Speech of HH Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji in the evening – December 30, 2016 – Vijayawada
Courtesy: Archana Penukonda
Jaya Guru Datta
We are bidding goodbye to 2016. 2017 is around the corner. The new year starts next month. We are welcoming the new year. Normally, Ugadi is our festival marking the new year. This is just what the English-speaking world did for their calculation. To aid in their calculations and record-keeping, January 1 has been marked as the beginning the year. Otherwise, there is no number or calculation to what has been coming down eons after eons.
Every day is considered a good day. Every morning marks the first day of the year that follows it. That is why, every day we wake up we are alive again. We could have passed away in our sleep – of course we may not be that fortunate, but we never know when we are going to die. There is light when we are awake/conscious and there is darkness when we are not. We are calling this series of light and darkness as years. When we close our eyes it is night time and when we open our eyes it is daytime. As we go around the sun, darkness is when we turn away from the sun and sunrise is when we turn towards the sun. The sun is in the same place. Only the earth is moving. We are going around the sun (doing Pradakshina).
Chanting “Yani kani cha papani, janmantara kritanicha…” – may the sins we have committed over many births be destroyed today – we perform circumambulation in place (Atma Pradakshina). When we do this standing in front of God, it is darkness when we turn away from God and light when we face God. This is the secret. But we do Atma Pradakshina because God is everywhere. Because we cannot see God with our physical eyes, we see God in the idol. The Lord is present everywhere in a very subtle form. He fills the sky. He fills me and he fills you. He fills everything around. He is in the form of air, in the form of fire, in the form of water, in the form of sky. Like that, He pervades everything. Where is darkness then? There is no darkness. While doing Pradakshina, we say it is darkness when we turn away from God and light when we face him, only for our calculation. That is the calculation they have used for the earth as well. Because it was necessary to have a certain calculation, January 1 is considered the beginning of the year.
There is also a calculation for all the years passed. The Ugadi calculations – the Telugu calculations say 5,700 or 5,800 years. That is not the time the earth was born, it was the time man became aware and was keeping records. It has been over 5,700 or 5,800 years. That is called Ugadi festival during which we observe the new year. In India, according to place and time, Deepavali, Rama Navami etc. are marked as beginning of the new year in different places. Tamilians too have their new year. Their calculation is slightly different. Malayali people too have their new year with a slightly different calculation. Uttar Pradesh celebrates Deepavali as the new year. In South India, people of Karnataka and people of Andhra and Telangana observe Ugadi/Yugadi as the new year. So, that is the count since we gained awareness. There is plenty of time elapsed before we gained awareness. We cannot determine that. Since the time man had awareness, 5,600 years have elapsed. Sometimes they say it is 5700 years, that is okay. There may be a variance of a 100 years. If you look at the almanac, you will get the exact calculation.
See how wonderful the almanac-keepers’ calculations were. They have been keeping this count for a long time. They had no binoculars, no telescope, no science. There is so much precise calculation in our astrology. They had such good grasp of time in astrology (samaya jyotishyam). They would correctly write the time, direction and duration of the eclipse, a year in advance. Some great scholars would write this 5 years in advance. If they wrote that the sunrise on a given day would occur a few minutes after the normal time of sunrise, that is exactly what would happen. They would correctly predict when in the year it would rain and when it would not. Those of us who go believe in astrology can read the almanac – the Tangirala panchangam or the one published by Tirupati. Sit down and study in leisure. If we just gloss over it, we will be deterred by the content and close the book immediately. We should take the time to study the calculations. We will be amazed. Instead, we only look to the almanac to read about our future (based on our horoscope), but things may turn out topsy-turvy and we blame the almanac for being wrong. You should never look at your horoscope. You should only look at the time based content. You must respect time. When you respect time, you will understand it and you will understand the way to live.
So like our Ugadi, this English new year is their (English-speaking world’s) Ugadi. Since we keep track of things by months (January/February/March…) and days and that is what we know, we celebrate that too as the beginning of the new year. Nothing wrong with it. Every person that wakes up should consider each day as the beginning of a new year. Every time you wake up, it is a new day, it is a new hour, it is a new second.
When you fall asleep, you do not know what is going on. When you wake up, you are singing “Suprabhatam” (song to symbolically wake up God in the morning). Early morning, when we sing the Suprabhatam here, the people in America are singing lullaby to God (to symbolically put him to bed). They all go to sleep. I need to stay awake and take care of them. I need to enter into them, I need to enter their dreams. I must fulfill their desires. Then, when they wake up, you go to sleep. I need to come to you. When can I get rest? There are other countries in between with a 3-4 hour time difference. There is no chance of getting any rest. Not a second. Day breaks at one place and night falls at the other. See how it is. According to the time, according to their state of mind, according to their devotion, I have to run to them. The body may be in one place, but mentally, I have to be with them. There is no choice. I have to go to them. That is the reason Chandramohan says I have no time. It does not mean I have no time in India. It is not as if I do not have time physically with this body. I do not have time mentally.
There are also other things to take care of in between all this. In the midst of all this, I will need to take care of some music. In the midst of all this, I will need to take care of who is meditating and who is not. In the midst of all this, I need to take care of those who are just born. I need to bless those who are departing. Or at least, I need to bless those who have lost the departed ones. I need to give them courage. I do not need to give them courage physically. They will experience it mentally. They will feel the courage when they see Swamiji’s photo. They will feel as if Swamiji is saying something to them, as if Swamiji is talking to them. So, if you go by this, every second of the 24 hours in a day, Swamiji is always working. He is always busy.
“Why do you look tired Swamiji?”. What can I do? I just came back from my travel. “But, you have been here all day?” You do not know. You do not know those travels. I did that travel, but not with the physical body. Physical travel only gives little exhaustion. But the mental travel causes a lot of exhaustion. It causes a lot of irritation and tiredness. Unnecessary grief and diseases come to this body. There is no choice but to experience them. I have to take care of them too in between things. Where does this body get rest? Where does this body get comfort? This body did not come here (to this planet) for comforts. This body is here for this purpose. It is here for all this. This body is alive for that. This life is meant for that purpose. The body’s fate is like this. There is no rest for this body.
I said just yesterday, “This is your destiny. It is up to you. You have no right to complain that you have pains in the body. Just shut up and bear the pain. It is up to you. I am not giving you attention”. I tell this to my body sometimes. The children keep saying sometimes, “Appaji is not well. Please take some rest”. What rest? I have no rest. I am already arrested in the devotees’ lives. You have tied me down in your hearts. I have earned plenty of devotees, some of whom worship me as God, some who worship me as Guru, some who worship me out of respect and some who worship me out of love. They keep pulling me as they like. They keep pulling me with their mind and tying me down. Sometimes they blame Swamiji, sometimes they praise Swamiji, sometimes they keep pining for Swamiji to look at them so their sorrows can go away. There are some who are looking at others whose sorrow has disappeared and are wondering when their turn would come. There are many, many different kinds of lives. I have no choice but to enter those lives. I have no choice but to cry with them. I have no choice but to laugh with them. I have no choice but to get fickle with them. This Guru’s responsibility should not come to anyone, not even God. The all-pervasive Guru’s responsibility should not come to anyone at all. Occasionally, I used to feel I would be better off being a Guru who just recites the Bhagavatam or Ramayana or some other scriptures. Now, I am used to this, so I do not feel like that anymore. I am used to this. But I do not wish for other things. Whatever I have is good, wherever I am is good, whatever anyone says is good.
When you blame me, it is worship to me. Your worship is worship to me. Praise and blame are the same to me. There are people who blame me with their praises. There are some who worship me while blaming me, “How many times should I worship you? How many times should I pray to you?” There are also the kind that say, “From tomorrow, I do not want your photo. I will not come to you. I will not even come near you. I am leaving you”. By the same night, they come back begging for forgiveness. I need to be ready for everything. I need to be ready for blaming in the morning and I need to be ready for cajoling and praise in the evening. You are so fickle. With extreme fickleness, you are making me a small toy in your hands. I am happy that you are at least getting some peace of mind because of me.
If blaming me gives you peace of mind, blame me. If praising me gives you peace of mind, praise me. If worshiping me gives you peace of mind, worship me. If staying away from me gives you peace of mind, that is fine too. It is up to you. All I want is for you to be happy. If not having faith in me gives you comfort, do not have faith in me. If having faith in me gives you comfort, have faith. If intermittent faith gives you comfort, have intermittent faith. You are wasting time, that is all. You are not achieving anything. You are not accomplishing anything. You are losing time. That is what I keep telling you. It is not a gain for me, it is a gain for you. I am not the one losing, you are losing. I am not the loser, you are the loser. You are becoming a lost being, you are becoming a waste being, you are the one suffering. I cannot see you suffer. That is why sometimes, I reprimand you saying, “What you are doing is not good”. But I also tell you it is up to you.
After the entire Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna, “I have told you everything. This is what the scriptures say. It is up to you. Follow if you wish to”. In the end of the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord says, “Leave all karmas, surrender to me. Have faith in me. You will attain everything. You will attain liberation”. Then finally he said, “I have told you everything. Now, it is up to you”.
If God himself said that to his devotee, what should your Sadguru say to you? Tell me. After telling you such great secrets, it is now up to you. You can experience whatever your fate is. How far can I withstand the chaos and anxiety in your minds? Tsunamis are going on in you. Your mind cannot stay still for a second. That is what I tell Kriya Yoga students. Be calm. In the morning, keep your mind calm and meditate. That is what I told them so far. Meditate. Have no desires. Silence the mind and establish it in God. Meditate without experiencing any desires or sorrows or pains. There is no greater happiness than that in this world. There is no liberation other than that.
We pray to God with all our desires. But real worship is when we pray to God without any desires. Worship with desires is not real worship. We should worship without desires. You must think, “Attaining this birth, I want to learn to become a devotee of God, learn spirituality, live in the world of spirituality and get to know myself. I need to know myself. I must be happy. My service to Guru should make me happy. If I am happy, you (Guru) are happy”. But you should not be grieving about trivial things not taking place or feeling elated when those things take place. All that is just loose change. We leave this change behind and go. I am not talking about the change from the bank, but thoughts that are like the loose change. We should let go of those thoughts. When we let go of them, we will get real thoughts. That is your blessing for the new year.
Sri Guru Datta