Swami Shivapadananda with thoughts on Ramanuja

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

Day 503

(Pictured: The Panchavati and the brick meditation hut built to replace the mud hut where Ramakrishna performed his advaitic [non-dual or monistic] sadhana [spiritual practice])

 

Sri Ramanuja was a great man. He took diksha [initiation into spiritual life] mantra from a sudra [labouring class person]. He bashed all barriers of caste, colour and creed. He held on to God and God alone. He was a great man – nay, a great Incarnation [Avatar]. Do you know why they called him Shesha? Shesha carried the weight of Lord Vishnu with his creation and Sri Ramanuja was carrying Sankaracharya's weight. He was the basis. God came first then the Shesha – yet the Shesha carried the Lord and his Creation.

When you give a public talk you must first offer the whole talk to your deity. My guru used to say that you must select one person who responds to you in a crowd and talk to him only.

Remember also that the microphone will magnify your voice. Gurudev [Swamiji's guru, Swami Nischalananda Puri] would ask me, "Inder [Swamiji's pre-monastic name], why do you shout so much?" Just lately I have stopped shouting.

Do not let your association with a swami or an institution blind you to the ignorance that is covering you and I.

Devi or the Divine Mother is none other than Brahman [the indivisible Universal Consciousness] Itself. You will find that Devi worship, when rightly understood, is not separate. There is a kind of experience in Devi worship which is felt by the devotees, it is softness, love, compassion. This is also felt to a certain extent by the worshippers of Sri Krishna.

Hindus do not realise that death itself is a kind of shakti [power]. You may see a stone and think that there is no shakti there. But imagine the shakti if even one atom of it was split. This shakti is none other than Brahman. Shakti herself is formless, quality-less and nameless. If anything she is called the Eternal One.

Nowhere in the scriptures is this Divine Mother's presence more clearly demonstrated than in the Devi Mahatmyam. God is Omnipresent, Omniscient and Omnipotent. This embodiment cannot be thought of. Out of Him manifested this Maha Kali with thousands of legs and hands. She destroyed Madhu and Kaitabha the first obstructions to creativity. Later on this concept was given to man, that That which embodies Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, time past, present and future, also takes us to the formless.

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