Notes from a lecture of Shri Kripaluji Maharaj

I got to overhear most of this audio lecture last week. I don’t quite remember all of it now, but from what I remember, I enjoyed listening to it and appreciated the thoughts quite a lot. So thought I’d note them down before I forget.

Ego is our worst enemy. Why to have ego in the first place? We are never the best, but still we feel we are. When complimenting each other, us humans use phrases like “eyes like a deer”, “tall as a giraffe”, “run like a leopard”, “faithful as a dog”, etc. Even when animals are better than humans in looks and many other characteristics as we can see in these comparisons, it is us who feel proud of ourselves. What if humans were blessed with those better characteristics? Where would we be then?!

There was this Sanskrit shlok/couplet that had a line "Be as tolerant as a tree". It took me back to the time when I went on vacation to Sequoia National Park. Looking at those hundreds of years old sequoia trees, made me think how long some of them have been standing there, standing tall, in freezing snow, in scorching heat, in stormy winds, in rains, one season after the other. Trees indeed are the most tolerant living things.

In one of the parts, Maharaj ji says he preferred when people scolded him than to when they praised him.

Random thoughts - "sorry"s & "thank you"s

I wonder what goes in the brains of people who can't say "thank you" or "sorry" when appropriate. Especially "thank you". Are they really like that? How hard is it to say to someone that you're grateful to them when they do something, anything for you? May be these people think they're overdoing it? And that might reduce the value of it? But does it really reduce the value of it? It's difficult to understand.

As for the "sorry"s, I am reminded of the dialog from Munnabhai where Gandhiji says to Bhai how slapping someone is so easy, but to apologize for something we've done needs good amount of courage.

I'm reminded of a proverb in Sanskrit: वचनेषु किम् दरिद्रता
It means: why the poverty in speech? Why not be generous when saying (good/nice) things? Indeed, it's not worth being so (poor).