Interacting with quite a few of Saibaba devotees in the family recently has given me a good opportunity to learn more about Him and His life. It is really nice how the stories are always about feel-good things and incidents. Not that there aren't any unhappy or sad incidents, it's just the way He teaches us to see them differently. I like that.
During of the incidents, Saibaba says, "don't ever refuse a meal invitation you get, no matter who it is from" and at another, He says, "feed people who come to your door happily and with all your heart." Personal experience says that unless you have grown up in a home that has this environment, it is very difficult to start practicing this. Not impossible, just very difficult. And at another instance, He also says to "donate food." What a noble thought! Here's wishing this good gesture can be implemented thoroughly in life. For the greater good all around as well as inside.
One of the best albums that I have ever discovered! I am not a huge fan of Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh, but I really love this collection of songs and the music. I think there might be more tracks in this but these are the ones I am aware of.
Each and every single one is so divine and makes me feel happy and excited and gives me goose pimples!!!
I had been wanting to type up the lyrics of this Ramayan Choupaayan ever since I listened to the track jai gauri maa of Vivah. Finally, was able to do it! (with a lot of typos and mistakes in the words, I am sure). In any case, simply fabulous! that's how I'd like to describe it.
Every time, I listen to this 1-hour long track that has the entire story of Raamaayan, it makes me feel happy and emotional; it also stumps me to realize what an ideal human-being should be like and inspires me to be more like Him.
vighneshwaraaya = the one who takes away obstacles varadaaya = the one who blesses us surapriyaaya = the one who is favorite of Gods lambodaraaya = the one who has big belly sakalaaya = whole jagdwitaaya = the one who does good of the world naagaananaaya = the one with an elephant head shrutiyagnavibhushitaaya = the one who beautifies Shrutis of Ved and Yagna gaurisutaaya = the one who is Son of Goddess Parvati gaNanaath = the one who is Leader (naath) of all the gaNas namo namaste = I respectfully bow to you
What do we learn from Lord Shri Ganesh? A lot and one of them is to respect our parents.
We all know of how when Shivji wanted to test the intelligence of His two Sons - Ganesh & Kartikey - he asked them to do parikrama (circumambulation) of the earth. When Kartikey went on to complete His parikrama on His peacock, Ganesh went around his parents Shivji & Gaurima praying them and did seven prarikramas. He completed the circumambulations before Kartikey did thus achieving blessings of His parents before Kartikey. They blessed Him.
He also has gotten His signature elephant head because of following orders of His Mother - Ma Parvati. When Shivji had returned from being away for years, He couldn't reconize His son and tried to enter the home and ended up fighting with Ganesh and beheading Him. Eventually when Ma Parvati came and saw Her son's condition, She requested Shivji to give Her son life. Shivji said whoever comes their way very first will be beheaded to give his head to Ganesh. An elephant came and Lord Ganesh became Gajaanan.
He lost his one tusk fighting to protect asleep Shivji against Parshuram who had come to visit His Guru (Shivji). Ganesh did not want a stranger waking His father up. They dueled and His right tusk was broken with Parshuram's axe. This is how He got the name of Ekdanta.
Here's to the God who inspires everyone! More modak/laddoos to all of us. :)
Pushpadant was a gandharvaraj and was named so because he had beautiful teeth like flower buds or pomegranate arils. He knew of a vidya that enabled him to disappear and venture around without being seen.
The king of Kaashi, Chitrarath, owned beautiful gardens in and around his palace where he had many beautiful flowers growing. To protect the gardens from thieves he had very tight security around. Over the time, the guards and the king discovered that someone was stealing their flowers without their knowledge. When the theft continued without any traces, the king increased the security in gardens and tried very hard to protect more flowers from being stolen. For a long time they couldn’t catch the culprit behind it. Finally the king asked advice of the wise Brahmins in his kingdom. After consulting the Brahmins, the king took a step that no one had imagined. The next morning the guards caught the extremely frustrated thief red-handed in the garden. It was Pushpadant. He was brought into the castle to confront the king. The king was quite upset at the burglary in his gardens and began to punish him. Pushpadant accepted the punishment and requested to the king to tell him more about how he was able to catch him. When asked by the king whether he knew what he was stepping onto in the garden at night while stealing, Pushpadant responded it was some kind of leaves. The king told him those weren’t any ordinary kind of leaves, but they were the bili (bilva patra) leaves. These were the ones that had once been used for pooja of the Shiva-linga in temple. Pushpadant realized that the reason for him forgetting his stotra mantra to become invisible was because he stepped on these bili leaves. He realized the power these leaves had when they had only touched the Shiva-linga. He understood the eternal power of Lord Shiva and instantly became his devotee. He left all his mantra vidya and decided to write this stotra we know as Shri Shivmahimna stotra.
There is no better stuti (prayer) than the Shivmahimna stotra in this world.
shri pushpadanta uvaca
mahimnah param te paramavidusho yadyasadrishi stutirbrahmadinam api tadavasannastvayi girah athavacyah sarvah svamatiparinamavadhi grinan mamapyeshah stotre hara nirapavadah parikarah
atitah panthanam tava ca mahima vanmanasayor atadvyavrittya yam cakitamabhidhatte shrutirapi sa kasya stotavyah katividhagunah kasya vishayah pade tvarvacine patati na manah kasya na vacah
madhusphita vacah paramam amritam nirmitavatas tava brahman kim vag api suragurorvismayapadam mama tvetam vanim gunakathanapunyena bhavatah punamityarthe'smin puramathana buddhirvyavasita
namo nedishthaya priyadava davishthaya ca namo namah kshodishthaya smarahara mahishthaya ca namah namo varshishthaya trinayana yavishthaya ca namo namah sarvasmai te tadidamitisarvaya ca namah
bahalarajase vishvotpattau bhavaya namo namah prabalatamase tatsamhare haraya namo namah janasukhakrite sattvodriktau mridaya namo namah pramahasi pade nistraigunye shivaya namo namah
krishaparinati cetah kleshavashyam kva cedam kva ca tava gunasimol langhini shashvadriddhih iti cakitamamandi kritya mam bhaktiradhad varada caranayoste vakyapushpopaharam
That's the question I had asked Papu a long ago. I had gotten quite a satisfactory answer for myself and that's why I believed in it. After I found out that "jaya parvati vrat" is going on right now and today is Guru Purnima, I asked him again to remind myself of the answer. He said that fasting is done with the desire for a sacrifice or letting go of something. Something that we think we need on daily basis, but here we will make a compromise with ourselves and hopefully that will eventually lead us to achieve higher self-control.
Over the years I have realized that the fasting that results in more craving for our favorite kind of foods is not worth it. You'd rather not fast at all. It is when we are able to decide by choice that even though I can eat this, I choose not to eat it, it's truly worth it. That too shouldn't lead to any regrets or unhappiness of any kind. Sometimes I feel that us Gujaratis fast only to eat. There are so many items that one can eat while fasting it seems that people who fast actually end up eating more than when they aren't fasting. I am totally against that idea. Fasting is to reduce the intake of food, so that there is no distraction of having a full stomach and sleepiness, which eventually leads to clearer thinking and better concentration on things that matter to us - our reasons for fasting.
Taking a little detour from the topic of post here.
He also told me that it is not good to have conditions with God. e.g. manyta or manta, badha, (in Gujarati) etc. that people keep for themselves or others. If something they wish will happen, then they will do this for their God. That is not unconditional devotion. Of course, then like Kashmira asked, the question would be, why people do it? Human mind is a very strong thing. It can make things happen the way we wish and when we concentrate on something so hard and wish for it, doing something conditional for it only helps our minds feel more confident about achieving that goal. That's how these things work. Many a times, it happens so that our wish doesn't get fulfilled, in that case too our faith/belief just gets stronger that eventually we will be able to reach our goals, only that next time we need to try harder. At the end of the day, it is about faith, how much do we believe in it. And people believe in things for many personal reasons. Faith makes people do weird things too. I remember talking to KB about it a couple of days back. She said in India there are ladies who'd actually roam around wearing a white saari because somebody they liked a lot died in a serial(soap opera) that they watch daily. But is it worth it? I don't know that, but what I do know and believe is that it's not worth playing that kind of a game with God. In life, we get what we deserve and if we got something forcefully then it's possible we might not be able to live with that fact or even worse, we won't have that thing for too long. Our deeds (karma) are like a big pot of grains with that has a faucet-like opening at the bottom. What you put in on top over the time (including past births) eventually comes out at the bottom. That's why we sometimes see a good person who's never done anything bad to anyone also going through hardships and bad people having so much good in life. At least this is the belief I live by. What goes around, comes around.
There is a story of King Dhritarashtra. After the Mahabharat War was over, he once asked Shri Krishna: "You can see beyond this life, then tell me what is it that I did in the past that I am born blind in this birth and even though I had a hundred sons, they all have died?" He got to see his past births with the help of "divya-chakshu" and some 50 births back, he saw that he was a hunter and once he threw a burning net over some pigeons in a forest. A hundred of them died in that fire and this was the reason he had to suffer the pain of losing his hundred sons. He threw the burning net, so that act resulted in him being blind. His next question was, why did it take so long for him to actually experience the result of such a horrible act? The answer he got was because first of all, in order to experience the pain of losing a hundred sons, he’d have to earn the good karma to deserve a hundred sons. He did more good than he actually needed so he also ended up becoming a king along with having that many children.
Papu says this often: (he read it somewhere, but I can’t recall where) sut vitt deh daaraa yash apyash vidhi haath.
sut = son/children vitt = money deh = body daaraa = wife/spouse yash = fame apyash = defame vidhi = fate haath = hands
It means how your children will turn out, the amount of money you will get, the kind of body you will have, the kind of wife/spouse you will have, and any fame or defame you will get in this birth are all decided by your fate for you.
We call it playing "pakaD daav" in Gujarati. That's what's been happening these days - the tagging game. I still have one more from Nova, but until then I decided to do this easier one by Stupidosaur.
How to play:
Pick up the nearest book.
Open to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you.
[picks up the nearest book] The book is maharshi vedvyaas praNit shrimad bhaagawat part I.
શ્રીશુકદેવજી બોલ્યાઃ કુરુઓમાં શ્રેષ્ઠ અને શ્રીકૃષ્ણ ઉપરના ભક્તિભાવથી શુધ્ધ વિદુરજીએ ગંગાના હરિદ્વાર ક્શેત્રમાં બેઠેલા અગાધ ગ્નાનવાળા મૈત્રેય મુનિની સમીપ જઇ, તેમના સુશીલતા વગેરે ગુણોથી અત્યંત સંતોષ પામી આ પ્રમાણે પૂછયું.
વિદુરજીએ પૂછયુંઃ મનુષ્ય સુખ માટે કર્મો કરે છે; છતાં તે કર્મો દ્વારા તેને સુખ પ્રાપ્ત થતું નથી અથવા દુઃખની શાંતિ પણ થતી નથી; પરંતુ ઊલટું ફરી દુઃખ જ પ્રાપ્ત થાય છે, તો આ સંસારમાં જે કરવા યોગ્ય હોય તે આપ ભગવાન અમને કહો.
પૂર્વજન્મના કારણથી જે મનુષ્ય શ્રીકૃષ્ણથી વિમુખ અને અઘર્મ શીલ હોઇ અત્યંત દુઃખી હોય છે, તેના પર કૃપા કરવા ભગવાનના ભવ્ય ભક્તો આ જગતમાં વિચરે છે, અર્થાત્ આપ જેવા ભગવદ્ભક્તોનો સ્વભાવ પરોપકાર કરવાનો જ હોય છે; તો હે સાધુવર્ય! આપ અમને એવો કલ્યાણમાર્ગ દર્શાવો કે જે દ્વારા સેવેલા ભગવાન મનુષ્યના ભક્તિ થી પવિત્ર થયેલા હ્રદયમાં રહી આત્માના સાક્શાત્કાર સહિત વેદપ્રસિધ્ધસનાતન ગ્યાન આપે.
[tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you]
Tagged: everyone who reads books, which I know is everyone who reads this blog. (I think that's definitely more than five people). And of course, this taggie acknowledges the tagger.
So all those who read this blog please get to work. :D
Today, on shraavaN vad aaTham as we celebrate Shri Krishna janma - Janmashtami, I was thinking of all of the stories that I have heard/read about Shri Krishna bhagwan.
Then I remembered a story that I read in Shri Radhavatar a few years ago. Once Shri Radhaji goes to a mela (funfair) with her friends. That is also the same place where she first meets Rukmani and other wives of Shri Krishna. It happens so that Rukmani and the other queens had heard of Radha and her love for Shri Krishna and got jealous of her before they met her. On meeting, during one incident, Radha mistakenly drinks extremely hot milk and her mouth gets burned by it. A few days later when the queens of Shri Krishna return back home and meet Him, they see that His feet have burned because of coming in contact with something very hot. And they find out that when Radhaji drank the hot milk, it passed by and burned her heart along with the holy feet of Shri Krishna that reside there as well. All the queens regretted for being jealous when they realized how divine Radha's love was for Shri Krishna.
I got tears in my eyes when I read this story. It is such a beautiful story!
