COMMENTS GALORE ... 91

COMMENTS GALORE ... 91 

Sugata Bose@

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JDwrcd1MR/

Facebook Reels : L. Subramaniam is terribly out of tune and typically playing to the gallery with a show of rhythmic speed while the raag is nowhere musically in contention. V. G. Jog on the other hand is exhibiting a nuanced musical mastery redolent of his masterly training at the feet of his blessed Guru, the great Baba Allauddin Khan, with the yaman oozing out in beauteous bliss with every stroke of his bow. Or, I may be wrong. Perhaps, this is the basic difference between laya-tala-based Carnatic music and raag-based Hindustani classical music. Moreover, it is but natural that the youngster will be no match for the veteran. Jogji outshines Subramaniam in every phase---raag, taal, layakaari, taankaari, everything. But as I listen to the jugalbandi again and again, even L. Subramaniam shines more and more with subtle latakaari which for his young age is unbelievably intricate. His raagdaari falls terribly short, though, for no fault of his may be but for his Carnatic training which to the Hindustani classical music lover is ever shallow in this regard. So, Subramaniam may be excused perhaps but V. G. Jog must in the same vein be held in sublime regard for his virtuosity of a different pedigree altogether, one absorbed from Allauddin Khan, assimilated and here reproduced by his grace. Overall, an enthralling experience.

Sugata Bose @Priyadarshi Gupta : And that is Maya, to be with detached performance of duty done away with to discover the divine within.

Sugata Bose @Cheenmoy Saha : And Hindus are also divided by dietary dictates, vegetarian and non-vegetarian.

Sugata Bose @Susmita Das : Bad Maya. I reject it. Such selfish association is not worth keeping.

Sugata Bose @Susmita Das : Caused by the nearest ones themselves and those who pose to be so.

Sugata Bose @Susmita Das : Those who receive pain thus ought not in turn to give pain to others. But they do and the cycle of vice continues even as the vicious circle expands.

Sugata Bose @Ritaban Majumder : The Mission needs to be criticised far more as it has become a mockery of its original self in terms of adherence to pristine principles, its foundational tenets. This degeneration was amply testified to by Swami Nityaswarupananda (Chintaharan Maharaj) in his booklet 'Back to Vivekananda' whose distributed copies to the tune of 200 to the various branch centres were burnt under orders from the Mission's authorities apparently to keep the organisation integrated but in effect also to crush democratic dissent.

Sugata Bose @Ritaban Majumder : 

১) না, সবকিছু রামকৃষ্ণ মিশনের সাধুরা করবেন না | তাঁদের সে দায়িত্বও নয়, তাঁদের সে ক্ষমতাও নেই |

২) স্বামীজী তাঁর স্বপ্নের দায়দায়িত্ব বহুলাংশেই মিশনের সদস্য, সন্ন্যাসী এবং গৃহীদের ওপর ন্যস্ত করেছেন | সব দায়িত্ব কথাটা গণিতের সরলীকরণ হয়ে গেল যা যুক্তিসঙ্গত নয় | 'ঘাড়ে' স্বামীজী চাপাননি কারো কারণ স্বামীজী সেরকম অশোভন ভাব পোষণ করতেন না, ভদ্র ছিলেন | 

৩) সকল ভক্তের ওপরই দায়িত্ব বর্তায় স্বামীজীর অনুগামীরূপে তাঁর আদর্শকে বলিষ্ঠ পৌরুষদৃপ্তভাবে পালন করার ও তাকে পূর্ণতাদানের | 

৪) হ্যাঁ, বীর্যহীনতা, শ্রদ্ধশূণ্যতাকে তো স্বামীজী বহুভাবে বলে গেছেন দেশ তথা জাতির অধঃপতনের অন্যতম মুখ্য কারণরূপে | 

৫) সন্ন্যাসীদের ওপর অত্যাচার কখনই সহ্য করব না, করেনও না ভক্তরা | একই ভাবে হিন্দু সন্ন্যাসী সংঘেরও হিন্দুদের ওপর অমানুষিক অত্যাতার হলে প্রতিবাদে সোচ্চার হওয়া উচিত | এটি অভিপ্রেত | 

৬) যেমন গুরু তেমনি চেলা | সাধুরা যদি যথার্থ বলবীর্য প্রদর্শন করেন---এবং তা অরাজনৈতিক থেকেও করা যায়---তাহলে ভক্তশিষ্যরাও সাহস পাবে প্রতিরোধে সোচ্চার হওয়ার |

৭) মিশনের যথার্থ সমালোচনা করা মানেই আক্রমণ করা নয় | মিশনের যাঁরা শুভাকাঙ্ক্ষী, তাঁরা মিশনের কল্যাণকামনায় সপ্রেম সমালোচনা অবশ্যই করবেন, করা উচিতও যাতে গোড়ার গলদ বিরাট ভ্রান্তিতে পরিণত হয়ে আদি পথ হতে বড়রকমভাবে মিশনকে সরিয়ে দিতে না পারে | 

৮) আত্মসমীক্ষা সবসময় ভাল, শ্রেষ্ঠ শ্রেয়কর্ম যা ভিন্ন কোনো শুভসংকল্প অথবা কর্ম সম্পন্ন হয় না | 

৯) এক আঙুল আর চার আঙলের দিঙ্নির্দেশের কথাটা ছেলেমানুষি যুক্তি যার সাংকেতিক মূল্য একপ্রকার চাপিয়ে দিলেও তা শারীরিক পরিধিতেই আবদ্ধ থাকে, বিশেষ দার্শনিক অথবা ভৌতিক তাৎপর্য বহন করে না | 

১০) মিশনকে 'অন্য' বলে বোধ করি না, আপন বলেই বোধ করি | অতএব, মিশনের সমালোচনা করাটাকে আত্মসমালোচনার নামান্তরই মনে করি | এটা কোনো রোগ নয়, ওই পূর্বোল্লেখিত আত্মসমীক্ষারই একটি রূপ | এতে সর্বনাশ নয়, সনাতনীর সর্বতো কল্যাণ হবে বলেই বিশ্বাস |

১১) ঠাকুর অবশ্যই সহায় |

Sugata Bose @Ritaban Majumder : Read my refutation of every charge of yours in the earlier post. Godspeed you unto service at the lotus feet of the Lord manifested in this Age in the form of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda! Be blessed if indeed you value my blessings!

Sugata Bose @Ritaban Majumder : Read 'Lectures from Colombo to Almora' over and over again and galvanise yourself thus into a divine dynamo for generation of power to the nation.

Sugata Bose @Ritaban Majumder : Written quite well but a lot of flawed logic in apology involved on behalf of the erring Mission. How would you know of my lifelong commitment to the Mission which has been rudely rent by its departure form original course? It is a long story that cannot be so easily explained in a few words here without causing ample misapprehension to which, owing to inexperience of the Mission's earlier glory, you are already prone. But you are right. Let us mend the holes in the Mission's raft by laying down our bodies to hold the same, as Swamiji says, and let the multitudes pass over them onto the other shore. Your words, instead of causing irritation, are so inspirational that I feel right now overjoyed to have read into your deeper drive that in divinity shines like a beacon unto my old self, rent and tattered, beaten and battered by the winds of change to which, alas, even the Mission has succumbed. But here you are, youthful and blossoming, bearing the burden of the benighted past, yet inspiring me to dive again into the depths of truth whence pearls of wisdom and gems of love I may yet gather for free allowance to all and sundry. May Thakur bless you! P.S. Do not read my irritating posts which you feel are detrimental---though not I in all fairness entertain such a notion---to the Mission's prospects. Stay away from such poison and drink the ambrosia that the Mission serves, and gain immortality. 🕉

Sugata Bose @John Embrey : My criticism in this regard is becoming an irritant for some devotees of an esteemed spiritual organisation who by their sustained support of mass commercialisation of an erstwhile sublime cause that had held its own for a century in the heights of pure renunciation are wittingly and unwittingly aiding the gradual degeneration of the movement, its toxic fruits, now in seed form, for sure threatening to bear their rot in manifest form in the decades ahead. Spirituality lost through commercial association going quite against the foundational principles laid down by the preceptor will be ground gone for possible future afforestation as rootless the soil is blown away by the winds of change to make fertile land arid. But if criticism be made, it is misconstrued as being the agency of destruction which makes for the furtherance of decline, unopposed, unhindered, with a few individuals determining direction against the inarticulate opposition of so many within the order who dare not speak for fear of disciplinary retribution. Today, I am voicing concern but it is to the irritation of blind devotees who would not brook such opposition even as they by their allowance and support actively aid the transformation of a spiritual organisation into its quasi-commercial sibling of sorts. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Samarbijoy Chakraborty : Swamiji has defined character as the sum total of tendencies (sanskaras), the sanskaras or mental impressions, turning out as tendencies in thought and action, having been formed by past actions and thoughts. It is this summation of sanskaras that govern the bent of mind of a person, drive his deeds and is termed his character.

Sugata Bose @Manoj Sethi : What a lovely post, Manoj! Thanks a lot. Read the Gospel and drown in your divinity. Thakur beckons you from his holy habitat in the divine Dakshineshwar that as yet vibrates to these wondrous words pouring forth from his lips, from the Bhāvagangā that flows subterranean in his being.

Sugata Bose @Debaprasad Bhattacharya : Fantastic! At last you have started writing on your own, something I had requested you to do long ago but for reason pertinent enough in your considered estimation you had refrained from doing. Now that you have lifted the bar to literary self-expression, I extend my heartiest welcome to you unto the mansion of social utterance. 

P.S. Please also draw the special attention of the Ramakrishna Mission to the conversion issue.

Sugata Bose @Swami Vibhatmananda : The male peafowl sporting its plumage looks like royalty with its outspread court. Truly the national bird! What extravagant beauty Nature has! Sister Nivedita, while marvelling at the beauty of the sunset off the coast of a place, I cannot quite recall, had drawn attention to Swamiji to which he had said that if external Nature held such rapturous charm, how much more was the Beloved within whose manifestation it all was. Indeed, when we behold Thakur's rapturous smile in samādhi in that celebrated photograph clicked at Keshav Chandra Sen's place where in erect posture he is held by his nephew Hridayram, a picture perfect which probably was later painted or adorned to even more telling effect, we get an inkling into what Swamiji meant. But for lesser mortals like us, the peafowl in his outspread dazzling plumage does draw us to the beauteous front of Nature and the beauteous behind which we may imagine thus before beholding one day in the noonshine of realisation. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Sharmistha Chatterjee : Bless you! May you realise the most aspired vision of Sri Ramakrishna in this very life! Purity, patience, perseverance---the trinity of virtues is the key to becoming great according to Swami Vivekananda. And there is no greatness that can compare to God-realisation. And what is Thakur but God in human form, the descent of the Divine for the resurrection of the Dharma? Be blissfully conscious of the Lord who ever resides in the sanctum sanctorum of the heart. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Debaprasad Bhattacharya : Excellent suggestion but one unlikely to be even heard, far less heeded and executed by the secular government of the land that has tied its limbs towards protection of Hindu interests despite India having been formed by vivisection of the undivided motherland on the basis of the supposed Hindu-Muslim divide duly proposed and with armed action activated by Muhammad Ali Jinnah with the compliant British Raj giving it eventual legal and political sanction. Hindus today are at their civilisational receiving end yet again and with demographic change precipitating a rapidly evolving altered sociopolitical landscape, a civil war that Gandhi had apprehended and so attempted in vain to avoid in allowing Partition, is looming large yet again. Will it lead to further provincial partitions? One may only keep conjecturing as the D-day approaches nearer and nearer with an eternally somnolent Hindu 'samāj' (society) awaiting Providential help in their political passivity. 🕉 Hindu!

Sugata Bose @Sharmistha Chatterjee : Divinise yourself actively. No more of passive piety. Be up and doing. You must realise your Ishta in this very life. And why wait? Is not celestial bliss waiting for you? I aver, you will realise. Let there be no doubt about it. So, onward! Charaiveti! 🕉

Sugata Bose @Sharmistha Chatterjee : The divorce of Buddhism and Hinduism has led to the downfall of India. This was revealed to the depth insight of Swamiji. This means that the heart of the Buddha and the brain of the Brāhman separated has led to the drying up of the spiritual well of eternal India and it must be by the reunification of these two grand currents of our national evolution that things may be remedied. Upon the harmonising of the head and the heart of these two apparently contrasting currents of thought lies the future well-being of India. It is our national imperative and it must be done forthwith, for our civilisational dangers are many and they must be countered effectively without delay. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Debaprasad Bhattacharya : See how I never use emojis or make puerile remarks of passive piety but take pains (really pleasure) to leave pertinent detailed observations on the posts. This is worth observing. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Prasenjit K. Basu : No wonder you carry so much of the grace that sure must have been showered on you by Thakur himself.

Sugata Bose @Debaprasad Bhattacharya : I knew you would readily come to support the cause. Be an integral part of it and help spread the message.

Sugata Bose @Ujjal Kumar Ghosh : Help spread the message by sharing widely the online newspaper 'ARISE ! AWAKE!' started by us and by Swamiji's blessings all will be right.

Sugata Bose @Dr-Manoj Kumar Dutta : Read our online newspaper 'ARISE! AWAKE!' This is a humble beginning we have made. The movement will spread. The newspaper is right there on my profile wall.

Sugata Bose @Lopamudra Das Basuthakur : Please share these posts that are by way of publishing our daily divine newspaper on the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda-Vedanta Movement. Your sympathetic participation will be of immense help to the fledgling cause that is right now in its fumbling first footsteps. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Archana Tagore : Please share the posts daily, religiously, without fail. Help spread 'the good news', as the Christians say.

Sugata Bose @Sharmistha Chatterjee : Life is for God-realisation. Be up and doing to achieve it. I say you will succeed. Make a sincere effort. All help will come from the highest. The Lord never leaves those who take refuge in Him. 

And by God-realisation in the ultimate sense is meant Self-realisation, Atmajnān. This highest spititual state is realised when the Kulakundalini Shakti rises to the seventh plane of existence whose bodily seat is the sacral plexus of the brain, although in that state which is purely spiritual, all physical and psychological sense is lost and only the essence in the Spirit reigns. That is the goal which must be reached. But by and by, measure for measure. Slowly the system must be filtered of all material dross. Then the latent power locked at the base of the spinal column will be activated and made to rise along the sushumnā. Moolādhār, svādhishthhān, manipur, anāhat, vishuddh, ājnā and sahasrār---these are the seven planes, the first six being called Tantrachakras as well. 🕉 

'The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna', if read religiously, I am convinced, will transform one's nature and draw one towards Thakur leading at no distant date to Self-realisation. Bhakti, mukti will be both in one's palm like the fruit āmlaki---as they say, karāmalakavat. 🕉

চরিত্রগঠনের একটা মূল দিক হল সংকল্পসিদ্ধ হওয়া---যা শুভ সংকল্প করেছি, তা পালন করবই করব |

Sugata Bose @Surajit Banerjee : Thanks for sharing. This is a vital effort, a daily newspaper with morning and evening editions in both English and Bengali, which needs popularisation. Ramakrishna-Vivekananda is the way out of the intractable problems we have enmeshed ourselves in with, humanity literally caught in the net of Maya, awaiting the delivery of the death sentence served on it by Nature, the Mother who we have so injured with our consistent betrayal of her every hope. Now is the time to redress the wrongs and what better way than to support the Vivekananda cause that we are serving, keeping in line with the aspiration of the Swami to set alight the masses with the torch of the Vedanta in all its phases, here in the literary phase in easy accessible language free of all charge save the charge laid on our shoulders by the Swami to fulfil his once-expressed desire to daily distribute a hundred thousand copies of the 'Udbodhan' on the streets of Kolkata? Today, technology allows us to do so easily and we are doing it at a time when the Ramakrishna Mission has sadly gone fully commercial in its drive to raise funds on every count including monetising specific YouTube channels as of Udbodhan and removing the online reading rooms largely. Consecrated food (prasād) is being charged for with coupons handed out at Belur Math against a certain minimum amount which never used to be the case earlier. Many more such things as letting out auditoriums against monetary charge etc., paying paltry sums of money--- exploitative to say the least---by way of salary for its employees while raising large sums of money by appealing to public sentiment citing the words of the Holy Trinity of Thakur-Ma-Swamiji whose ideals they scarce follow anymore. It is a sad sad day for devotees like us who have dedicated their whole lives for the Mission to find themselves now stranded thus, betrayed on every count in idealism and in practice. Alas, this has historically been the bane of all spiritual organisations---money! Help us salvage the situation by spreading the message of the Master and his anointed Apostle and, above all, the Mother who is the prime mover of the divine duo. We have set the ball rolling and shall not budge till victory be sealed on Vivekananda. 🕉