SWAMI VIVEKANANDA --- HIS LIFE AND LEGACY 1

July 4, 1902, 9:10 p.m., Belur Math. Swami Vivekananda lay in his last sleep. Long ago, Sri Ramakrishna had prophesied that the day his beloved Naren would get to know his real identity, he would give up his body by an act of will. And so he did. The doctor certified his death as having been caused by apoplexy but his brother disciples maintained that the great Swami had willed his own death once he felt his work on Earth was over.

The next day he was cremated on the hallowed ground of Belur Math. Today, a memorial shrine stands over the exact spot where Vivekananda was cremated. A bas-relief of the Swami was inlaid on a wall of the shrine by Betty Sturges, an American devotee of the Swami. Countless pilgrims daily offer their obeisance to Swamiji there even as they did unwittingly on the first day, that hallowed morn of his advent on Earth, January 12, 1863, the day of the Makar Sankranti.

RAMAKRISHNA-ANUGAAMI JAAGO ... BANGLA 1

Thakur tyagmurti, bairagyer jwalanta bigraha. Tnar bhakta-shishya hote hole jeebon tyagputa howa chai. Satyasankalpa ei premikpurusher anugaami hote hole satyabaadi howa aboshyok. Tnar mukhanisrita 'Shibjnaney jeebseba'---ei mahabakyake jugadharmarupey grohon kore sheirup karmaanushthaan korlei prakrita Ramakrishna bhakta howa sambhab. Alosh stuti tey Tnar mon bhorbe na. Jugadharma sthapaner kaajey sahaayota korte hobe. Ashun amra sakoley ei mahabratey nijeder nijukto kori aar sommilito prochestar dwara Thakurer mahan karmayajney nijeder utsorgikrita kori. Jai Ramakrisha! Jai Maa!

APPEAL 5: MOBILE MEDICAL VAN PROJECT, RAMAKRISHNA MISSION SEVASHRAMA, MUZAFFARPUR, BIHAR, INDIA

44 lakh rupees or 4.4 million rupees or INR 44,00,000 are immediately needed to purchase a MOBILE MEDICAL VAN which will cater to the eye and dental treatment of the poorest of the poor of North Bihar. The aim is blindness eradication from North Bihar. The Eye Hospital, Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Muzaffarpur is in acute shortage of funds and we thus exhort the generous public to liberally contribute to this noble cause. The Mobile Medical Van is a vital link between the Eye Hospital at Muzaffarpur and the poor people lying up-country in North Bihar. They have neither sufficient health awareness nor access to the necessary means for treatment. Consequently, the Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Muzaffarpur has taken the initiative to make available the basic health facilities to them by means of this proposed roving medical van. We urge all kind-hearted souls, devotees and friends to help us in this noble cause. Corporate houses are being urged to come forward and take up this hospital project as their project under the CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. We sincerely look forward to everybody's help for little drops of water accumulate to make up an ocean.

http://www.rkmmuzaffarpur.org/donations.html (WEBSITE LINK)

Donors are requested to provide the following along with their donation in a COVERING LETTER or EMAIL or BOTH :

NAME OF DONOR :

ADDRESS OF DONOR :

PERMANENT ACCOUNT NUMBER ( PAN ) IN CASE OF DONATION OF INR 10,000 OR MORE :

EMAIL ID :

MOBILE NO.:

DONATION AMOUNT :

MODE OF SENDING DONATION : ONLINE TRANSFER / CHEQUE (CHECK) PAYMENT / BANK DRAFT :

DONATION PURPOSE : PURCHASE OF MOBILE MEDICAL VAN

http://www.rkmmuzaffarpur.org/donations.html (WEBSITE LINK)

All these details sent will help make the entire process of donation giving and donation receiving smooth. Kindly comply with the aforesaid request.

With sincere hopes of garnering support for this noblest of causes,
I remain your humble servant,
Ever in the Holy Trinity of Thakur-Ma-Swamiji,
Sugata Bose

P.S.: Kindly go through the following WEBSITE carefully before sending your donation. All relevant details such as the address of the Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Muzaffarpur and their activities are available here.
http://www.rkmmuzaffarpur.org/donations.html(WEBSITE LINK)

MOTHER TERESA, LOVE INCARNATE ... 1

Mother Teresa was the epitome of love for all, especially the poorest of the poor of all races and religions, although her guiding light was the message of her Master Jesus Christ to whom she was spiritually betrothed. Mother served the poor and opened homes for them throughout the world but her love was not confined to the poor alone. She was the mother of the whole world and her love knew no bounds. It flowed in an unbroken stream, nay, a veritable flood, for all whom she came in contact with even if for a brief moment. When asked how she could manage to love so many, she said, "Whenever anybody comes to me, that person becomes the only person in the world for me...Our work is with individuals." And, herein lay the secret of her success, concentration, focus on the one at hand, although it almost pains me to rationalize the love of this supernal soul, a rare visitor to our planet Earth, one that graces this terrestrial realm to fulfil but a special mission of the Lord. This time over it was perhaps to spread the gospel of love that this missionary of the Spirit had adorned the Earth for a few years, a love that cares for all, even the unborn child in the womb of the mother.

Controversies galore have attempted to vitiate this beautiful love of Mother, attaching sectarian and political motivations to it, but they have never been able to dim the effulgence of this supernal maternal love that seeks only to protect and to preserve and never to destroy the seed of love, for what remains in life when the mother crushes the very life she has sprouted in her very self? I know I am stepping into a controversial zone where such world-governing issues as population boom and its concomitant evils are the subject of grave discussion but I do what I do with no malefic design save to highlight what Mother Teresa in her life stood for, albeit the fact that she was an avowed follower of the Catholic Church headquartered at the Vatican City. I personally am vouching neither for nor against this motion, being too insignificant and ignorant a person to pass my pronouncements on momentous issues as these. I follow what Swami Vivekananda had once said: "Society forges its own laws as it forces its way ahead...God is the sum total of all personalities...The will of the totality nothing can resist."

End of Part 1...to be continued.

HIS HOLINESS, THE 14TH DALAI LAMA, AN APOSTLE OF PEACE

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama's fortitude and courage and, above all, his great forbearance in the teeth of the greatest of odds in the wake of the Chinese occupation of Tibet marks him out as a true Apostle of Peace for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The exemplary way in which he has conducted himself as an honoured refugee in India and the manner in which he has followed the Buddhist path of moderation while raising his voice on behalf of the Tibetans, dispossessed of their home and hearth, has earned him a place in the annals of history as a true humanitarian but for whose presence the world would have, for sure, lost the beautiful Tibetan culture. His Holiness had to tread a tightrope throughout in his non-violent crusade for justice for the Tibetans and exhibited the greatest of restraint in speech, moderation in criticism and a pragmatism in politics, rare in the brightest of statesmen. A Buddhist monk to the core, steeped in the spiritual tradition of his country, His Holiness has yet been ever progressive in his outlook and is a great protagonist of scientific culture which he has tirelessly tried to usher in the Tibetan community. He has even stepped down from his position as the exiled Tibetan community's temporal leader and now continues to be only its spiritual Master. His Holiness advocates democracy and has introduced a democratic form of government for his exiled Tibetan followers. He considers the office of the Dalai Lama also as archaic for today's Tibetans and would like to see the end of it after his demise if the Tibetans so desire. Acutely sensitive to the exigencies of the hour, His Holiness is leading his exiled Tibetan sisters and brothers into the modern world of science, technology and information culture while helping them preserve their cultural roots in Tibetan Buddhism. But for His Holiness the world would have witnessed the annihilation of an entire national culture at the hands of the conquering Chinese who have reduced Tibet to a colony fit to be despoiled of all that is good and grand in it, monasteries, manuscripts, monuments, monks and the masses. But through it all His Holiness has been exemplary in terms of the maturity and statesmanship he has shown as he has guided the destiny of millions of hapless Tibetans overnight rendered destitute by the cruel hand of tyranny.

Such then is our Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama who takes pride in calling himself and fellow monks of his Order as belonging strictly to the Nalanda lineage and himself a 'chela' (disciple) of the Indian spiritual masters and Indian spiritual thought. My prostrations at his holy feet and my heart-felt love for all my Tibetan sisters and brothers who have made their home at McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh a world centre of culture and pilgrimage by their industry, attitude and exemplary living.

An aside about His Holiness. He is extremely witty and spares no means to send his audience the world over into fits of laughter by his incessant jokes but such is his profound spirituality that he can instantly regain his composure and turn the train of thought of his listeners in a trice with the profundity of his expositions. And what a sweet personality overall His Holiness has, child-like, mischievous, and what compassion, love that knows no bounds! Truly, he is no more a Tibetan than a citizen of the world, no more a spiritual saint than a secular one, no more a monk than a human in all his essential glory. My prostrations yet again to His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, the last of a vanishing tribe.

SERVE THE VISIBLE GOD

Wish to realize God? Then drown your ego in service to all. They who are the visible manifestations of the Lord must be served. In it is the highest good and this is Yugadharma, the austerity of the Age, the spirituality of the times.This puny ego must go, this little self, this identification with smallness, all this pettiness must be swept away if beatitude is to be reached. All power is within you and must be brought forth into active play for furtherance of your own good and the good of the world. This is a spiritual imperative today for you devotees, especially those of you who have been blessed with initiation from an advanced soul, for the world is burning and the fire needs to be doused before it consumes all. The Lord has manifested Himself in this Age once more, this time in the guise of a poor Brahman priest and we are but His extensions, we who are the inheritors of His grace, the carriers of His message and spirit, the instruments and agencies of His mission. Must we fail Him who gave His all for us?

It is so cumbersome, this descent of the Divine, so arduous, so painful for the Infinite to bind Itself up in a finite form, for the ever-blissful Lord, free and pure, to enter this dungeon where all is fraught with disease and misery, and yet He, of His own volition---for who can force Him?---, out of His boundless mercy, chooses to be with us, His children, for but a brief hour that we may set our lives right, that the terrestrial conditions may be adjusted to suit the furtherance of life and its great evolutionary purpose. He lived just the other day on the bank of the Ganga at Dakshineswar, preaching His nectarine Gospel, singing and dancing in ecstasy like a soul inebriated and casting out of clay, moulds of men, whereby a new civilization may yet arise to approximate man to God.

Knowing this to be your inheritance, this the legacy of Ramakrishna who you worship, O devotees, cast off this inertia and rightfully take up your cross to further the Cause of the Master through devoted service to Him in the many, the afflicted, the miserable, the lonesome and the diseased, the poor and the destitute, the soulful and the sorrowful. This is true worship of the Divine in this Age, this the real measure of your spirituality. May Ramakrishna make messiahs of men from among you for did not the great Swami Vivekananda say: "Wait not for a prophet to come and save you but be a prophet unto others."?

MEDITATION 2

TEN TIPS TO MEDITATIVE CONCENTRATION

1. Be truthful.
2. Be pure.
3. Read the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna daily.
4. Follow your spiritual preceptor's instructions religiously.
5. Meditate at dawn and dusk when Nature is tranquil and the nerve channels are open to higher vibrations.
6. Eat moderately only such food stuff which is not exciting.
7. Sleep well from 10:45 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. Never sleep during daytime for it fractures the memory and induces tamas (ignorance).
8. Avoid arguments over trivial issues for they disturb the finer thought currents.
9. Donate generously but never thoughtlessly towards social causes, especially, the Mission of Ramakrishna which is to bring peace on Earth hereafter.
10. Keep good company, avoid evil company and, on a disciplined basis, seek the company of the sages and saints of the Ramakrishna Order. This will induce sattwa (serenity) so very essential for meditative concentration.