If you wish to follow Vivekananda, then throw overboard into the sea your puny ego as he has exhorted you to do and cling fast to the principle : THE WORLD FIRST, MYSELF LAST.
All our actions are dictated by this tyrant ego which makes us selfish in our motivations and endeavours and, so, causes enormous difficulties in our path towards godhead. Promising us the trifling pleasures of life, it robs us of the infinite bliss of the Self. The result is that human society is fractured along lines of self-interest which impairs effective social functioning, causing misery to millions.
Our forefathers when they had drawn up collections of individuals into the aggregate they called Samaj (a variant of 'society') had done so with the purpose of mutual help and conjoined action for self-preservation, collective good and the spiritual evolution of humanity as the fundamental drift of whatever emanated from it and had, thus, based the social structure on the firm foundation of the realisations of the Rishis (seers of transcendental truth). Social ethics derived from spiritual truths as envisioned by the Rishis and was geared towards raising the consciousness of man to behold the Divine within. But time eventually took its toll and the simple division of society into the four varnas (qualified strata): brahman (the philosopher-scholar and priestly class), kshatriya (the warrior class), vaishya (the merchant class) and shudra (the labourer class) with the accompanying four ashramas : brahmacharya (the period of studentship), garhasthya (the period of marital household life), vanaprastha (the period of retirement in the forest for austerity and scriptural study) and sannyasa (the period of complete renunciation of all worldliness) which had so effectively helped in the smooth functioning of society, now began to erode and complex social divisions with their concomitant evils of divisiveness and antagonistic group interests became the order of the day.
Spiritual revolutions in the form of the advent of the Avatar and his Apostles have rectified the imbalance of the Age from time to time but have never quite been able to uproot the selfishness en masse in the heart of man for it is contrary to the divine scheme of things terrestrial where all opposites make the composite whole.
Thus has society grown in size and complexity with growing selfishness in the heart of man, as in an expanding society by the reverse mode of individualism, mortal man has cocooned himself in his microcosm and so marooned himself in his isle of 'I'. Turning his back on society's basic needs of protection of the defenceless and the underprivileged, its basic purpose of the safekeeping of its citizens, he has turned himself into an acquisitive machine with his greed feeding on the hapless millions whose ruddy drops spilled in the effort to fill up the coffers of their millionaire master have left them drained of the very vitality we call life and reduced them to beasts of burden.
Time it is to effect a change and set society right the world over, restoring dignity to the masses who have 'lost their individuality', to quote Vivekananda, and to create a condition for the decent survival of the teeming millions by providing them food, shelter, clothing, education and health-care that they may also seek the joys of life before comprehending the futility of it all and immersing in the bliss of the effulgent Self. Let all survive, let all share in the resources of Mother Earth for are not all equal children of the Mother? Did she once make distinction between prince and pauper, the pundit and the pariah, between the enlightened and the fallen one in her brief sojourn on Earth? Then who are we to create divisions, who are we to hoard the wealth of the world that is the common property of all? We have no right to deprive Mother's children of basic human necessities which by our acquisitive tendencies we invariably are doing. We have scant respect for brother man if we let them suffer the way we never could. Redress we must this violent apathy towards the sufferance of the masses, else there will be a more violent revolution to redress things.
Ramakrishna was born poor and so was Sarada Devi. Vivekananda sank into poverty after his father's death. After the passing away of Ramakrishna, his monastic disciples endured inhuman poverty at Baranagar Math. The legacy continues at the different branch centres of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission where acute shortage of funds holds up the expansion projects and impedes the growth of the Mission. As the flourishing of the Mission's work is intimately connected with the welfare of the country and the world at large, its obstruction owing to financial stringency is detrimental to the nation's well-being and the spiritual health of the world. As such it is a moral binding on all devotees of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission to see to it that the welfare projects of the Mission take off well and are completed in quick time for rapid growth of the Mission. Else, how will the world be saved from its present state of spiritual degradation and how will the India of Vivekananda's dream emerge in the full glow of material adequacy and spiritual plenitude?
Poverty is a sin, nay, it is the breeding ground of sin. Poverty cripples an individual by denying him basic human necessities for decent survival. Likewise, a charitable organisation that is catering to the needs of the poor is also held back if its funds keep drying up due to insufficient governmental and public support. The work is huge, the task mammoth, it is a project colossal, that of transformation of the whole of human society from its present operational mode of ultra-materialism to the more refined mode of quasi-spiritualism.
The stock-pile of nuclear weaponry, global terrorism, international territorial disputes, religious bigotry, ideological intolerance, widespread illiteracy, poverty, misery, squalor, the rudderless motion of the youth towards desperate ends, and an endangered environment have brought the world to the brink of destruction where immediacy of effective action is an imperative. Two World Wars it seems have not taught man lesson sufficient to avert a third. Man continues to wield unbridled power indiscriminately over fellow man oblivious of karmic consequence. This supposed omnipotence of man has cost him dear in the past and is doing so now. Yet, he does not wake up from his slumber. Will it be the final sleep then? Will all perish in mutual slaughter as en masse Nature takes to redressing the imbalance by reducing life on Earth to nought or will God manifest Himself again to establish Dharma (righteousness) here on Earth?
It is a shame, an utter shame, a total travesty of devotion or human care if we allow things to further precipitate for the abyss of oblivion will then be our precipitous end. Whither divinity, whither tall talk, whither devotion, O devotee? Upon your shoulders lies the burden of the whole universe, so said Vivekananda. Must you fail him in ushering in the Golden Age of Light and Truth? Surely not.
Have faith, my friend, in your blessed future and do not fear. Nothing will go amiss if you transform your feeling for your hapless brethren everywhere by contributing to their material welfare. Your charity of the day will secure your morrow with peace, prosperity and godliness but the spirit must be right, not of condescension in giving but of worshipful service to your Ishta (the Chosen Ideal). I rest my hopes on you and await for the blissful morrow when the poor, the miserable, the blind, the sick, the suffering and the destitute will smile to behold life at hand in the first radiance of the rising sun.
Spiritual revolutions in the form of the advent of the Avatar and his Apostles have rectified the imbalance of the Age from time to time but have never quite been able to uproot the selfishness en masse in the heart of man for it is contrary to the divine scheme of things terrestrial where all opposites make the composite whole.
Thus has society grown in size and complexity with growing selfishness in the heart of man, as in an expanding society by the reverse mode of individualism, mortal man has cocooned himself in his microcosm and so marooned himself in his isle of 'I'. Turning his back on society's basic needs of protection of the defenceless and the underprivileged, its basic purpose of the safekeeping of its citizens, he has turned himself into an acquisitive machine with his greed feeding on the hapless millions whose ruddy drops spilled in the effort to fill up the coffers of their millionaire master have left them drained of the very vitality we call life and reduced them to beasts of burden.
Time it is to effect a change and set society right the world over, restoring dignity to the masses who have 'lost their individuality', to quote Vivekananda, and to create a condition for the decent survival of the teeming millions by providing them food, shelter, clothing, education and health-care that they may also seek the joys of life before comprehending the futility of it all and immersing in the bliss of the effulgent Self. Let all survive, let all share in the resources of Mother Earth for are not all equal children of the Mother? Did she once make distinction between prince and pauper, the pundit and the pariah, between the enlightened and the fallen one in her brief sojourn on Earth? Then who are we to create divisions, who are we to hoard the wealth of the world that is the common property of all? We have no right to deprive Mother's children of basic human necessities which by our acquisitive tendencies we invariably are doing. We have scant respect for brother man if we let them suffer the way we never could. Redress we must this violent apathy towards the sufferance of the masses, else there will be a more violent revolution to redress things.
Ramakrishna was born poor and so was Sarada Devi. Vivekananda sank into poverty after his father's death. After the passing away of Ramakrishna, his monastic disciples endured inhuman poverty at Baranagar Math. The legacy continues at the different branch centres of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission where acute shortage of funds holds up the expansion projects and impedes the growth of the Mission. As the flourishing of the Mission's work is intimately connected with the welfare of the country and the world at large, its obstruction owing to financial stringency is detrimental to the nation's well-being and the spiritual health of the world. As such it is a moral binding on all devotees of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission to see to it that the welfare projects of the Mission take off well and are completed in quick time for rapid growth of the Mission. Else, how will the world be saved from its present state of spiritual degradation and how will the India of Vivekananda's dream emerge in the full glow of material adequacy and spiritual plenitude?
Poverty is a sin, nay, it is the breeding ground of sin. Poverty cripples an individual by denying him basic human necessities for decent survival. Likewise, a charitable organisation that is catering to the needs of the poor is also held back if its funds keep drying up due to insufficient governmental and public support. The work is huge, the task mammoth, it is a project colossal, that of transformation of the whole of human society from its present operational mode of ultra-materialism to the more refined mode of quasi-spiritualism.
The stock-pile of nuclear weaponry, global terrorism, international territorial disputes, religious bigotry, ideological intolerance, widespread illiteracy, poverty, misery, squalor, the rudderless motion of the youth towards desperate ends, and an endangered environment have brought the world to the brink of destruction where immediacy of effective action is an imperative. Two World Wars it seems have not taught man lesson sufficient to avert a third. Man continues to wield unbridled power indiscriminately over fellow man oblivious of karmic consequence. This supposed omnipotence of man has cost him dear in the past and is doing so now. Yet, he does not wake up from his slumber. Will it be the final sleep then? Will all perish in mutual slaughter as en masse Nature takes to redressing the imbalance by reducing life on Earth to nought or will God manifest Himself again to establish Dharma (righteousness) here on Earth?
It is a shame, an utter shame, a total travesty of devotion or human care if we allow things to further precipitate for the abyss of oblivion will then be our precipitous end. Whither divinity, whither tall talk, whither devotion, O devotee? Upon your shoulders lies the burden of the whole universe, so said Vivekananda. Must you fail him in ushering in the Golden Age of Light and Truth? Surely not.
Have faith, my friend, in your blessed future and do not fear. Nothing will go amiss if you transform your feeling for your hapless brethren everywhere by contributing to their material welfare. Your charity of the day will secure your morrow with peace, prosperity and godliness but the spirit must be right, not of condescension in giving but of worshipful service to your Ishta (the Chosen Ideal). I rest my hopes on you and await for the blissful morrow when the poor, the miserable, the blind, the sick, the suffering and the destitute will smile to behold life at hand in the first radiance of the rising sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment