Should We Change?

Satsang by Gautam Baiji

"Like Vibhisina, who was the greatest devotee of Lord Rama, sometimes we think that when we keep good company, that's enough for us to get changed and do good things.

But sometimes our samskaras (our psychological imprint; our nature) don't let us change. A person could be listening to satsang for many, many years but if you look at him or her, the person is the same! There's no change.

Who's fault is that? The Mahatma's? The ashram's? Or the person's fault?

Sometimes the kids fight with the parents, or hear the parents fighting with each other, and then ask their parents, "What did you learn from the ashram? Why are you fighting so much?"

The secret? Only fight when you're alone - don't let the kids hear!

What if your son was going to school for a long time and still didn't know his abc's? What happens?

Questions arise in your mind. "I'm sending him every day to school, but still he is not learning his abc's. Something is wrong there!"

Maybe the kid cannot hear. Maybe he cannot see, or isn't giving attention to it...

Either you will come up with the solution to the learning problem, or you will let it go, saying, "Oh, that's fine. My duty is just to feed him, clothe him, give him supplies, that's it."

What would you do?

You will try to find out the problem.

You will try to make it better.

It's the same with us who attend satsang again and again.

(We must be diligent and willing to face the Truth of our weaknesses to get liberation. Who's going to do it for us if we won't?)

The Spiritual Treasure Within You

Truth.

What is Satsang?

Satsang is a Sanskrit word that means "gathering together for the truth" or, more simply, "being with the truth." 

Truth is what is real, what exists. So all there is, is Truth. 

Whenever something increases your experience of the Truth, it opens your Heart and quiets your mind. 

Conversely, whenever something, such as a thought, fear, or judgment, limits or narrows your experience of the Truth, the Heart contracts and the mind gets busier. 

We are all equally endowed with this capacity to discriminate the Truth. Thus, the true teacher, or satguru, is within you, and satsang, or being with the Truth, is endless. 

The first step to complete peace and liberation is listen to the Satsang carefully and ask inquiring questions of yourself with a guileless heart.

These discourses on the nature and Knowledge of God in the company of Saints vanishes sorrow and brings us joy.

The Princess and Her Necklace

During satsang today, Gautum Baiji said:

"You can purify your body with water. 

You can purify your mind with truth.

You can purify your intellect by knowledge.

You can purify your knowledge with understanding. And everything depends on our understanding.

Once there was a queen who enjoyed spending time in her garden. One day she returned to the palace to find that her necklace was missing from her neck. It must have broken and fallen in the garden.

The necklace was extremely valuable, and the queen knew the king would be angry if he knew it was missing, so she sent her maid to go find it.

But the maid came back empty-handed, so the queen knew she had to tell the king.

When the king heard the news, he wasted no time. He assembled all of his guards, his field workers, his kitchen staff and even some peasants to immediately go through the garden and search plant by plant, bush by bush for the necklace. 

But they searched all day and found nothing. So the king ordered everyone to look harder.

Finally a peasant saw something sparkly in a pond. He yelled to another peasant, 'I think that's the necklace!'

'Well go get it!' said the other peasant. So the first one waded into the water to retrieve it.

But for some reason, he's not able to grasp it, no matter what he does.

The king himself is summoned to the pond. He watches as more of his men go into the water and also fail to obtain the necklace they can all clearly see! They are perplexed and frustrated by this. 

An old wise man wandered by and learned of their dilemma. He thought for a moment and said:

'This reminds me of something that happened to me as a boy. I would go outside with my mother, look up at the moon and say "I want the moon! Can you give it to me?" She said yes, and brought me a bucket full of water. In it I could clearly see the moon reflected in the water.'

Then everyone looked down at the pond and realized they were looking at a reflection. They looked up and there, on a branch in a nearby tree, hung the beautiful necklace.

All scriptures are a reflection of truth, an indication. We tend to only chase the reflection.

If our body is a temple of God, and if we want to see the light, where else do we need to go than within? 

Someone who goes within, who meditates, might be asked by another, "Why go within? What's wrong with going to church or temple for wisdom and light? What's the difference between the inside vs. the outside?"

The answer is the difference between the reflection and the necklace, the map versus the treasure. An idea and the truth.

What Does Namaste Mean?

I can't add much more to that, except...

Namaste.

And this:

After all, how can you "namaste" someone without loving them?