Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi
gssxHolyMa
I tell you one thing:
If you want peace, do not find fault with others.
Rather learn to see your own faults.
Learn to make the world your own.
No one is a stranger, my child;
The whole world is your own.
I am the mother of the righteous, I am the mother of the wicked as well.
Never fear. Whenever you are in distress, just say to yourself "I have a mother".
Collection of posts on G+: The Master, Holy Ma, and Swamiji
Whatever She says, lodges immediately in my heart
In the ebb of life, one thing i find useful is to keep the focus on the sayings of the Holy Mother.
In The Universal Appeal of Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother, Kamala S. Jaya Rao writes:
When we remind ourselves that the Holy Mother was brought up in a traditional, rural atmosphere and had no formal schooling, it amazes us that she could not only understand modern concepts and changes in the society, but also adapt herself to them with neither hesitancy nor any difficulty. Sister Nivedita says, "I have never known her to hesitate in giving utterance to large and generous judgement, however new or complex might be the question put before her…. With unerring intuition she goes straight to the heart of the matter, and sets the questioner in the true attitude to the difficulty."
In a situation, i like to think what the Holy Mother would do here (from Her many sayings) and try to come out with something nice and appropriate.
For instance: (from Sri Sarada Devi The Holy Mother: Her Teachings And Conversations)
One should not hurt others even by one's words. One must not speak even an unpleasant truth unnecessarily. By indulging in rude words, one's nature becomes rude. One's sensitivity is lost if one has no control over one's speech.
Of course, it's not always possible, but mercifully Life is analog, and not digital. Is there any way i can increase my response (not reaction) to events in line with Her sayings from 70% (one-sigma) to 95% (two-sigma) and 99.5% (three-sigma)?
In the early 1990s, while traveling back to Bangalore from Hyderabad, i met a guy who told me about one of his friends who, after eating meat, would scrupulously keep the pieces of bone neatly along the edge of his plate. His logic was: "The meat was attached to the bone earlier, and just because the meat was no longer attached to the bone doesn't mean that the bone was any lesser in value; it has to be treated with the same respect"! This idea always tempers my actions when i am discarding used stuff. And, right at the end of Sri Sarada Devi The Holy Mother: Her Teachings And Conversations, the Holy Mother echoes a very similar line of reasoning:
One morning, while the Holy Mother was rubbing her body with oil, someone was sweeping the courtyard. After the work was all done, that person threw the broomstick aside. At this the Mother said, "What is this? You have thrown away the broomstick with such disrespect when the work is done. It takes only the same length of time to put it gently in a corner as it does to throw it aside. One should not trifle with a thing, though it may be very insignificant. If you respect a thing, the thing also respects you. Will you not again need that broomstick? Besides, it is also a part of this family. From that standpoint also, it deserves to be treated with respect. Even a broomstick should be treated with respect. One should perform even an insignificant work with respect."
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This grid was created on the tithi birthday of Holy Mother in 2016 (20.DEC, very close to Her Western birthday of 22.DEC).
Maintained by రామ ShastriX. Here's one on similar lines for the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.