I.D SONI
Janmashtami! The greatest Day in Hindu history! The Day is sacred as the Birthday of Shri Krishna! It was an epoch-making event in India’s life when Shri Krishna was born over five thousand years ago. He came with ravishing beauty. He came with the matchless music of the flute. The purest of the pure. Stainless, he came with purity of his heart that saw. The Divine in the Human and made him to many a milk-maid (gopi) an image of Eternal. He came with eternal youth. He came with an ancient, unborn beauty which gave joy to all, to man and maid, to bird and beast, to oak and pine, to flower and star. In a crisis of our history, He came with a rich out pouring of love. Krishna played upon the Murli, the flute. In its notes, Krishna sang his vision of life, a vision of Wisdom and Joy. “Why do you always wear black?” asks a character in a little drama. And the answer given is, “I am in mourning for my life. I am unhappy!” Many alas! Are unhappy. The world needs a message of strength, life and joy. Civilisation lies prostrate today. The Lord of the Flute brings as a message of a newlife: “Bound for Brahmaloka (the city of God) are ye, bound for beauty eternal. Why wander ye away from love? Why spend our strength in separation, hate and strife? Out in the open he lived: he tilled the field! He tended the cows; and his heart was open to the strange mystic voices of nature and the inner Realm of the spirit. At last, came through him the great Revelation of Wisdom enshrined in the Bhagavat Gita and Bhagavat Purana. This cow herd become a seer, a Prophet, a Teacher. And they who heard him said never man spoke as he. He was a singer too. He played upon the flute and ravished the heart of all who heard him. This Flute Player become the great way- shower to multitudes. This was a blend of Karma (service), gnana (wisdom) and bhakti (love). He taught how to serve, and through services grow in wisdom and blend service with love. The secret of his insight and his power upon the multitudes was his Realisation of the One Universal Life flowing into all men, all birds and beasts, all forms of manifestation. In the stars in their course as in the birds in their flight, he saw the One universal spirit the Atman!
Seeing the one in all, he saw that love was the mightiest force in life. He radiated love: his life was a moving picture of love. The world alas! Does not yet see the truth of “Law’ of love the world is still entangled in strife, fighting and war.
Shri Krishna’s way is the way of sympathy, in infinitive understanding and love. The Kauravas listened not to him. And the modern world, dominated by desires and self-seeking, listens not to Krishna’s call. Yet in his way is still the hope of the world, and nations will not be truly free until they rise above all cults of exclusiveness to a vision of sympathy and understanding as the hope of this dark and lonesome world. The world needs inspires and leaders filled with Krishna’s spirit.
Krishna builds a new city on the sea-shore, in kathiwar. He names it Dwarka, “the city of many gales.” He love Dwarka, as he loves Gokul and Brindaban, where he is early years he played upon the flute spent the spring of his song. In Dwarka are gathered together many of his devotees. Krishna loves the sea: its waves sound in his ears and makes Dwarka a city of joy.
He loves, too, the forest and the field: he loves the lily and the lotus: he loves the rose and the brier: though he knows they live but a day and he lives himself in Eternity which itself is but a Day spent in freedom and joy. He loves to listen to the music of the brook flowing, flowing: seeking the sea, seeking and singing the mystery that flows for ever! Will Bharata advance to her appointed fulfilment? Then must India’s youths, in a true historic spirit, commune with the loving past. India was once a fount of inspiration to sages like Appolonius and Plotinus and clements. Alberani, the great Muslim traveller and scholar, felt the fascination of Hindu ideals and Hindu culture: he accompanied Sultan Mahmud to India, and in India made a study of Sanskrit and, with love and reverence in his heart, read the “Bhagavad Gita.”
In her long history hath India been blessed by Great Ones, again and again. On six of them, specially, have I love to meditate. They are among the Ancestors of Arya-varta: Shri Rama, avatara of shakti; Shri Krishna; avatara of wisdom born of Ananda and Bliss; Buddha and Mahavira, avatara of compassion; Sant Kabir; avatara of Nama (the word and name Divine) and Guru Nanak; avatara of fellowship, unity and peace.
Krishna’s “Bhagavad Gita’s” message is regarded as the essence of Hindu Wisdom. “All the Upanishads,” we read, “are cows, men of purified intellect are the drinkers, and the Gita is the milk.” The “Bhagavad Gita” is the song universal. It is a song of life. Wrong it, I humbly submit, to think that the Gita ask us to run away from life. The Gita shows us how we may eliminate the “ego” and enter into the “self”, how we may abandon ugliness and illusion to embrace the spirit of life and the life of the spirit.
The Gita Reveals Krishna
I. As teacher od Dharma (righteousness)
II. As lord of compassion and
III. As servant of humanity.
In every age he says, “I am back
I. To serve the good,
II. To destroy the sin of the sinner, and
III. To enthrone Dharma, righteousness.”
In the teaching of the master, activity or “work” is not discarded: work and wisdom or unified, are regarded as one. But “work” should be purified of “desires.” It is “impure” work which has made men unhappy. “The world”, says the Gita, “is imprisoned in its work, in its activity dominated by desire.” “Work of the true type must become a “yagna”, an offering to God. Perform action sacramentally”, says the Gita, “perform action as worship of God!” Karma or action should be a sacrament, a yagna, an offering to God!
Of impurities must “action” be freed. These are three the Gita refers to them as the three gates of Hell.” These are lust, anger,and greed.
Hence the Gita’s emphasis on “duty”,swadharma. Every man has his duty to do. The householder must perform his duty: the merchant has his duty: the peasant has his. There is a room on this earth-plane for the “warrior”, too his duty, Dharma is heroic action. The sanyasin or the “contemplative” man his dharma, too: it is the pursuit of wisdom which fulfils itself in holiness. All life, the Gita teaches is sacred: and higher than “heroism” is “Love” or “compassion” , which is to be poured on all creatures, birds and neasts, not alone on fellow-mwn. Thus spiritually equipped, a man may well be in the world and work for the worlds’s welfare, blessing all. Well says the Gita:-
When, in deed, a man hath no lust
And no harted in his heart,
He well may move
Safely among the things of lust and hate.
Attaining to wisdom and enriched with love, with compassion in his heart, a man may well mingle with all men and make his earth-pilgrimage a source of service to humanity and universe. Such an one called the man of realisation: he seas the One in all: he sees that God is the “light of the fire”, the “life of all that lives”: he sees that God is the “eternal seed of everything that grows”, that God is the “vigour of the active”, “the strength of the strong.” Verily such a man is truly wise. He acts, yet hath no desire for “fruits” of action. He acts, yet not imprisoned in action’s “chain.” He acts, yet is free. Having conquered desire, he need nothing. “Thou Krishna! Thou are my all! And having Thee, Ineed not anything, he says. Such a man act and rises beyond action to the Eternal. He acts, but lusteth not after anything. He acts, yet calleth nothing his own. He acts, but is not beyond. He acts, nut is free. Broken are his bonds illumined is his heart: his life becomes a mirror which reflects the one supreme. This message gave Krishna five thousand year ago. This message may yet save modern civilisation. For I hold that his life and teaching are not for India alone. They are for the world. And centuries will may meet at the Lotus Feet of him who “emptied” Himself of his Glory and played with the little ones, free children of earth and space, and loved cows and birds and loved the forsaken ones and loved, too, each lotus of the lake and each lily of the field. Blessed, indeed, is the man who ever keeps in mind this teaching of the Master that the heart that is tranquil, the spirit that is free from passion and purged from all harm, to the Life Divine.
