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Sivananda

THE PATH BEYOND SORROW

Chapter 15: Saints And Sages

3.Infallible Guidance from the Lives of Saints

 

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Sri Swami Sivananda          The Path Beyond Sorrow

 

 

So, if you go to the scriptures and they confuse you, well, just look to the path which these great ones have taken. See how these saints have lived, how these people have tried to make themselves fit for the expression of the Supreme. See how they have spoken, how they have dealt with their fellow-men, how they have reacted to life and its experiences. Behold! Channel your life upon the pattern of the saints, and in this way, the great importance of the lives of saints for us is that they present to us a blueprint of the life-perfect. Their lives offer to us a tangible scheme of living, a way of life, glorifying their own exemplary personalities, their own ideal personalities; and we find that now we are in safe hands if we can just follow in their footsteps. “Lives of great men oft remind us...they leave behind them footprints in the sands of time”—and these ‘footprints’, their ideal pattern of living, becomes to us the indicator of the path to perfection.

So, let us follow in the footsteps of the great saints, steering clear of the great mass of underbrush, of theory and dogma and doctrines and various theological beliefs. Let us leave the theological beliefs safely in the hands of the theologists, because they are concerned with the things of this world. Rather, let us go to the heart of theology, into the essence of it, and try to walk the way in which the saints walked. If saints are to have any meaning for us in our lives, we must try to emulate them, we must try to live like them, we must try to feel like them, we must try to make their lives the standard, the measure, of our own conduct. In a given situation in which we do not know how to act, we should say to ourselves, “How would such-and-such a saint have reacted in this situation?” or “If St. Francis were in my place, how would he have reacted? If Jesus had faced this situation, what would he have done? If Ramakrishna and Buddha were in this situation, what would they have done?”

A high standard is a difficult thing to demand of yourself, but it is better to have a high standard and fail in reaching it, than not to have a standard at all or to have a low and petty standard. Saints, by the examples of their lives, show us what a man can attain if he wills enough.

Read the lives of great saints and you will see how they too started from scratch, how they also had humble beginnings, with all the weaknesses and defects of ordinary human beings. But, by being impressed with the love of an ideal, through their earnestness and sincerity and, above all, through their persistence in following that ideal, no matter how much they were assailed by the world and its experiences in this process, no matter how many obstacles confronted them, no matter how many problems faced them, they came out triumphant. Their problems and sufferings proved to be the very factors that thus polished their nature and completely removed all dross therefrom, making them shine like pure gold. Life came to them as a furnace that purifies the base ore and turns it into pure shining gold. In this way, the saints have shown us that any ordinary being can also do what they have done.

Thus their lives become to us a challenge and an inspiration. The details of their lives are thus sources of great wisdom and great courage. When reading their lives, we find that we have real wisdom at hand. Pondering over the lives of these great saints, courage comes to us in times of despair. Saints, therefore, are primarily examples on the way. God has given us saints so as to hold before us models of perfection, ideals into which we have to cast ourselves and become perfectly moulded like them. We also can reap the harvest of peace and blessedness by going the way they went, by following in their footsteps.

Is it not a very significant title which Thomas A. Kempis has given to his work—“Imitation of Christ”? Christ’s life has to be imitated. We have to be as he was. We have to be as all the great ones, all the saints and mystics were. They are a perennial source of inspiration offering us the standards, the principles, upon which we should base our lives. These saints are a living embodiment of the scriptures. All the lofty teachings of the scriptures, the great truths of the scriptures, become visible and living in the lives, in the utterances, and in the actions of saints and sages. A scripture as a book is a mass of knowledge, but when we see the lives of saints, we see the spiritual truths as a living force, as a living truth. Through the saints, therefore, we obtain inspiration, great hope and courage. We get an indication of the state of perfection to which we are to raise ourselves, into which we have to grow, and we receive, easily available to us, a definite pattern of living, a definite way of life and being.

In the twelfth chapter of the Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna, concluding his short discourse to Arjuna, upon the path of devotion, sums up in the last eight verses the ideal of one who is totally devoted to God, the way in which such a one lives. It forms a blessed pattern for us to follow.

The presence of these great saints, these mystics, these men of God, teaches us this wonderful thing, namely, a totally different sense of values. We find in their lives that many a time their actions seem very queer and completely out of context and out of harmony with the rest of the world. They seem opposed to the ways of the world, at least on the surface, but if you delve beneath the surface, you will find that they have the deepest rationality for their differing mode of conduct. The saints say, “You are after certain things which are vital to you; therefore you are going after them in your own way. We are after things which are very vital and precious to us; and we are going after them in our own way”.

The vision of the saints is also something which is totally different. The vision of a man of the world is always coloured by “I” and “mine”; he clings to things of this earth. But the vision of the saints is always coloured by the Bhav or feeling of “not mine”. He feels that everything he has belongs to the Lord, including his body and mind.

 

Next: Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 4.The Transforming Influence of a Saint’s Action

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Sri Swami Sivananda          The Path Beyond Sorrow

 

 

Chapter 15

 

  • Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages
    Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, Blessed Immortal Atman! Glorious children of the Supreme! Beloved seekers! It is a great joy and a great blessedness for me to be with you all and bathe myself in the radiance of your holiness. It is said in India that the greatest blessedness a soul can have is to come in contact with those who love the Lord. Many things can be hadyou can have riches and material things which may be very valuable, but this is not anything compared to having the company of the pure in heart, of people who love God, of people who aspire for Truth. This latter cannot be purchased. It comes to us only through His Grace. It is a bestowal that comes directly from God. It comes only when the Divine wishes to be gracious unto us. He has been very gracious to me in this way at energyenhancement.org

  • Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 1.The Purifying Power of Holy Saints
    Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 1.The Purifying Power of Holy Saints, Satsanga is a transformer. Satsanga is the company of those who are at one with the Reality. Sat stands for the Supreme Truth or Reality. Sanga is association or company. Satsanga means being in close contact with the Supreme. The highest of holy company is to be with God in God-thought or divine contemplation, in meditation, in worship. You get close to the Reality with the aid of these processes at energyenhancement.org

  • Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 2.Conflicting Declarations of Creeds and Scriptures
    Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 2.Conflicting Declarations of Creeds and Scriptures, The pathway to the Supreme is beset with many difficulties and it is confused with conflicting declarations. Especially in this modern age, man is confused about religion. He does not know what the truth is, or the right religion, or the correct belief, for diverse religions abound. There are different scriptures declaring the Ultimate Reality in different terms, one contradicting the other. There is mutual conflict. There is no agreement and each religion insists that its conception of the Truth is the only Ultimate Reality. Sometimes they do not stop at this, but go one step further saying, All other conceptions will lead you to hell-fire and you will have to continue in that state, in the furnace of hell-fire and brimstone, for centuries and centuries. You who do not believe thus are all pagans and heathens at energyenhancement.org

  • Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 3.Infallible Guidance from the Lives of Saints
    Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 3.Infallible Guidance from the Lives of Saints, So, if you go to the scriptures and they confuse you, well, just look to the path which these great ones have taken. See how these saints have lived, how these people have tried to make themselves fit for the expression of the Supreme. See how they have spoken, how they have dealt with their fellow-men, how they have reacted to life and its experiences. Behold! Channel your life upon the pattern of the saints, and in this way, the great importance of the lives of saints for us is that they present to us a blueprint of the life-perfect. Their lives offer to us a tangible scheme of living, a way of life, glorifying their own exemplary personalities, their own ideal personalities; and we find that now we are in safe hands if we can just follow in their footsteps. Lives of great men oft remind us...they leave behind them footprints in the sands of timeand these footprints, their ideal pattern of living, becomes to us the indicator of the path to perfection at energyenhancement.org

  • Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 4.The Transforming Influence of a Saints Action
    Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 4.The Transforming Influence of a Saints Action, There was a saint living on the banks of the Ganges in the province of Bihar, a Vedantin, but devoted to Lord Rama. For many years he had been practising Yoga in a cave which he had dug out on the river bank and had attained to a very high spiritual state. He would be immersed in trance for several days and weeks and eat no food during that time. Due to this, he came to be known as the holy man whose food was air. Being a devotee of Lord Rama, he had many articles of worship (vessels, plates, pots, spoons, lamps and candlesticks) and devotees would come and lavish upon him their offerings (fruits, flowers, camphor and incense) and he would offer these to the Lord at energyenhancement.org

  • Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 5.True Saintliness Is Egolessness
    Sri Swami Sivananda, The Path Beyond Sorrow Chapter 15: Saints And Sages, 5.True Saintliness Is Egolessness, The principle which the saints enliven within themselves, the principle of seeing the Lord in all, beholding the Self in all, and of attaining to a state of absolute desireless non-possessionthat is the way to liberation. The Supreme can be achieved only by making these truths live in reality within ourselves. And the forbearance of the saints! The very essence of saintliness is the total effacement of the ego. If you wish to briefly sum up the inner heart of saintliness, it is the total effacement of the ego. That is the perfect emptiness of which Christ spoke when he said, Empty thyself and I shall fill theea total emptying of ourselves of all I-ness and mine-ness and of all their offsprings, namely, desire, selfishness, attachment, anger, delusion and greed. From I springs mine. If there is no I, there is no mine. I is the root thought that separates us from God, and when I and mine come, there comes selfishness. The I wants to possess all things and countless desires spring into life. And when a desire is blocked, anger comes; and if the desire is fulfilled, more desire comes and greed follows because desires are insatiable and cannot be appeased. From desire springs greedgreed to obtain and possess that which is desired. Out of this possession comes clinging, infatuation and delusion. Saints are devoid of I at energyenhancement.org

 

 

 
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