will be able to chant mantras such as “Ōm Namō Hanumatē Namaha”, “Ōm Aim Hrīm Śrim Śiva Rāma Anaghā Dattāya Namaha”, “Harē Rāma Harē Rāma, Rāma Rāma Harē Harē, Harē Krishna, Harē Krishna, Krishna Krishna Harē Harē”, “Om Namaśśivāya” or whichever mantra you like. You select the mantra for yourself. You can even just chant the Pranava Matra, “Om”. That’s enough. That’s the formless deity, the formless sound representing the invisible God. Om. So, you can practice with chewing gum. Don't make mantra chanting an excuse to chew gum.
Any mantra chant will stay in your mind / mouth for 100 years. Why is Swamiji giving such an example of chewing gum? Because you need to turn around all your habits into good habits. Then the good habits will protect you till you die. That’s why, don’t just ignore a small bad habit. Just turn it around. Tell yourself “I am going to turn this bad habit around”. Make a strong determination of self control. Then only bad habits can turn into good habits.
Don't look at the mirror and get disappointed about your looks. Your face is God’s gift to you. You make various modifications to your face in hopes of looking better. The more decoration you do, the uglier it ends up. Just let it be natural God given face. Of course, there are exceptions. If you have a random defect you need to fix or correct, that’s okay, no problem. But, you are messing up a normal face in pursuit of more beauty. But, it only gets worse. It gets so bad. It is God's gift, there is not need to get disappointed.
Swamiji narrated a beautiful story in Kathâ Sāgara (video / book series of stories published by Dattapeetham) which goes like this.
There once lived a married couple, both of whom had noses that did not look good. They were fairly wealthy, but had no children. They did a lot of charitable work. They considered orphans as their own children and donated food to poor people. People that went to the couple’s house to eat, received the charity, but before leaving would always make fun of the couple’s noses. Then, one day, the couple thought long and hard about how people laughed at their noses. The couple was very innocent. They prayed to Brahma one day. Brahma instantly appeared and asked them what they wanted. They told Brahma about how everyone laughed at them after receiving charity. They asked Brahma to bless them with beautiful noses. Brahma blessed them and vanished. The next morning, both of them had noses all over their body (because they prayed to Brahma for beautiful noses). It was difficult to manage with so many noses, not knowing which one sneeze from and which one to clean. However, the couple continued with their charity. People now began laughing at them even more for having noses asking the couple how they could manage to be tidy with so many noses. The couple was disappointed. They prayed to Brahma and said they didn’t want any noses. Brahma appeared instantly, blessed them and left. The next morning, the couple realized they had no nose at all. This obviously caused even more issues. They somehow breathed with their mouths and continued with their charity. People received charity, laughed at the couple and left. The couple was again very frustrated. They prayed to Brahma again and asked to get their original nose back. Brahma blessed them saying “so be it” and left. So, regardless of what you want and what you try to do, you will always get whatever you are destined to. It might seem like things are changing sometimes, but when one thing changes, another one takes its place. So, asking God for material wealth and beauty, we forget real happiness. We never ask for true bliss, we never ask for His presence in our lives. We keep praying “this door is not right, that window is crooked, my older son has gone astray, my younger son is not right, my daughter has no children yet, my grandchildren are not right” and so on. So there is no stopping of material wants. Instead learn to pray to be in God's presence. Morale of the matter is, no matter what you strive to become, your destiny will eventually happen.
So, there is no point in asking God about material wants. Real want, real happiness comes from being in God's permanent presence. That is what should be our true wish. You are filled with attachments. That’s all you are thinking about and praying for. There is no stopping of material wants. "We have built this house. We are always thinking about our family. We should let kids lead their own lives after they are adults. Think about yourself. Stop worrying about them. After you die, there is judgement about what you have done for YOU. Based on your good or bad deeds, you will get next birth. What ever hard work you put together for your kids will not count. What you have done to serve the poor and needy people will only count.
Some people ask why Swamji is only taking care of birds these days and not people?
You are filled with attachments. That’s all you are thinking about and praying for. If you detach from them, you grow your own tree of attachments. You don’t need to hanker after your kids and their lives. After they are grown up, you should let them live their lives. Let them be. If you always think about them, who will not think about you. Think about yourself. You will not be here forever. When you leave this planet, you will be asked what you did. They don’t care if you got your kids married. Your karmic balance is empty. So, you have to take another birth. You always strived for your children. You should have at least helped a poor person.
Someone said, Swamiji looks happy now, but he doesn’t care about us, he only cares about the birds. How much should I(Swamiji) care about you? Contentment is the most important quality. Satisfaction in what you possess, will lead to happiness. We are never satisfied. You come saying you have one last desire, but there are more coming up after. You must strive for satisfaction. First, strive for satisfaction. Be content with what you have. Once you have contentment, sorrow goes away. But, for you, there seems to be no satisfaction despite everything you have. After eating a whole-hearted meal, you complain about lack of some dish. You ate well, but now you want Tomato Rasam (a soup like dish made from tomatoes and various spices). We always demand things from God, we have no satisfaction. We are beggars. We are always begging God. “Give, give, God, God, give, give, more, more”. We are beggars, big beggars, small beggars. If, in your prayer to God, you are demanding from him, that’s not good. If you demand, you won’t even have the capacity to beg in the future. He will take that away from you. You will lose that capability. If a beggar comes up to you to beg, you will toss him something and walk away. When a beggar is demanding near your house, you evict him out of this house. If the beggar demands from you, you will kick him out. If the beggars plead to our compassion, we do what we can to help. That’s how you should plead with God. You should become real beggars, not fake beggars (begging for material wants).
And then you say, your time is over and that’s why Swamiji is not looking at you. You become your own Brahma now. You shouldn’t compare Guru like that. You should not bring Guru down to your cheap level and compare. There are raging fires of *** for someone who does that. We should be grateful that the Guru is blessing us with the ability to have His darshan. If the Guru greets you, you should consider yourself lucky. You must always try to improve yourself . How many times will Lord Vishnu show His Vishwaroopam? Arjuna saw it only once. Gods don’t drink the nectar many times. One sip is enough. Don't feel Swamiji has not looked at me or talked with me or did not come to my house. It is enough to have the darshan of Swamiji. Be glad that you could come to Swamiji. You should build upon that energy slowly. Why should I keep filling you up with energy all the time? You should remember that special experience or energy is enough for your lifetime and future births. If you feel that Swamiji has to interact with you a lot, it means that you don't value that interaction. That is why you are asking for re-fills. How many times do you want Pada Puja (worshipping the Holy Feet)? It’s enough to do it once. If you get a chance to do it again and again, that’s wonderful. Some of you say “Swamiji used to give Pada Namaskara (touching feet and prostrating) before, now He doesn’t”. At least you are able to see His feet. You shouldn’t’ talk like that cheaply. It’s a grave sin. Even if you hear someone say these things, you must stop them. You shouldn’t empathize with them or support them. You should cherish whatever you’ve been given. Guru gives mantra only once. He won’t give you a new mantra each time. For a good disciple, one mantra is enough. This is the serious and important advice to all Datta devotees.
Jaya Guru Datta.