LIVE THE LIFE 6 ... A TRIBUTE TO SWAMI SUMEDHANANDA

A devotee once asked Swami Sumedhananda, venerable monk of the Ramakrishna Order to bless him that he might preach the Word of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. Prompt came the reply, ''If you wish to spread the Word, then LIVE THE LIFE.'' I was witness to this event and it struck me as singular the force with which the Swami spoke these words. Also, there was so much of love and good wishes associated with it that it altogether seemed to the devotee to be quite within his reach to achieve what normally one would have conceived as unachievable. But the condition was there, an imperative---LIVE THE LIFE.

So, what is this 'living the life' after all? Did the Swami mean that the devotee must renounce home and hearth in his forties, wrenching himself free from his settled householder's life to wander about as a mendicant monk spreading the Gospel of the Lord or did he have something else in mind? Well, he did not say anything more but from all intents and purposes it seemed clear that he meant that the aspirant devotee would have to live a life steeped in the values of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, that is, a principled and pure life full of the fire of selfless love and charity, if he were to have any impact on his addressees when he spoke. In short, he would have to cultivate character and thereby acquire the necessary spiritual power to make his words potent enough to carry his audience not merely for the hour with his oratorical flourish but for a protracted period of time and that too at a depth where real spiritual transformation might be effected. He would have to have courage of conviction to be able to carry his audience and that could only be possible through a deepening of his own life spiritually.

The 'silent word' is more eloquent, it is character that speaks. There must be a fire, a zeal without bigotry, an all-consuming peaceful love that will make one's words have a telling effect, lend them such potency that they bore their way through the nerves of the listeners and grip them for good. And all this for a higher, peaceful, noble purpose free of dogmatism and full of reasonableness, though sublime and inspired. For there is already a surfeit of irrational, infra-rational, unscientific, dogmatic, doctrinaire, intolerant stuff doing the rounds in the world at large that is the cause of so much dismay to right-thinking people. Let us not add to the commotion there already is as regards religious babble for the world requires as much a respite from these deliverers of men as from their messiahs. If at all one must serve the world, let one do so in as peaceful and gentlemanly a manner as possible without the histrionics associated with preaching or its malefic intent.

A life must be built, a character formed, a higher inspiration reached, by whom? Why, the preacher himself. He who wishes to transform others, let him first transform himself. He who wishes to spread the Word of a Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, let him first reflect on this fact that these great masters first had dived deep into their selves to acquire real spirituality before they ventured to speak before the world. And what joy when one attains to something worthwhile in this spiritual journey! It is then a 'joy unspeakable' to rise and help raise one's fellow men, one's 'sisters and brothers', a veritable pilgrimage this life then is. So, says the Swami Sumedhananda from the hills of Cherrapunjee, from the vales of this vast land and from his ethereal abode in Ramakrishna Lok now, IF YOU WISH TO SPREAD THE WORD, THEN LIVE THE LIFE.