Religion and Spirituality

Divine & Unconditional Love

Ensures1 Comment

As I celebrated my 21 years of a journey on 31st March, with a irreplaceable co-passenger. Time for some reflections and a tribute to that wonderful soul mate. Reproducing my thoughts penned at 0000hrs of 31st March. For whatever she meant, I thought this should be the first thing I should do. Here it is…

The journey that began about  21 Summers ago is probably the happiest moment in my life. Me and Aparna Suresh became husband and wife (that is us in the picture). Yet another 7-year itch passed by itching for the same person.

Can I really describe it in mere words how special she is to me.No! Vocabulary goes bankrupt. Like they rehearse for a show, I patched up something like this after countless entries/backspaces because I was pretty sure there were better ways to appreciate whatever this amazing lady meant to me.

She indeed is the the most amazing thing ever happened to me. My life changed when you came into my life.. if before I sleep very late at night, surfing the web, watching movies etc, but nothing has changed even today 😉 LoL! just like the love and longing for her too.

My gratefulness to the Divine for this wonderful gift dropped right on to my lap (Ouch! It hurts – 70kg is not too less a weight) But I guess the good heartedness makes it very light and bearable.

If I were to rewind my clock back and change things to my liking, what would I do? Exactly the same little things we did, the joy we shared, the challenges we conquered together. I would replay the life exactly the way it played out so fat and well until He take me up above.

Happy Anniversay! Thanks my darling Aparna for whatever you are.Love you loads and have a fantastic day! Wishing that we celebrate many many years of this day for ages to come (I had another line here, but some of my extremely close well-wisher wanted it removed for emotional reasons)

While at it, I was also reminded of a story of Lord Krishna, incidentally a favourite bedtime story that my better half keeps telling our children. And she indeed lives her life this way. Unconditional love to all of us.

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE IS TRUE LOVE

Krishna, while living in Dwarka with his favourite wife Rukmani, would very often softly utter to himself, ” O Radha… O Radha.”

Rukmani felt jealous and asked him why he kept Remembering Radha so often. Krishna did not saya nything. He just smiled.

A few days later, Krishna complained of stomach Ache. Rukmani gave him medicines, but the pain did not go away. He kept moaning in pain. Krishna told her that only a little charanamrita (blessed water) washed off the feet of a person who truly loved him would put an end to his agony.

He begged Rukmani to give him some of her charanamrita. A shocked Rukmani refused: ” How can I commit such a terrible sin? You are the Lord of all that be, and if I gave you my charanamrita I would surely go to hell.”

Krishna than asked Rukmani to send an attendant to Vrindavan and try and procure some charanamrita from  someone there. Soon the attendant returned with a cupful of charanamrita and as Krishna sipped it, all The pain disappeared.

He then asked the attendant, “Who gave you this Charanamrita?” the attendant replied “no one in Vrindavan was ready to give it on learning it was for Lord Krishna.

Then one young woman came running up to Me and gave me this cup. Her companions cautioned her, “You fool Radha, you are committing the greatest sin. But she did not care. She said, “I don’t care about What happens to me but I cannot bear to see my beloved  Krishna in pain”

Krishna turned to rukmani standing by his side and Said, ” Radha is not afraid of going to hell for me.
She only thinks about me.

So if Radha loves me so much, should I also not long for her?”

Radha in this story epitomized in my day to day life through Aparna! Lucky me! Thank Lord Krishna for HIS blessing. Also gratitude to by our Master, HH Sri Sri Ravishankarji who has abundantly and unconditionally loved, guided and blessed us. You can follow Him on twitter here @SriSri

Fill The Room

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A story that I heard from a Senior Acharya of  Pujya Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankarji (Follow Him on @SriSri on Twitter)  – combination of imagination, compassion and morals. Enjoy!!!

There lived a businessman in the city. Everything was working for him. A great family – nice wife and three sons. Wife very loyal and caring to the core. Sons were dutiful, good at studies and very good assistants. Business was at its flourishing best. He was very active socially and was an acknowledged Philanthropist. No one went away from his doors without a dose of his hospitality and large-heartedness. There was nothing lacking in his life so to say.

But as the wise men asserted, nothing lasts forever good or bad times. He fell sick and his doctor told him that he was suffering from an incurable disease and the only way left for him was towards the Heaven (of course, that was the way the arrow pointed for his last journey – remember he always did a good turn to the society at large) . He accepted his fate and preapred for this journey. His only reason for worry was his business. He was pensive as to which of his sons could take best care of his business. He then thought of a nice little test

He called all his sons to his room, one day and gave them 100 rupees each. Asked them to go to the marketplace and buy something that could fill this room. The condition was that no money should be added to this and also that they had time only till sunset.

The first son returned by evening with a bundle of hay and spread it out. It covered two walls of the room and the old man was quite happy. Expectantly looked out for the next son to come in. 

The second son dragged in two huge sacks of Cotton, opened it and spread it out. Wow…it covered 3 walls of the room. Old man’s joy knew no bounds.

The last son came in almost empty handed and the old man totally taken aback asked him what he brought. The son replied, “Father, I fed a poor hungry child with a part of the money, a part of it I dropped it as offering in the temple that is being built and I was left with a rupee. I bought a tiny candle and saying so he lit it. 

All the four walls were now covered and the whole room was filled with the light from this tiny candle.

Let’s resolve to make service to the society and compassion a part of our nature and light up our inner walls. Whatever sense of despair we feel at happenings around us, We can be that Candle that can dispel darkness of the society. We can Light up and feel Light. Remember Angels can fly only because they live their lives light

Asatoma Satgamaya
Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya
Mrutyorma Amruthamgamaya
Om Shantih Shantih Shantih

Ungrown Media Columnists – Lerds

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Was surprised at the misconceptions of Rononjoy Sen who had recently written a piece in ToI. I have to only attribute his tirade maybe to his intellectual bankruptcy making him think that he is more intelligent than Spiritual Gurus or more likely plain delusive ignorance. Why then did I read this piece – only because I happened to see 2 names Sri Sri Ravishankar and Baba Ramdev. Goes on to prove that his piece would not be worth the ink it is printed on and it attracted eyeballs only because of the names he has dropped

Even for an ordinary beginner in the spiritual path, it is evident that this writer just dished out some words in the name of article – maybe a deadline  imposed before the publication went to print made him go rabid in his thoughts (wondering who in ToI lent him the space). This Editor deserves a nice tight slap for insulting my common sense.
For me, Spirituality is all about enriching and enhancing values in society. It includes everything that concerns society and Politics is something that deeply impacts the society. Possibly Sen grew up reading a lot of Amar Chitra Katha thereby stereotyping how a Spiritual saint should be as depicted in those “comics for Kids” (agreed it helped me lot in this path, but the only difference is that I grew up beyond these lovely & informative comics). To him, they must wear saffon robes, be somewhere up in Himalayas and sit in a trance, in blissful ignorance of the happenings in the world.
How can any responsible social being nurse a hackneyed thought that anyone part of this society should be above politics especially such Spiritual Siddhis who have chosen to reform this very society which is impacted by politics. What does “they should remain above politics” mean. By voicing their popular voice in the interest of common good, they are playing the spiritual role that they have set out to play.  Didn’t he read about the proactive roles that a lot of saints played even in those comic strips. Chanakya, Vivekananda, Dalai Lama are examples of spiritual leaders along with the names he has mentioned especially Sri Sri Ravishankar who assumed seemingly what appears to us as Political responsibility but without politicking – If we look without any prejudice, this  participation was limited to spiritualizing Politics to improve responsiveness of this class.
Now coming to the Columnists (Chetan Bhagat rightly calls them Lerds) – are they playing the larger role that they are expected to? Or do we see a sinister design or promotion of something more vested? Invariably most of them are confused about Religion and Spirituality, yet embark on some psuedo intellectual adventurism. After all the spiritual leaders named were not promoting legalizing black money or spying against our nation. They fought against the biggest bane of this nation, “Corruption” which to my surprise ticks a lot of Lerds off! (probably some brand of writing doesn’t subscribe to such noble goals. It is doing the bidding of their political masters)
Finally, we should be well aware that such columnist reach even the very few of us who cared to even give a glance to this article only because of the names dropped to sell it (apparently at the behest of some corrupt sections of the society the author have articulated some perverted idea which you need because it apparently feeds them) but please note these Masters don’t feed off Politics or the so called newsmakers.
And! Praying for a day when word processor of such columnist crashing (or do they still use the Quilled Writers as seen in Amar Chirta Katha?). I declare a celebratory party for myself on that day.
Happy 2012. Let us win over these narrow minded, selfish agenda driven columnists.