Sri Ramakrishna on Himself (concluded)

Since reading the Kathamrita and by extension the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, requires deep commitment on the part of the devotee and researcher, Sri Ramakrishna on Himself,  diligently foraying into all the aspects of Thakur’s life, succeeds in bringing in with immediacy and experiential range, the fullness and sweep of Sri Ramakrishna’s exceptional and great life. 

There are however, some infelicitous moments of translation, which have always been a problem with The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, written in the 1940’s, primarily for a conservative American audience. Since Thakur or Sri Ramakrishna spoke in very direct and simple language, lines like “Had she (Holy Mother) not been so pure, and losing herself, assailed me..” (115) and “..I had importunately asked the Divine Mother…” (115), carry the burden of heavy and ornate words, which distance the context from the translation. It may difficult but perhaps one could try for a more supple version of such lines!

Finally, one has to give thanks to Master Mahasay for his incredible documentation of Sri Ramakrishna’s words, where the oral immediacy of Thakur’s language comes together with the power of the written word.  The Kathamrita and through it Sri Ramakrihsna on Himself, proves that only through the Word, may God speak!

Sri Ramakrishna on Himself (cont)

Sri Ramakrishna on Himself, also brings in moments of powerful affect, which establish Sri Ramakrishna in a Radha like mode, characterized by vyakulata or even viraha. However, this viraha or vyakulata was not for a romantic love object, but for devotees, with whom he wished to converse, once his period of intense sadhana was over. In his own words:

My heart was wrung like a wet towel, and I was restless with grief and pain. I wanted to weep loudly, but I couldn’t cry in public or people would misunderstand me. …Severely tormented by the worthless, mundane talk of worldly people, I would wistfully anticipate the day when my beloved companions would arrive (149).

Thakur’s words above are strongly reminiscent of Rabindranath Tagore’s song, “tai tomar ananda amar por/tumi tai esechho niche/amai noile tribhubaneshwar tomar prem hoto je michhe”, where indeed the devotee claims that God (Prabhu) intensely yearns or longs for him/her.

The plenitude of the Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita derives also from the wide and rich range of Thakur’s interactions with various classes and kinds of devotees. It is beyond the purview of this review to provide detailed references to all such conversations quoted in Sri Ramakrishna on Himself. The book contains the most significant excerpts from Thakur’s interactions with Narendranath, Sarat, Sashi, Tarak, Baburam, Nirnajan, who later became Swamis,Vivekananda, Saradananda, Ramakrishnananda, Shivananda, Premananda and Niranjanananda. Sri Ramakrishna’s conversations and interchanges with Girish Ghosh, Kalipada Ghosh, Devendranath Mazumdar, Adhar Lal Sen and others, provide unforgettable moments when love, spirituality, historical context and dramatic encounter, constantly and richly interface

References to other sadhakas of the period who Sri Ramakrishna interacted with and mentioned in chapter 6, provide an extremely rich context of spiritual life, debates and ideas of the time, particularly in Bengal. One such sadhaka was Padmalochan, who claimed that since he had neither seen Shiva or Brahma, he could not decide who was greater! (68) Other names that are mentioned are Haladhari, Achalananda, even Dayanand Saraswati and of course, the great Tota Puri. Sri Ramakrishna’s sadhana under the guidance of the Bhairavi Brahmani, always a pivotal chapter of his sadhana period, contains details that are truly compelling, and would be extremely significant from the point of view of the cultural anthropologist:

..she brought a piece of rotten human flesh, offered it to the Mother, and asked me to touch it with my tongue. I was horrified…Saying ‘Please shun aversion,’ she placed a portion of it in front of me..(38)

No selection of Sri Ramakrishna’s utterances would be complete without reference to the Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi, about whom the devotee knows much, but would still like to listen to the oft quoted lines of Thakur on Her:

                        She is Saraswati. She has assumed a human body to impart wisdom to men; but she has hidden her celestial beauty lest people by looking at her, should befoul their minds with sinful thoughts (116).

Another highly charged and original statement that Sri Ramakrishna attributes to Gauri Pandit is, ‘Gauri once said that one attains true Knowledge when one realizes the identity of Kali and Gauranga. That which is Brahman is also Shakti, Kali. It is that, again, which, assuming the human form, has become Gauranga. Gauri used to worship his wife with offerings of flowers. All women are manifestations of the Divine Mother (69). It is a little difficult to discern exactly when Gauri stops and Thakur begins, in the above statement. One need not also repeat at this point, how many times, Sri Sri Thakur speaks of  Kali and Brahman inhering in each other, and being indivisible from each other. Interestingly, prior to the Shodashi Puja, Thakur knew that Gauri Pundit had also worshipped his wife. (116)

References to other sadhakas of the period who Sri Ramakrishna interacted with and

Sri Ramakrishna on Himself...

An early example of Sri Ramakrishna’s powers of protean empathy and ability to seize archetypes through which to express his own spiritual states and longing, is seen in his ability to merge with the being of Sita, during the first four years of sadhana at Dakshineshwar:

..the sublime qualities reflected in her face—love, sorrow, compassion, are seldom to be seen even among Goddesses….Overwhelmed with joy and wonder, I fell unconscious on the ground…(31)

Once again, the powers of extraordinary empathy and plastic ability that endlessly allowed him to extend himself is seen in his childlike joy in perceiving the actors of Ramlila, as the players in the divine drama of Rama and Sita:

Oh, what an ecstatic state it was! Even the slightest suggestion would awaken my spiritual consciousness. …One day I witnessed a Ramlila performance. I saw the performers to be the actual Sita, Ram…Then I worshipped the actors and actresses who played those parts (32)

Sri Ramakrishna’s interactions with pundits, sages and scholars of his early sadhana period at Dakshineshwar, contain  some invaluable moments of mutual exchange, and provide contextual moments for the same utterances by Thakur, in the Kathamrita, thereby, setting up a system of echoes and reverberations, which locate Sri Ramakrishna within a continuum of  spiritual practice, embedded in Vaishnava, Shakta and Vedanta traditions. An early example is Thakur’s reference to Vaishnavcharan who said, “Why should one constantly dwell on sin? Be Merry!” (66). This spectacular statement establishes spiritual practice in joy, and is echoed and re-echoed through the Kathamrita, with Thakur saying, “it is not good to talk of sad things in the presence of worldly people. There is need for joy ”. (27^th May, 1883).   

Sri Ramakrishna on Himself, continued...

Hence the book has a kind of biographical time frame, beginning from Sri Ramakrishna’s experiences at the temple garden (1855 onwards), his significant interactions with pundits and sadhakas of the time, the many moments of the consummation of his mature philosophy, and closing with the rich variety of his numerous interactions with sannyasi (Tarak, Kali, Sharat and Sashi, among others) and householder devotees like  Adhar Lal Sen, Girish Chandra Ghosh, Devendranath Mazumdar among others. In the process, not only does the Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita and the Lilaprasanga (recent English translation  by Swami Chetanananda) get located in time, but also  create multiple resonances at the levels of  philosophical enquiry and exegesis,  aesthetic theories (the nine rasas) and their application to the organization of spiritual states, musical traditions of both singing and instrument playing in Bengal, and very importantly, at the level of History, whereby a gallery of important historical personalities, acquire immediacy through their interactions with Sri Ramakrishna or his with them. Sri Ramakrishna on Himself succeeds in giving the reader the range and amplitude of the Kathmarita particularly, through an intelligent selection that make this  many splendored text, come alive to us, within a much shorter scope. In Swami Ranganathananda’s exegesis of the Gita (The Universal Message of the Bhagavad Gita), the Swami at one point, refers to Thakur’s interchanges with devotees, as having the extraordinary power and vitality of the dialogues of Socrates!

Sri Ramakrishna on Himself, continued..

The Kathamrita is one of the most richly celebratory of texts, derived from  Thakur’s infinite capacity for deriving joy, from all that he saw unfold around him, which only served to  constantly reinforce his deep and ecstatic understanding of an overwhelming and overflowing Cosmic Entity.  Sri Ramakrishna on Himself, succeeds in creating in the reader that “ananda” or joy that made Sri Ramakrishna, in the words of Sri Sarada Devi, “Anandaswarup” or  “ Joy personified”.   As the writer of the Preface of this book claims, it was truly a “herculean” and “strenuous” task to bring to the reader in the scope of 243 pages, the quintessence, the “subliminal Self” of Sri Ramakrishna. As the author also claims, this ‘Herculean” task was accomplished through patient sifting and constant revisiting of both the If I may hazard to add, the reason perhaps is his artistic method, also borne out in his natural proclivity for song, Kathamrita and the Lilaprasanga, to provide a kind of autobiography of Sri Sri Thakur, through his own sayings

Sri Ramakrishna On Himself

Sri Ramakrishna on Himself

Compiled by Dr. Mohit Ranjan Das/Advaita Ashrama/5 Dehi Entally Road/Kolkata 700014/May 2014

A wonderful selection of Sri Ramakrishna’s utterances, taken mostly from Swami Nikhilananda’s translation of the Kathamrita and  known widely as the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in two volumes.  Dr. Mohit Ranjan Ray and Advaita Ashrama must take credit for having established through this selection that God alone is His/Her own absolute complement or point of comparison. Sri Ramakrishna (Thakur) stands resplendent and irresistible, through his many utterances, which provide a rich range of his early and also late spiritual experiences, the play of his mind and intellect as it forayed into closely observed natural phenomena and domestic details, coming up with compelling images and metaphors, with which to extend and substantiate spiritual ideas and philosophies. This is what makes the Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita, a text of the utmost plenitude and joy, whose multiple layers and multiple resonances, linking the quotidian and the most sublime, sets up a  universe, in which the verbal, intellectual, artistic and philosophical, endlessly intersect and interface, literally linking Heaven to Earth.  These charged utterances  give proof of Sri Ramakrishna’s prodigious memory and also of  his innate artistic sensibilities, not only manifested  in his proclivity towards song, but in  his ability to transform and recast the world of ordinary perception and experience, by creating new and startling juxtapositions and associations, much as an artist does through his/her paint brush or words!

Sister Nivedita (translation of Bhagini Nivedita) continued...

One  knows of Europeans who have been deeply attracted to India, either through knowledge of our scriptures, or Vedanta or through personal attraction to some spiritual figure, and they have approached India in a spirit of reverence. However after having directly seen the overall poverty and dereliction of Indian society, they have lost their former ardor for India, and returned empty handed to their own countries.  Unfortunately their love had flourished only in the darkness of ignorance and was not able to survive the light of day.

However, the love that Nivedita had for India was the truest of the true, not a passing fancy. This love did not try to find the scriptures always embodied in the character and conduct of Indian peoples.  Rather it tried to penetrate all external layers to reach the innermost core of persons and to love that core. That is why she was not pained to see the extreme dereliction of India. All that was missing and inadequate in India simply aroused her love, not her censure or disrespect. Our  modes of life , our conversation, clothes, conduct of our daily lives, are capable of leaving a European aghast and pained. That is why we sometimes don’t understand why they are rude to us, and find their behavior completely uncalled for. Ironically however, Indians themselves create insurmountable barriers amongst each other based on minute and particular differences of tastes, habits and beliefs, created through caste and ethnicity differences.  It is almost as though the marking of the boundary of houses by hedges, is far less effective than the bars created by thorns in the hedges.  So we have to remember that Sister Nivedita who came and lived in a Bengali neighborhood, entirely amongst us in a house in a small lane, must have been subject to many such painful discriminations and distinctions, both day and night. 

Nivedita, continued....

As much as she always tried to see what was good and positive in the ‘people’, her unfailing motherly instinct, also tried to shield them from all kinds of unkind and unfair criticism by outsiders. This is not because she wanted to hide the truth, but because she knew that shallow and superficial persons would only find it too easy to ridicule and laugh at her ‘people’. She wanted to bar the entrance of such European women who would defile the sanctified ground of her people’s innermost selves.  She lashed out at that particular category of Indians who made a habit of constantly genuflecting in the face of European civilization, shamefully admitting that Indian civilization was far inferior to that of Europe.

Nivedita, continued...

As much as she had extreme tenderness for the masses, she was also fiercely protective of them, like a tigress of her cubs. She could not withstand patronizing or unkind comments about them, nor could she tolerate any attempt by the Government to harm them in any way. She often patiently withstood betrayal, meanness, treachery and exploitation by undeserving persons who wanted to pick into her meager earnings.  Her only fear in this regard was that her friends would   judge her ‘people’ unkindly on the basis of such instances.

Nandi, the Bull

Posted in the school Whatsapp site

Message forward by Padmini Natarajan

Sharing a beautiful explanation about Lord Shiva's vehicle Nandi and meditation.

Generally we see Nandi sitting directly opposite the main door of the temple where Shiva's idol or the Shivalingam is located.

He is not waiting for him to come out and say anything.

He is in waiting.

Nandi is a symbol of eternal waiting, because waiting is considered the greatest virtue  in Indian culture.

One who knows how to simply sit and wait is naturally meditative.

He is not expecting anything. He will wait for ever.

Nandi is Shiva's closest accomplice because he is the essence of receptivity.

Before you go into a temple, you must have the quality of Nandi--to simply sit.

So, just by sitting there, he is telling you, 'When you go in don't do famciufl things. Don't ask for this or that. Just go and sit like me'.

The fundamental difference between Prayer and Mediation is that  Prayer means you are trying to talk to God. Meditation means you are willing to listen to God

You are willing to just listen to existence, to the ultimate nature of creation.

You have nothing to say, you simply listen.

That is the quality of Nandi--he just sits, alert, not sleepy. He is not sitting passively. He is very active, full of alertness, full of life, but just being--that is Mediation!

Me: Yes, I agree. Absolutely. Am trying. Watchfulness. Watching oneself. To listen and not to talk.

Friend: Examining all choices and options in one's mind and choosing the correct response and not reacting.

Me: And watching birds is a lot of fun. You know impersonal enjoyment. That is also mediation because I am not doing it out of self interest. Not 'sukha' but 'ananda'. An Argentinian Swami, Madhurananda had made the distinction between 'sukha' and 'ananda' many years ago, at Mayavati.

Me: I read the Nandi post in detail now. It is beautiful. In temples too we are performing all the time. I mean you have to give the right donation of the purohit will be annoyed. I care more about the purohit than I do about God. Yes, prayer is clamour and self interest. I want to mediate but break out into prayer asking for this and that so that my worry and stress may end. I am not receptive. I am shutting out God's voice and I must stop doing that. Nandi is also humility. Let us all be like him.

Whatsapp Selections…January 30, 2018

Someone posted the following song on my school Whatsapp site. I would like to share my thoughts in response to the post. I have one comment from another friend…

This song was sung or the musical score was this in Dr Zhivago…

Somewhere My Love

Frank Sinatra

Somewhere, my love there will be songs to sing
Although the snow covers the hope of spring
Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold
And there are dreams all that your heart can hold

Someday we'll meet again my love
Someday whenever the spring breaks through

You'll come to me out of the long ago
Warm as the wind, soft as the kiss of snow
Lara my own, think of me now and then
God speed my love 'til you are mine again

The vast tracts of loneliness in love…how love is always elusive, near, yet far, heart-breaking and a test, but unavoidable and huge. The music suggests all that to me….

The unreachable, the ever elusive, the eternal journey and the waiting,is what creates the poignancy that can cut you like a knife…

‘There will be’—not ‘there is’.

The desperate hope and dream that there ‘will be’, that moment.

A friend responded: Sometimes wonder if were trying to find our own self in love. Our own self within us is  yet to be felt by the five senses. So elusive n yet glimpses of it raise hopes again n again. The music says it all..

Me:..RightJ

Only the self can love the self the way we want to be loved. We try to find that ideal self in the other. But which self? The self that loves us, heals us, supports us more than we can ever give anyone else or even ourselves?

Nivedita, continued....

As the childishness of children is not always merely childishness, similarly all the codes and rituals of the mass of ordinary people are not simply born of ignorance, and therefore, entirely meaningless. They represent the efforts of ordinary folk to teach themselves, and these are the only avenues that are open to them. Nivedita’s motherly instinct made her view all such efforts by ordinary folk, as a child’s efforts to gain knowledge. She was extremely accepting of all such conventions. Disregarding what seemed as the crudeness and sloppiness of such methods, she saw in them the perennial instinct of human kind to teach itself.

Nivedita, continued...

The masses of India occupied the centre of Nivedita’s being. Her objective was not to patronize them from a distance, with acts of charity.  She wanted to be amidst them and she opened every corner of her mind in order to try and know them. She wanted to know about their ways of life, their legends and their fables, their religious rituals, and their Art. She wanted to enter every nook and cranny of their lives. Nivedita wished to learn not from the standpoint of intellect alone, but from a sense of deep identification and love. She reached out to whatever was good,   beautiful and timeless in all these traditions, with utmost sincerity and earnestness. Her innate respect for other human beings, her natural instinct towards motherliness, made her confident that value could be found in these traditions, and she tried to discover it.  Sometimes carried away by over enthusiasm she made mistakes in judgment. However, her capacity to see good in everything far outweighs her mistakes. Those who are good educationists know that each child has a natural instinct for learning. The restlessness of children, their endless curiosity, their playfulness, are all manifestations of this natural instinct. The largely ignorant collectivity that one calls the masses is also childlike in its nature. That is why it has evolved its own simple methods of educating and healing itself.

Nivedita, CONTINUED

When we try to imagine a collectivity like nation (desh) or universal humanity (biswamanav) in an embodied form in our hearts, no clear image really rises up before us. There are reasons for that. It is because we try to reach this image of the collective, through our intellects. We have not actually seen ‘universal humanity’.  Anyone who does not see the image of his nation, in each face he encounters, has not really seen his nation, no matter what claim he may make. I have seen Sister Nivedita, to see and touch the nation, in the truest manner possible. I once saw her address a very ordinary Muslim woman, living in a hut in a village, with the greatest respect. Unless one really sees the glorious image of universal humanity in everyone, it is not possible to show such respect.  It is because she was capable of respecting all human beings as the Ultimate Human Being that she never lost her sense of respect even after having lived so close to India for so many years.

Nivedita, continued...

Essentially she was what one would call, the Mother of the People. Hers was not the kind of motherly feeling that remained confined within her family, only. It was a vast love that enveloped an entire people, creating an example hitherto unseen by us. Perhaps I had some sense of a how a man may feel duty and responsibility towards his nation. However, I had never seen before such force of tenderness in a woman, towards a nation.  When she used to say ‘Our people’ the kinship with the ‘people’ that came through in her voice, I had never heard in any of our own voices. Those who  have seen how wholeheartedly and completely Nivedita loved the peoples of India, will realize that many of us give our time, our money, even sometimes our lives, to the people, but we have not been able to give them our hearts.  We do not know what it is to really draw them close to ourselves and feel their pulse beat.

Nivedita, continued

If she considered something worth striving for, then she invested her entire energy in it. However, she was never interested in earning fame from the success of these ventures.  She could have easily created an organization and declared herself as its Head, but God had destined her for greater things than that. She did not compromise the blazing energy of the Truth within her by marketing her ideas and ensuring that they spread through the infrastructure of the organization. She left her heart and soul in India, but not an organization that was named after her.

Her decision not to found an organization was not because she considered herself racially and intellectually superior to the people with whom she would have to tie herself. It was not because she did not respect the Indian populace that she did not try to install herself as their leader. On the other hand, it was from her example that we learnt what giving one’s heart to the people, was. Most of us speak of ‘love for the people’ in simply academic terms without truly speaking from the heart. However just like a mother loves her child single-mindedly, Nivedita loved the Indian populace like her very own child. When she referred to the ‘people’ of India, a vast tenderness seemed to emanate from her and envelop these ‘people’. If the Indian ‘people’ could be reduced to a single child, Nivedita would have raised this child with every atom of love and dedication within her.

Sister Nivedita, continued...

However, Sister Nivedita gave herself completely to India, in a spirit of absolute love and respect, reserving nothing for herself. It was not as though she was innately so low keyed that she could not forcefully acquire a place for herself. As I have already indicated before, she was extremely strong willed and sometimes applied the force of her will on others. Whatever she wanted, she wanted absolutely, and if impeded or questioned in any way, she could express great impatience and irritation. Her western upbringing had taught her to assert her will, and I cannot say that it never did anyone any harm, because the forceful application of one’s ideas on someone else is never a good thing. In spite of that I will still say that her broad and liberal humanity, far outstripped her sometimes unfair forcefulness.

Sister Nivedita, continued....

One cannot say that her projects were small because she lacked strength.

One must remember that the kind of strength Sister Nivedita had could easily have earned her significant prestige in her own country. All who came into contact with her there, acknowledged the enormous incandescence of her spirit. However Nivedita was not in the least interested in acquiring renown and fame in her own land.

Even in India, she did not wish to sway people’s opinion in a way that she could establish herself as an important personality. One has seen other Europeans too in this country who have looked upon their work in India as the most important thing in their lives. However, they have not worked without self interest and have always tried to remain in a position of preeminence in Indian society. They have not been able to give of themselves entirely in a spirit of humility. With them, one always has a sense that they worked more out of a principle of charity, rather than respect and love for the people to whom they gave. In this context let us remember the adage, ‘What one gives with an attitude of respect to the other, is truly a gift. If there is no respect, then there is no giving’. If the left hand does not respect what the right hand gives, then the act of giving is nullified.  

Translation of Sister Nivedita, continued

What one notices most singularly about her is that as much as she was given to deep feeling, she was also extremely action oriented. The work that is the output of action will always carry the traces of the struggle to give it shape and form. Any piece of work, by its very nature, thus suffers from imperfection. Feeling, on the other hand, can remain perfect and autonomous. That is why one finds, that those who are prone towards deep feeling, are often either scornful of work or are afraid of it. Again, those who are extremely action oriented, may be cut off from feeling much, and consequently do not suffer if their work does not rise to a level of perfection.

However, where feeling is not an escape from work and work is simply not the flamboyant display of energy and entirely geared towards worldly ends, there the principle of work and feeling both meet and fuse. In such a case, work becomes the expression of feeling. In such cases, even the insignificant becomes significant, and the unfinished and imperfect imbued with the light of the sun even if it remains screened by clouds. Sister Nivedita’s work was like that.

Sister Nivedita (continued)

If we remain indifferent to this outstanding example of heroic self sacrifice, because it exists in our backyard, we will lose out significantly. We cannot simply presume upon it and claim it arrogantly as part of our natural inheritance given to us by our society. We have to rather, take very careful cognizance of the splendid power, the intelligence, the heart, the sacrifice and the overall luminousness of self which made a life such as Nivedita’s, possible.

If we truly realized the enormity and extent of Nivedita’s sacrifice, we would lose a great deal of the pride that we derive from being Hindu. We ascribe her greatness to the Hindu way of life or to the Hindu religion. We are simply making her an instrument for augmenting our cultural pride.  By attributing her greatness to the greatness of the Hindu religion, by arguing that her unique selflessness arises from her being Hindu at heart, we are significantly taking credit away from her and giving it to ourselves.

If we try to establish her as being just Hindu, we will face obstacles in our journey. I am afraid I can’t agree with the position that she was Hindu in the way one generally understands it. If we closely analyze how she assessed Hindu society through  scientific and historical perspectives, how she  refused to be tied to dogma, how she tried to explain the various moods and manifestations of Hinduism through  liberal understanding and  imagination, some of the central premises of what one considers ‘Hindu’ would perhaps be demolished or shaken. If   historical truth is asserted as greater than the truth of the Puranas, then may be that aids in determining what the truth of Puranic premises might be, but belief in historical truth does not come so readily. Whatever the case may be, she is worthy of our respect and reverence not because she was Hindu, but because she was great. We cannot pose as her equals, she was greater than us. It is not her Hinduism that enfolds us in her glory, but her Humanism, that does it. 

What on