IN A REFLEXIVE RAMAKRISHNA MOOD

IN A REFLEXIVE RAMAKRISHNA MOOD

🕉 Hindu monks must stop self-promotion and work for the protection of persecuted Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir and other Islam-dominated parts of the world. We would appreciate their services thus better than listen to their personal life-narratives of spiritual initiation, association and attainments. Let these self-obsessed monks speak up right now for the Bangladeshi Hindus in a bold and forthright voice rather than busy themselves in articulate and photographic self-promotion. Otherwise, soon the vast Hindu community 🕉 will lose faith in them. Their personal and organisational goodwill is already floundering. Let it not suffer a complete collapse such that their selfless welfare work thus far may continue unabated and gain vigour and spread with time.

Certain individual monks have to reconsider the imperatives of their spiritual vocation and take cognisance of the fact that they are not only making their personal profile light in public estimation but seriously eroding their organisational image. Perceptions matter -- this they must reckon. A sannyasi is not a filmstar in ochre clothes that he must daily appear in a different social garb to fulfil Swamiji's observation that 90% of the monastic community are subject to seeking name and fame.

Sannyas means total annihilation of the self. The ochre is donned to announce to the world and constantly to oneself that the Hindu 🕉 monk is one who is dead to the world of the senses and is only spiritually alive to help on suffering humanity along the path of spiritual enlightenment and liberation from inexplicable material ignorance. He has worn the ochre cloth after performing his own sraddha (post-funeral rites) and the Viraja Homa. Such absolute renunciation does not brook even one's own liberation, so affirmed Swami Vivekananda so often when he said, "तुच्छं ब्रह्मपदं" [Even refuge in liberation of the Self is of little consequence (to the sannyasi)]. Hence, sannyas is a continuous battle with one's worldly self. The sannyasi carries the charge of being spiritual exemplar and world-teacher (जगतगुरु). He must not engage in the daily frivolity of photographic and articulate self-promotion. The entire world looks up to him for spiritual guidance, assurance and fearlessness to which he must with enormous sympathy respond to provide strength and succour to failing souls. The monk must be a lighthouse, a beacon in this turbulent sea of terrestrial existence. He must not sell his ideals cheap to win the laurels of this delusive world.

Devotees must as well not pander to the earthly vanities -- however refined they may be -- of straying monastics and harm them further by feeding their unreal ego. Swamiji formed the Ramakrishna Math for monks but the Ramakrishna Mission he built for both monastic and lay devotees so that they could conjointly do welfare work in Sri Ramakrishna's name. After more than a century of seminal effort and attainments galore by this twin spiritual organisation let us take store of the situation as to where we, monastic and laity, stand. Let us dedicate ourselves afresh ro keep the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda movement fresh for the furtherance of the cause of the spiritualisation of the whole of humanity, a task which we have badly failed to fulfil thus far. May discretion and judgement guide us rather than insincere exhortations of passive piety in the name of the Holy Hindu 🕉 Trinity of Thakur-Ma-Swamiji !

Written by Sugata Bose