COMMENTS GALORE ... 118

COMMENTS GALORE ... 118

Sugata Bose @Swamiji's sayings : These are glorious words of the Sage of the Age.

The volcanic words of the cyclonic Swami. Description paradoxical? So, let it be. Common link is in terms of the force and the fire involved.

The glorious thing about Swamiji was that he was so positive despite the seemingly overwhelming odds he had to encounter and overcome throughout his adult life when he had to battle for his impoverished family and chose to fight for the resurrection of the world sinking in the mire of ignorance and misery.

Today the nation celebrates Swamiji's birthday as the National Youth Day. Directed by the dying Indira Gandhi and instituted by her visionary son Rajiv, this day perennially marks the celebration of eternal youth rising up and refashioning the world for the sustenance of humanity. Now let us bring Vivekananda victorious before the youth of the hopeful morrow.

If the individual is the universal, the moment is eternity and a point encapsulates the endless stretches of space, what fear then, friend, of the mighty and the menacing, your own Self riding over it all as the charioteer does his chariot?

Strength, Swamiji said, is the watchword of the Upanishads.

It is bounden on each one of us to nourish the child-body with nutritious food and the child-mind with fertile thought. And what better than to bring Vivekananda home to them like many a mother does to her would be brave children? Blessed are such children who have received such mothers' grace!

Even if one gazes at this leonine form of Swamiji standing before the world audience in Chicago and delivering his momentous speeches, one is bound to be transported in space and time to an ethereal realm.

The central theme of Swamiji's words seems to be that undying manhood what Swamiji himself has dubbed 'the (roaring) Lion of the Vedanta'.

This nation will live if it heeds Swamiji.

Read, read Swamiji till his words vibrate in your brain and your whole being becomes consonant with his life-giving message.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [The Vedic Student] : Prabhupāda is sectarian and narrow in his spiritual outlook.

Sugata Bose @Swami Shuddhidānanda : Maharaj, here you speak trying to awaken the Hindus about the dangers of Islamic jihad and there your entire Sangha is perpetuating the myth of all religions being true and valid paths to God-realisation when faiths like Islam are expressly intent on attaining to a sensory pleasurable heaven without any idea of liberation in unitary consciousness which is blasphemous in their dualistic conception of truth. Your Sangha does not speak a word against conversion of Hindus to Islam and Christianity when they hold interfaith meets. This is not expected of the Sangha whose Avatār-anointed express purpose ought to be destruction of the evildoers, the saving of the virtuous and the establishment of the Sanātan Dharma as it truly is and not as it is conveniently manufactured into to suit whatever purpose you know best.

Sugata Bose @Debabrata Das Barman : You do nothing but give expert comments. Do something positive for spreading the message of Swamiji instead. Your supercilious advice is not solicited.

Sugata Bose @Chandan Bhattacharjee : Fiery masculine monks are needed with tremendous zeal and penetrative preaching power, not effeminate derivatives of divinity full of worldly propensity and spiritual pretension that was detested by Swamiji who embodied its antithesis and was duly dubbed 'the lion of the Vedanta'.

Sugata Bose @Chandan Bhattacharjee : Read the Qur'an and find out more about Islam and its tenets. Hindus fancy that Islam is similar to Hinduism in its understanding of God and ethics. But it is fancy after all founded as usual on lack of information, misinformation and plain imagination as opposed to factual truth which may only be ascertained through reading the Islamic scripture, the Qur'an.

Sugata Bose @Randeep Bhattacharya : Paul Dirac's Abrahamic idea of God with scientific derivative.

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FLYING ON THE WINGS OF FACT, FANCY, FICTION

FLYING ON THE WINGS OF FACT, FANCY, FICTION 

A spiritual movement spreads rapidly if it can bring to its followers an unearthly sense full of sublime suggestions. Naturally, mythology and archaic ideas can creep in as well into the mass of distributed literature which will fire up the minds of the masses with strange notions and fancies, irrational hopes and dreams, but will keep the movement going if it is well fuelled by daily ritualistic discipline and austere observances, spiritual practices that nourish the psychophysical person, making him happier and peaceful. At any rate cherishing beautiful dreams is no worse than being beaten with rude realities of the mundane world. The flights of fancy that mythology releases in the prone mind makes for even spiritual growth when activity is restrained by ethical observances and spiritual exercises. To top it all, if the devotees are made to understand that their chosen path is the best path, the perfect path and the only path to ultimate perfection and proximity to the Lord, you have hit the bull's eye. The movement will then take to wings and spread like cyclone.

Written by Sugata Bose 

POESY: SECULAR KIRTAN

SECULAR KIRTAN

Chnoare Gobindo amar, 

Gokhro saap er phul.

Nekrer mastuto bhai,

Dui kaane te dul.

Bob cut teri kete

Dichhe birir taan

Aar choudike te ghaagra nachon,

Bishtu abhijaan,

Bolo Bishtu abhijaan,

Bolo Bishtu abhijaan.

Aha ki gaan! 

THE SPIRIT OF CRICKET

THE SPIRIT OF CRICKET 

Dennis Lillee for all his boorish behaviour would have fared rather badly with, say, hypothetical skipper Bradman. Foul-mouthing opponents (Gavaskar), physically fighting them (Lillee-Miandad case⁵), kicking at the stumps¹ (after dismissing Viv Richards in a provincial one-day match after bouncing him four times in succession), aluminum bat², all this and so much more certainly made the greatest fast bowler of all time a spectacle but like John Snow⁴ purposefully colliding with Gavaskar, would have landed Lillee in deep trouble with the Don of old school cricketing ethics, what in cricketing parlance is called 'the spirit of the game'. 

The 1981 Adelaide Test Match³ memory of Lillee/Aussie rude behaviour against Gavaskar and company rankles still. Lillee's general demeanour aided by the Chappell brothers allowing him undue latitude created on-field unpleasantness that has permanently in the minds of many tarnished his image. Rude boy Lillee will live in memory as a great fast bowler who did his country proud with his incredible cricketing achievements but shamed her with his uncricketing attributes as well for good and set in a dangerous precedent to check which the Rule Book had to be rewritten by the ICC. What a far cry from Bill Woodfull's impeccable ethical response to Jardine's and the MCC's 'unsportsmanlike' attitude in their bid to browbeat Bradman in the Bodyline Series! The Don in his interview⁶ 'Don Bradman: 87 not out' categorically denounced the use of what has been euphemistically called 'gamesmanship', what Steve Waugh notoriously called 'mental disintegration' tactics, and said that were he the captain of Australia when any player so transgressed, he would have warned him once and, should he have repeated the selfsame offense, would never have picked him again. 

That, gentlemen, is Sir Donald George Bradman speaking the final word on the disrepute to which the Lillees, the Chappells, the Steve Waughs and the Ricky Pontings, mentioning here by way of a larger representative illustration only a handful of significant Australian cricketers who he could as captain and administrator have hypothetically restrained the way the spirit of cricket deems it best for the game. And there's Lillee for you.

Written by Sugata Bose

3.https://youtu.be/hsqMTgqW4v0?si=pC3aaKfezwDMwYAZ

6.https://youtu.be/w9NRYOYiHIs?si=z00dK2PWi4Fdy-U8

4.https://youtu.be/zAtltGArRq4?si=kNAuZEhiwCWiSASU

5.https://youtu.be/UhG4mgcCuSM?si=UOYNoGkld-wWa3U_

5.https://youtu.be/FBNNrLxd4xM?si=8U6RbXl7_OHx7_Ee

1.https://youtu.be/QP1v2J2BKWA?si=RG8zym4AdQdHTKp0

2.https://youtu.be/8vyhJYCS8bE?si=_IvTgQ1xKBOWFdlD 

FORGET NOT, THERE ALSO IS A DEPTH TO IT

FORGET NOT, THERE ALSO IS A DEPTH TO IT

There is a depth to voice that comes through deep concentration and sustained practice which shows up in rendition of classical vocal music, even in conversation, something that transports the audience to a higher realm, transcending the existent surroundings and reaching an altered order of existence altogether. So hard to express it in words but felt so easily by perceptive ones when men of experience speak, recollecting memories that lie in the depths of their hearts but, recalled, stir afresh reflections of events of the past in live colours that secondary sources can scarce reveal. This depth-diffeence is so apparent in interviews when the interviewee sinks into depth-memory while the interviewer belonging to distracted breed of the modern kind casually interrupts his reminiscence and reflection by shifting his focus to more commonplace things of lesser consequence. This indeed is felt by great actors, by film directors when they try to level depth-differences in personality of players to arrive at a seamless presentation of performance. In everyday life this is hidden in commonplace talk based in the same frame of time and place but in reminiscence becomes apparent when individuals are mind-located differently. This, perhaps, is also the reason why communication is so rare in this world of easy misunderstanding, egotistical personalised interpretation based on insufficient sympathy that fails to connect and huge differences in historical positioning and perspective. But above all, to return to roots, it is this difference in depth of personality that creates this communication gap, this unbridged difference in feeling, as in love, as in conversation, as in going down memory lane in interviews of men steeped in the past. Bridging differences is good, but must it come at the cost of loss of the real that lives in the silent chambers of the heart where chamber music is still on?

Written by Sugata Bose 

MESSAGES GALORE ... 146

MESSAGES GALORE ... 146

1. When there is a trace of ego, there cannot love be. And where there is a trace of ego, can there love be?

2. আজকের কলরব কি কাল শান্ত হবে, নাকি কালে শান্ত হবে যখন মানুষ বহুসংখ্যক সভ্য হবে ? বর্বরযুগের হিংস্রতা আজও নব নব নখদন্তে বিকশিত সভ্যতার মোড়কে | কালক্রমণে বিবর্তনের সংঘটনেই কি এর অন্ত ? আর কত রক্তপাত করবে মানুষ মানুষের সভ্যতার দোহাই দিয়ে ?

3. Lying has become commonplace as cheating has been. Basic values are all gone down the drains. People casually keep not truth.

4. Love is like a river flowing upwards to source.

5. Everything except Brahman is in motion. Motion is the law of life. Hence, charaiveti!

6. ভারত বিকশিত হবে আপনি বিকশিত হলে | ঠাকুর-মা-স্বামীজী সে পথ দেখিয়ে গেছেন | তাঁদের পদাঙ্ক অনুসরণ করেই ভবিষ্যৎ ভারতের উত্থান, মাত্র বাণিজ্যিক বুদ্ধি বাড়িয়ে নয় | বৈশ্য যুগ বটে কিন্তু ব্রাহ্মণত্ব, ক্ষত্রিয়ত্ব বর্জন করে, এই দুই বর্ণকে অপমান করে নয় | প্রকৃত ব্রাহ্মণত্বের বিকাশের দ্বারা, ক্ষাত্রবীর্যের প্রকাশের দ্বারা, বৈশ্যবুদ্ধির প্রক্ষালনের দ্বারা এবং শুদ্রোদ্ধারের দ্বারা, অর্থাৎ, অলিখিত চতুর্বণের সাম্যস্পন্দনের দ্বারা নতুন ভারত সূর্যালোকে প্রস্ফুটিত হবে নবপুষ্পসম | বিকশিত হোন ঘরে ঘরে সেই প্রস্ফুটিত পুষ্পরূপে |

7. এই ভেজালের যুগে গুণীজনের সমাদর নেই, না আছে তাঁদের গুণের কদর | এখন নিম্নমেধার রমরমা |

8. বাঙালীর মধ্যে সনাতন শ্রদ্ধা ফিরিয়ে আনতে হবে | বড় বেশি বুদ্ধির বিড়ম্বনায় ভুগছে ভ্রষ্ট বঙ্গব্রাহ্মণ | ঠাকুর বলতেন, "কাক বড় চালাক কিন্তু বিষ্ঠা খেয়ে মরে |" সেইরূপ পরিণতি যেন আধুনিক বাঙালীর না হয় | ইয়ং বেঙ্গল থেকে মার্ক্সবাদ ঘুরে এবার বাঙালীর ঘরে ফেরার পালা শুরু হোক | রামকৃষ্ণ-বিবেকানন্দ গন্তব্যস্থল | সেইদিকে চরৈবেতি !

9. The current education system is a conspiracy, unconscious though and unconscious indeed, to keep students under the thraldom of Nature to survive as slaves and die as such.

10. ঠাকুরের আদর্শ ছিল 'টাকা মাটি, মাটি টাকা |' আজকের এই ঘোর বৈশ্যযুগে, যখন লোভরূপ তৃতীয় রিপু বিশ্বমানবকে আক্রান্ত করেছে, তখন ঠাকুরের বাণীটি স্মরণ করা আশু কর্তব্য ও তা পালন করা ততধিক |

11. আজ চরিত্রের বড় অভাব | সর্বত্র বাণিজ্য, এমনকি তথাকথিত আধ্যাত্মিক জগতেও | স্বামীজী বলেছিলেন, "Religions of the world have became lifeless mockeries. What the world wants is character." সময় এসেছে তাঁর বাণীর অনুধ্যানের | এতেই ভারতের উত্থান, এতেই জগতকল্যাণ |

12. 

বিন্দু হতে বিচ্ছুরণ,

বিন্দুতেই পুনর্মিলন |

13. Serve the Hindus by way of religious charity but do not convert them to Islam or Christianity and deculturalise them. That is SIN.

14. ভাল জিনিস নেবার লোক নেই | তাই গুণীজনের এত অনাদর |

15. As the candle burns out, there isn't a room illuminated yet. In futility is life spent chasing wild dreams while the icy chill of the final hour draws near. As yet the flickering flame hasn't died, the rushing breeze daring it equally with life and death. Who knows what shall chance? 

16. স্বামীজীর বাণী পড়ে দেশ জাগুক |

17. ISKCON has zeal. This sort of missionary zeal Swamiji wanted in his followers. Let us have it. That is service to Mother.

18. Instead of giving emojis can readers not respond with creative commenting, pertinent observations on a post?

19. If you want your spiritual movement to spread, be unapologetic about it and propagate your ideas with courage of conviction.

20. We have to deluge the world with spirituality. Chant incessantly and spread the vibration. No apologies will do. Live the life. Speak with authority.

21. রামকৃষ্ণদেবকে প্রচার করতে গেলে রামকৃষ্ণদেবের বাণী অক্ষরে অক্ষরে পালন করতে অন্তত যথার্থ চেষ্টা করতে হবে | রামকৃষ্ণদেবের বাণীকে নিজেদের সুবিধামত কেটে ছেঁটে ব্যবহার করলে রামকৃষ্ণদেবকে প্রচার করা যাবে না | সে প্রচেষ্টা ব্যর্থ হবে | এবং অধুনা তাই হচ্ছে | অতএব, ঘরে ফেরার দিন এসেছে | ঠাকুর অপেক্ষমান দক্ষিণেশ্বরের দ্বারপ্রান্তে |

22. সরলতার অভাবে মানুষ কষ্ট পাচ্ছে | অবতারপুরুষের বাক্য সরলভাবে মনেপ্রাণে গ্রহণ করলেই শান্তি |

23. Spread Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature with zeal. Chant the Holy Name to bliss and inspire others to do so.

24. Too much immersion in material work is spiritually baneful.

25. This world is on fire. And Swamiji's words are fire as well. They fire up minds to douse the worldly fire and render the human divine.

26. Human civilisation has been built on blood.

27. সঠিক বাংলা শিখুন | সঠিক বাংলা লিখুন | সঠিক বাংলা বলুন | হিন্দুস্তানি বাংলা চাই না |

28.

Srila Prabhupāda's Guru, Srila Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvati Thākur, who had commissioned his disciple Abhaycharan (later Prabhupāda) to carry the message of the Gauriya Vaishnava version of the Vedas to the West. Prabhupāda set sail in 1965 at the age of 69 and over the next 12 years circumvented the world 14 times to spread the Vaishnava spiritual message, in the process publishing 80 volumes of spiritual literature translated into 30 languages, establishing Krishna temples across the globe and founding a spiritual community called the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) with its unique Vedic way of community living, an entirely revolutionary societal order in this modern materialistic age. Prabhupāda passed away in 1977 but his message persists as does his order of Vaishnavas, monastics and novitiates which continues to propagate Krishna's life and pastimes to humanity at large with a missionary zeal missing among other Hindu religious orders.

29. If such a poor response comes to Swamiji's sayings, then we, Hindus, are in a decadent spiritual state indeed.

30. যত সব বাজে পোস্টগুলোতে লোকে লাইক দেন | ভাল পোস্টগুলোর কোনো কদরই নেই | লঘুচিত্ত সমাজ !

31. চাই চরিত্র |

32. বাংলাদেশের হিন্দুদের পাশে দাঁড়ান | নইলে আর কিসের হিন্দুত্ব ?

33. কিছু লোক আছে যারা কাজের কাজ কিছুই করে না ঠাকুর-স্বামীজীর বাণীপ্রচারে কিন্তু খোঁচা মারে আর মেলা জ্ঞান দেয় | এদের গন্তব্যস্থানে পত্রপাঠ প্রেরণ করি |

34. চিন্ময়কৃষ্ণ দাসের অবিলম্বে মুক্তি চাই | মিথ্যা মামলা করে ক্ষুদিরামের চট্টোপাধ্যায়কে একদিন দেড়ে গ্রামের জমিদার ফাঁশিয়েছিলেন | তার ফল যুগাবতারের আবির্ভাব তাঁর ঘরে | আজ আবার সেই সনাতন ধর্মসঙ্কট | তাহলে কি ঠাকুরের পুনরাবির্ভাব আসন্ন ? চিন্ময়কৃষ্ণ দাস কি সেই 'পরিত্রাণায় সাধুনাং বিনাশায় চ দুষ্কৃতাং' এর অধুনা নিদর্শন ?

35. How many different ways to approaching God! All pure roads lead to Home because the Self is the same in all. Impurity fails though inevitably. There is no room for impurity in spirituality. 

36. Unbelievably low response to 'Swamiji's sayings'. Didn't expect it at all. Swamiji seems to be dead for devotees. Nonetheless, my crusade will continue in all its Vedantic blaze even if the wilfully blind will not see it.

37. Spread the message of Swamiji zealously. This is important, to understate it.

38. We must fire up the world, nothing short of that. Ours is to send galvanic shocks through the world, ignite men's minds with the blaze within. The world is dying. There is no time to waste in idle pursuits. Those that will, let them. Thou, come along, friend, and join the movement to save the world. Swamiji is our general, we the infantry, insignificant alone but potent in our collective might. Arise and spread the gospel that the Master and his anointed Apostle have freshly brought to our sinking world. Spread the message, bring home what the Christmas call 'the good news'.

39. জাগো অনন্তবীর্যে, জাগো !

40. The goal is to see God and the method is to serve all as embodiment of the Divine.

41. Are we men? No, we are gods on earth, as yet largely unaware of our divinity. But some of us have awakened. And we must send forth the clarion call to all. The thrill of God-realisation none can resist  Only the necessary lapse of time must cover up all earthly lapses and deliver the deal divine.

42. Genuine optimism comes from tremendous self-belief which in turn springs from at least a semblance of perception of the Self. Netaji had this sort of undying optimism which kept him going despite the gravest of odds pitted against him by friend and foe alike. And that immeasurable love for the motherland that he bore and which he embodied.

43. Sri Ramakrishna is the hope of humanity. His all-embracing love will conquer. All opposition will be overcome. The world will capitulate before his boundless love. His Age has but begun. But his mission shall seek fresh channels under diverse garbs, even not bearing his name but in fulfilment of his ideals. Sri Ramakrishna is God. Can God be limited to one mission? His mission is one, that of spiritualisation of the whole of humanity within evolutionary bounds. And his missions are many in terms of individuals and organisations channeling his ideas and ideals, his energy derivatives through diverse modes and means. Ramakrishna is coming alive in the masses and we are thrilling to its dewy efflorescence.

44. Miracles are all material. They do not prove the existence of God or that the miracle-monger is at all spiritual. These are yogic powers quite easily attainable through a bit of spiritual practice but these lead the spiritual aspirant away from the divine destination, the spiritual goal of God-realisation.

45. The way Srila Prabhupāda spread Sanātan spiritual culture across the world, no other Hindu preacher has done thus far barring the prime mover of the movement in Swami Vivekananda. Prabhupāda's movement has been all-comprehensive in its civilisational sweep despite its philosophical outreach on account of its sectarian attitude being rather limited. But there has been for once an unapologetic attitude in propagating the Vedic Dharma without suiting it to western convenience. The westerners have appreciated this Hinduness more than the quasi-Hindu, quasi-westernised version of it propagated by other reputed spiritual organisations.

46. It is so difficult to start a significant spiritual movement. Srila Prabhupāda did it. He literally conquered the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of western youths and transformed their lives, reorienting them along Vedic lines unapologetically unlike the monks of some other reputed spiritual organisations who cannot but pander to the vanities of the West and present a refashioned western variety of Hindu spirituality. Prabhupāda's undiluted Vedic presentation left a deep impress on the disillusioned chaotic youth of the sixties and the seventies of the last century and brought forth a movement the like of which no predecessor or successor of Prabhupāda has ever before or since managed. When a man lives upto what he preaches sincerely and without apology, he creates waves in the world which no worldly apology of spiritual preachers can achieve. Prabhupāda was unsuccessful in impressing the western intelligentsia but, that apart, he did sway vast numbers to the Sanātan Vaishnav fold through his life and teachings in the West. He gave them a new civilisation, the Sanātan civilisation of eternal India, whose appeal became irresistible for the West sinking in the mire of materialism and gasping for a breath of fresh air.

47. Keep doing good work and all evil will fall away. Evil persists not where good prevails.

48. The life of slumber is limited. The awakening must come.

49. To serve the spiritual cause one must literally obliterate one's ego. Thereafter naturally all desire for name and fame, recognition and honour will fall off.

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THE VOICE OF TRUTH

THE VOICE OF TRUTH

We want a voice of authority and not apology, one who can stamp his authority on what he says, his authority stemming from experience and lived truth rather than truth read in books but unverified in experience. There must be power in his affirmations, a thunderous roll in his remarks that does not pander to the vanities of society, does not bow down to political or religious authority but hammers out truth as it happened, as it is happening and as it is in essence. No compromise, no apology, simply the truth pouring out like volcanic lava to metamorphose society unto a higher order of terrestrial and ethereal existence. 

Written by Sugata Bose