Swami Shivapadananda on Truth perspectives

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.

Day 451

 
 

As you know a yogi is not supposed to eat excessive ginger, garlic, onions and my dear favourite chillies. [laughter] Then there is the inner nature of a thing – like potatoes. They don't disturb your mind but they disturb your health. If you eat a lot of potatoes you get too much starch in your body and this can lead to sugar diabetes. In this way some foods affect the mind and others affect the body.

Sri Krishna made it very clear in the Bhagavad Gita: Moderation, moderation, moderation. So what I want you to know is that you should have everything under the sun, but in moderation.

A sannyasi on the other hand has his own dharma. He can't have everything. Brahmacharis can't have some things. But a person like Swami Vivekananda would walk around with a pepper in his pocket. [laughter]

So what is spirituality? What is yoga? It is common-sense. We are complicating the sense.

It is said that Sri Ramakrishna and truth are one. No wonder therefore that Sri Ramakrishna – whose advent on Earth was for the establishment of dharma – upholds truth through all his words and deeds. He says the best name he can give to God is Truth.

Wasn't it Gandhi who later said the same thing? Not that God is truth, but that truth is God.

God is not 'true', because your 'true' may be relative. But truth is not related to anything. So Sri Ramakrishna says that the best name you can give to God is Truth.

Under no circumstances should one give up truth. Under no circumstances. 

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.