Sunday, June 29, 2008
Re: Vice of Fault Finding
Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!
Dear Gurudeva, Srinath and devotees, please accept my humble obeisances.
You are a perfect soul, full of bliss, full of knowledge and overjoyed in your eternal relationship with the Lord. All souls around you are made of the same reality and are bathing in unbounded happiness. In this reality as it is nobody even knows what �fault� is. So how could they find fault? Any other realities that include the six diseases: lust, anger, greed, illusion, madness and envy are experienced separate from our eternal reality. When you understand this and thoroughly realize its meaning you have not only all the answers to your questions but all your problems concerning this have vanquished as well.
The problem is identification. We identify with the temporary material conditioned world of our sensory perception and our souls are covered with the strong external energy of the Lord (Maya). We have fallen into the pit of repeated birth, disease, old age and death. In the darkness of this pit it seems hopeless but when we strain our eyes we see vaguely a rope from above hanging in the pit. Maybe we feel hopeless but we are not helpless and we can take the initiative to grab the robe and start climbing out. While climbing you don�t look back, you just keep on climbing looking up and everything becomes clearer by every pull you make. This effort is recognized by the guru, the guru parampara and by the Lord and you will discover a miracle while climbing: the rope itself is moving upwards accelerating your efforts.
When we stay in the realm of faultfinding we have chosen to stay in the pit. Positive do and do not�s to the other rope climbers around you are not considered focusing on �faults� but rather positive feedback in how to climb more efficient. When we become humbler than a straw on the road we will see everybody else as more elevated. When we see everybody else as more elevated we simply activate the higher principle in each other and in turn we enable others to see the higher principle in ourselves. This attitude taught by Lord Gauranga Krishna is brilliant on so many levels and contains multi layers of realization. The psychology taught by Lord Gauranga comes from the eternal realm and lead all living entities back to His realm. We should firmly take His teachings on our heads and climb with faith His divine rope.
Now tolerance is something different. How far do we go? When you see somebody deliberate hurt your innocent child (or any child) do we just stand by and watch or turn away as if we didn�t see it? What if you were terribly tortured by someone and you managed to escape and somehow you catch the guy who did this all to you. What are you going to do? You give him your pranams and blessings and let him go? In the Vedic tradition you have the right to retaliate in certain situations. Having the right doesn�t mean we have to take the right. So toleration has its boundaries. But our humility should be infinite. That�s the difference.
To overcome and look beyond peoples shortcomings is easy because you should be too busy working on your own shortcomings. And in the process of perfecting yourself in devotional service you will naturally see the good in people, even when it is just a spark, and your own realization will resonate with that spark and activate the good in the other person. I had a strong experience myself today. I talked to a couple of hardcore farmers who kill cows by the dozens every day. For them cows are �cattle� and the smell of dung is the smell of money. They have no any personal relationship with the cows and handle them as �things�. They kick them, push them, inject them, overfeed them, and eventually kill them. I asked them a simple question: �If you have to live the life of a cow what kind of cow would you choose to be?� They considered that milk cows were under the heaviest stress, �meat� cows had a too short of a life, and after some deliberation they came to the conclusion that they wanted to be a calf-producing cow because those live in the freedom of the meadow and live a relative long life compared to the others. While formulating the answer to my question they realized that they were thinking in humanitarian terms of the animals they treat so terribly. This is the spark I am talking about. We find an angle to go into each and every soul on the level they are at and activate a higher principle. I ended the conversation with explaining the most powerful word in the universe: �Nityananda� and they repeated it tree times. What I try to say here is that I could have said to them that they would come back as cows as many times as there are hairs on each and every cow they have killed. But instead I taught the holy Name �Nityananda� and I walked away with the satisfied feeling of the promise of Lord Gauranga that in some point of time these killers will be pure devotees of the Lord. In advance I bow down to them for this accomplishment by the mercy of the Lord.
Just some reflections from me Srinath, I hope it is of some use for you.
Your servant,
Hadai Nityananda dasa
Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!
Comment on this Post
Thanks for giving us inspiration daily. Nityaananda! Gauraanga! Hare Krishna!
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