Swami Shivapadananda on ‘literacy’

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Taken from Mother Radha's notes, written at Swamiji's feet.

Day 416

If you are pre–occupied with God there is no time to hate, only to glorify God in thought, word and deed. This, the simplest of teachings, leads to the highest abode.

God has given us one thing – His name. Call Him anything, provided you grow in His image. You cannot worship the all-compassionate One and then hate someone. We must have love, compassion, self-sacrifice. Realise that each one is a fellow traveller on the path that leads to God, and it must be travelled without pride and hatred. There is only one message – do not hurt others.
May Sri Ramakrishna, by whatever name you call Him, bless us

How many of you sincerely ask God to reveal Himself to you? Put your hands up. [Very few hands go up.] Therefore God has become dead, a senseless statue, because we do not ask Him to reveal Himself to us. Only a few ask Him to reveal Himself.

Master [Sri Ramakrishna] has told us where we are wrong. In his life he refused to ask the Divine Mother for anything else except that he must realise Her. He would not give his body any comfort, he would rub His face on the ground. Yet we think we understand Him. A sensitive man begins to think of his man-made 'blunders'. Who made the blunders? Yet we call ourselves intelligent.

One time M [Mahendranath Gupta (pictured) the recorder of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna] 'got it' [got a scolding] from Master. M's wife was illiterate and he was a teacher, a homeopathic doctor and so on. Master asked him, 'How is your wife?' He said, 'She is alright, but she is illiterate.' M was speaking to an apparently illiterate man about illiteracy – but he did it absent-mindedly. He gave a worldly answer to a spiritual man. This was the first time it struck him: All this time I wasted my time thinking that I am literate. 

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.

Reference websites: Ramakrishna Math & Mission, Ramakrishna Centre of Southern Africa, Sri Ramakrishna Dham