Swami Shivapadananda on fault-finding
SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA
DAILY READINGS
From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji
Day 531
[Pictured: Mother Sarada Devi worshipping at the Udbodhan House in Kolkata – where she lived permanently following the mahasamadhi of Sri Ramakrishna.]
You must take it very seriously when I tell you anything. Every word from the guru is supposed to be a mantra. And please believe me it is a mantra. Every word that Sri Ramakrishna said then, even jokingly, has today become a spiritual exercise or spiritual advice.
Some people, out of prejudice, out of envy, go about trying to run other people down, they try to find fault with everyone. But you do not have to go about finding faults, they will automatically appear in front of you. If you are a guru for example, the student [sishya or chela] will make a fault and you will correct it. So there is no 'fault finding'. If you as the guru know that a particular thing is going to bring the opposite of good to that student you lovingly draw his notice to it and correct him.
If you look at the lives of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Sarada Devi [pictured above] you will find that they were the personification of their own teachings. The Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi, did not find fault with anyone. But when she saw that a particular thing would harm a person's spiritual life she would correct them. As a parent your duty will be the same. As a brother your duty will be the same. But you are not to find fault.
If I, as the guru, say to the student, 'Look this is wrong, you should not do this,' it does not mean that I am finding fault with him; I am only telling him what is right. Similarly your duty will differ from person to person according to your relationship to each one.
Please do not think that when Sri Sarada Devi said, 'O God, even the moon has a stain. May I not have a stain,' that she was finding fault. Of course that is not fault finding. That is natural. She wanted to be natural from a human point of view.
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.
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