Sri Guru Gita – 24 July 2014 – Episode 214

Jaya Guru Datta. Episode summary:

Jaya Guru Datta.
For any task in our day-to-day life to succeed or for any practice in our spiritual life to become powerful, peaceful nature is very necessary.Things will not happen just like that. If you want everything to light up, but don’t have any light, how is it possible? How can you get what you want without working for it? “I want to be able to concentrate, I want to have peace, I want knowledge…”. If you don’t even try, if you don’t do your spiritual practice, if you don’t practice peaceful nature, how would that be possible?

You see the big ocean and lament about how little water your vessel contains? How big is your vessel? How much spiritual practice are you undertaking? For any thing in our worldly life to succeed, for any practice in our spiritual life to become powerful, the important requirement is peaceful nature, patience. Without patience, nothing can be achieved. We sometimes say to others, “You have no patience, you don’t have the habit of being patient”. Patience also means tolerance. If you lose tolerance and give in to anger, many disasters can occur. Anger destroys the fruit of all penance in a moment. We read of many such stories in history.

Guru Gita Sloka
Namami sadgurum santam pratyaksa siva rupinam |
Sirasa yoga pithastham mukti kamyartha siddhaye ||

You may have undertaken many good deeds, you may have been very patient throughout, but if at the end of it all, you suddenly get angry, that is what people will remember. There are many stories in the scriptures to explain this to us.

The righteous Parikshit, the spiritually accomplished Shringi also succumbed to anger. At that time, Shringi’s father Shamika imparted a valuable lesson to them that everyone should remember. One day, Parikshit went to the forest for hunting. He was tired after hunting for a long time. In the meanwhile, a deer really attracted him. The deer seemed to be get captured, but would eventually escape again and again. The deer was escaping the king’s arrows. The king would shoot arrow after arrow, but the deer would escape and run away. Could the king be quiet? His determination got stronger. He began chasing the deer. On the way, the king found a hermitage. The king who was already tired and thirsty by then, went into the hermitage to quench his thirst. That was the hermitage of sage Shamika. He was very peaceful by nature. But his son, Shringi was a little boy. He hadn’t yet conquered anger. The little boy was ill tempered. The king who entered the hermitage saw Sage Shamika absorbed in deep meditation. Bowing to the sage, the king said, “A deer escaped my arrows and came this way. Did you happen to see the deer?” The sage who was absorbed in deep meditation did not even notice the arrival of the king. The sage was completely absorbed in his meditation. He did not provide any reply. Let’s see what reply he gives later.

Jaya Guru Datta.