Swamiji speaks about the progression of Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha.
Swamiji touches on a number of topics. The first being how we humans have favouritism with our children. But he says, Mother Nature, who is the divine bookkeeper, doesn't have favourites. She merely keeps meticulous records of our past and present deeds. There's an amusing aside as Swamiji verifies that the bookkeeper definitely is female. And she loves this world so much that she sacrifices her high place in consciousness and descends [in guises and disguises] to provide a roadmap for us to live a dharmic life.
Swamiji says don't worry about seeing God, just try to be happy. How to become happy? By following the path of dharma. And the life of dharma is so geared, that it must give you detachment [vairagya or dispassion]. But how many of us follow that path? First we should read what is our dharma. Go and enquire from our teachers about our dharma.
There is individual dharma and universal dharma. Each person has two dharmas. One dharma that he owes to the whole world, and the other one is individual. [Swamiji told us that at a karmic level, we have individual, national (your country) and global karma to work out.]
And when you follow your path of dharma then you must accumulate what? Artha. Wealth. By righteous duty, by righteous means. Not by destroying and talking lies and killing and robbing others. Even if you have to suffer when you're doing the righteous thing. It’s apparent defeat, but in reality, victory, because you are getting slowly detached. Your mind is not coming down, it's going higher.
So when you accumulate this wealth by righteous means, then comes 'kama' – wonderful – kama is pleasure. It's considered the biological side of man, psychological side of man, and also the spiritual side of man. You can enjoy these things and use up that wealth to increase more dharma. Not to increase pleasure, like when you have the Mercedes, now you buy an aeroplane, and when you have the aeroplane, you buy a jet plane and one day while you're flying the plane….flames!
No, it means you accumulate wealth and enjoy in such a way that you must increase dharma. And when you increase dharma, you'll get moksha – freedom. So, dharma, artha, kama and moksha.
How many of us think that we should go that way? No…. we want to jump. We don't care, we have lost our real nature. We have become animals. In the animal kingdom, the fittest survive. In the human kingdom, at this stage of evolution you should be able to sacrifice yourself. sacrifice your things, for the highest good, for others. How many of you really do it? Why are we still suffering? Because we don't practise it. We only put it in one ear and out of the other. And if it doesn't come out of the other ear, it comes out of the mouth and we tell them what a great teacher we are. Just preach, preach. No practise.
You and I should be ashamed if we just preach – you are a rogue, first-class. I am a rogue, first-class. The only way is to practise what is the truth. But you can't do it yet. How? Why? Because you have a wife and children. And with wife and children what should you do? Serve them as if they were God. Protect them, and if evil comes in front of you, fight it and destroy it.
Rama didn't just sit there and say, 'Oh, Ravana did all this to me.' It doesn't matter. He got up and went and fought – his righteous duty – and you must be heroes, not become jellyfish.
A sannyasi must become, what? He must not resist evil. You must resist it with tooth and nail. And when you do that, you will be happy in this world.
There's no back door. Once again I must tell you. There's only one door. And you know what the door is? The gateway to hell is only one. The gateway to heaven, is only one. The gateway to God is only one. All three lead to different places – but it's only one door. It must be a wonderful mansion, not so? The gateway to hell is mind. The gateway to heaven is still your mind. The gateway to God is your mind. Tune the mind. Any station you tune, it'll pick it up. Each one has its own morals, laws and ethics. Tune it up!
There's no other way. If you think that by nighttime you'll get a miracle and you can realise God tomorrow, no. Take it from me brother, it's a bluff. Because Krishna Bhagavan would have given enlightenment to the whole of India. Rama would have given enlightenment to the whole of India. Christ would have given it to the whole of Jerusalem. But the minds [of the people] were not in tune.
Don't think that some laadla [dear One] Ram will come and do a miracle for you. If you don't follow dharma, no laadla Ram will help you my dear sir. You have to be dharmic for him to help you. I can't see God helping murderers to go and murder other people. I can't see my God going to help the robbers to rob. Then it can't be God.
Ramakrishna said, that if for twelve years you can practise truth, speak truth, everything that you say will come true. It will materialise. Swamiji says, the same story is given in our mythology or call it [traditional] history if you like, where [Bhakt] Prahlada was a great king – Hiranyakashipu's son. He believed in justice, he believed in dharma. He also believed in what is high and what is low.
So one day his son, Virochana said, 'Well, I want to see. This Brahmin [priestly caste] boy always comes and begs at my place. And these Brahmins are beggars. We Kshatriyas [warrior caste] are the people. We have no kingdom – what's going to happen? Who's going to give these people alms? So he says to the Brahmin boy, 'You people are beggars.' The Brahmin boy was calm, because he was spiritually cultured. He said, 'No, you people have material things, but you take your power and your spirituality from the Brahmins.'
Virochana said, 'No! That can’t be.' OK said the boy, let's go and ask your father [King Bhakt Prahlada]. The father looked at his son and said, 'You fool, you must not do this. He is a Brahmin who practises tapasya [austerity]. He is a Brahmin who wants to know what is satyam [truth], he is a Brahmin who realises Brahman, and he is the greatest. We rely on them, we serve them and some of the merit comes to us.'
For the blessing of these words, please click on the link below. Jai Sri Ramakrishna!
Duration: 09:56
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Dear Devotee, if we use the term 'He or he', when referring to Swamiji, it's not impolite or disrespectful. It's to minimise the repetitiveness of saying or writing 'Swamiji' too many times.
The original audio recordings of these posts were made by close Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa and Swami Shivapadananda devotee, Mother Radha. The audio editing and noise reduction of the original 1970s-onwards tapes, has been lovingly engineered, over many years, by her son and our dear gurubhai, Brother Tim. May Sri Ramakrishna and Swamiji bless them both.
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Context: As always, care should be taken to remember that what Swamiji was saying, was often very specific to the needs of people with him at the time. Please bear this in mind.
Links to our Guru Parampara (spiritual lineage) organisations, which will broaden your knowledge base: Ramakrishna Math and Mission and our alma maters, the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa and the Sri Sarada Devi Ashram in Durban. The Ramakrishna Centre of Johannesburg is also active in Gauteng province in South Africa.
There are various publications [The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna etc.] which you can download at no charge, from the Ramakrishna Centre of SA website page, HERE.