Seize the moment!
[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]
[now a Centre of the international Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission]
DAILY READINGS
Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.
Day 989
If your mind becomes more worried than what it is now, if the mind gets more involved in sickness and other people's troubles, in wives and children and friend's husband and friends children – finished, forget it. You won't get God. Take it from me. Now is the time. Now is the time, when the body can take it. I haven't seen a woman who lives for a hundred years and then has children. When they are young they have children. So when you are young you must give birth to God-realisation. When you're old you'll get a lot of worries. A lot of cares. Now, does that mean old people have no chance? They've got it! Because their senses at this time are bow dead [dulled]. So at least they are free from that [passions etc.]. Come on – make haste to God! But what do they do instead? Now they take the grand-children to look after.
Love them but see them as God. Krishna playing, Radha playing, Shiva playing, Parvati playing, Ganesha playing. Do you do that? No – take my darling Shamolia [one of the very close Ashram children]. What Shamolia is to me you must imagine is the personification of Kali, Durga, Sitala. That's why I love her. When Narendra, later Swami Vivekananda came to Sri Ramakrishna, he said, 'I don't love you because you are Loren [Sri Ramakrishna used to call him Loren instead of Naren], I know you are Narayan. To ordinary people he loved the boy Naren, but he knew it was Narayan, the Rishi [sage-seer saint]. He looked through the mind and the body and saw what it is, in essence. In?…essence.
In the Upanishad it is said very plainly, 'the husband loves the wife not for the wife's sake, but for the sake of the Self.' The wife loves the husband not for the husband's sake, but for the sake of the Self. Proof? When that soul leaves the body, does the wife take it and say, 'This is my husband'? For one or two days she'll cry and say that, but when the body starts decaying she'll say, 'Please, cremate this fellow or bury him. Bury this body.' So you don't love that body for the body's sake. There is a soul – you love that. You don't believe me? Sometimes when you go and buy a diamond you start loving the box, but if the diamond is stolen you'll see how the value decreases in your mind. You'll see. The body is the box, the diamond is the soul.
1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time.
2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.
There are currently available, 150 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order.
For more about the Holy Trinity, and also the founding Swamis of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, please mouse over their names below:
Sri Ramakrishna Sri Sarada Devi Swami Vivekananda
Swami Nischalananda Swami Shivapadananda
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online
Reference websites – please mouse over the name and click to connect:
Ramakrishna Math and Mission Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa Ramakrishna Dham