RU
IND
My way
My way
When I came to the Teacher for the first time I had not the slightest idea of what I should say, what I should ask and how to behave. Anyway, the question I asked astonished me myself by its straightness (it, probably happened after his encouraging smile and first words), “Please, tell me why it happens such way that in all my spiritual practices (I endeavoured quite a few of them) at first steps I felt strong enthusiasm, but with time it all as if abated; no inner strength left, and I again set off in search of something new.” “It goes so,while you are still searching. When you have found, it will cease.” The answer was short and clear. I came to him and understood – this time I have found!
It’s been five years since I know my Teacher, but I am still learning to confide, to open up myself and ask without quailing before him how to act in obscure situations, how to choose the right way (though it may not be obligatory easy )on many crossroads of life. At first I felt quite uneasy to ask Teacher’s advice; I seemed to have nothing serious, and I did not want to bother him by trifles. But once I heard one woman asking Guru Ji how to divide three Prasad fruit among four members of her family. And on seeing full seriousness and patience with which the Teacher explained to her that each fruit should be cut into four parts and one part of each fruit should be given to everybody, I understood that all the questions are equally important to him, and every person obtains his equal attention and respect.
Anyhow, asking questions is not still the whole problem. I always learn to listen to and comprehend the Teacher’s words which are so much multifaceted and multilayered. It happens that the true sense of his answer comes in some time; phrases told at satsangs or at personal meetings with all their might and clarity come to light some months later. And then I come to understanding how attentively I must hear out every word, because his every word (the smallest one) must not be flung aside lightly. He says nothing for free. All said has deep sense and specific purpose. And so I ask every day “TAMSO MA JOTIR GAMAYA – LEAD ME FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT” I ask so, because I do not want to wander about any more. I ask because I firmly believe that being led by Him I am moving along the rightest and the straightest way.
To the truth
The things I named the love before meeting with the Teacher in the Light of His Love turned to be selfish whims, irritative demands and various exchanges full of shrewdness, by which I ensnared myself and my near ones. The thing I called wisdom melted near the Teacher: it was no more than mere pomposity, haughty futile and tampering. There was the time when I saw my happiness in someone, but having got to know this closer, I discerned only evil arrogance, insatiable materialism, the endless full of pride pursuit of something bigger and better. And again I am asking: “ASATO MA SAT GAMAYA – LEAD ME FROM IGNORANCE TO THE TRUTH”, because only after the Teacher’s coming into my life I realized that so far nobody taught me either pure love or the true knowledge; and nobody pointed me the way to real happiness.
The truth is of such kind, that not only the disciples and those who knows the Teacher, but also who lives and works near his disciples feels his love. My son and the son of my sister are very close friends; they get on very nice with each other. For the whole year they spent together nearly all days off, and we allowed them deciding for themselves where to spend a day, and where – a night. We live in a small apartment in the center of an old city, and my sister’s family live in a beautiful country house where meadows, fields, and woods are just nearby. One would think: could anything be better for two teens? But more and more often they stayed in our flat and found something interesting for themselves to do in a small room. It was beyond my understanding and I always asked, “Don’t you really want to the countryside, to ride the bicycles, for example? Why have you been sitting in this room all the time?” And my son once says to me, “You have meditated a good deal here and it gets so nice and calmly in our flat, that we do not feel like going away from here at all.” Look, here they such as they are – our children: they have a very subtle perception of everything and are not embarrassed to say of it openly.
Now all this is my happiness – some underlying calmness, the terse firm connection with my relations, the assuredness that everything will move in a right direction. And even if we come across with difficulties and problems, which happen in the life of all, then to overcome and endure them will be much easier when we have such supporting strength beside – The Love of the Teacher.
And now I want to share my love in the right way. Not to “accept bribes” and not “to give them” in hope to get something in return, but do this only because I can and want to share my love. Formerly I ceased to visit my parents only because they grumbled too much; and now I go to them to simply stay with them and to bring some happiness to each other. Difficult is to explain it by words, but our meetings infrequent as before though, became different: much warmer, much more cordial filled with the love which my Guru Ji woke in me.
To immortality
I always thought that it is very important “to immortalize”myself, to leave the trace by the great deeds and breathtaking achievements. On meeting the Teacher my knowledge flew around as soap bulbs, and naked arrogance and ambitions of ego became quite evident. While listening to the Teacher at satsangs and personal meetings, I beging seeing brighter and brighter that the eternal values are too much higher than the top position, than the replete life or a strong social influence.
It happens so that in my work I have to communicate with great many people: to teach the students at the university, to head the departments in big companies, to coordinate various projects and to hold business seminars. Frankly speaking previously I took great pleasure from my status. Surely, the one who is higher, who is seen better, who is obeyed and reported directly to is, consequently, stronger and he is respected far more. Now I am smiling myself watching the Teacher’s warmth to melt my pride; and his patience and kindness to shape new appreciation in my mind and in my heart. Besides, it was the understanding that the more knowledge, experience, talents, power and authorities you have, the more responsibility you should feel applying them, so that they may become conscious giving for good, unselfish aid and the true service. In fact the rich is the one who has got what to share with others. So, if God endowed you richly with earthly blessings, He consequently gave you not only the possibility to enjoy the taste of amenities and pleasures, but also he entrusted you the possibility to serve. The meaning of the true service I only begin to understand when I am looking at Guru Ji. His patience, diligence, attention to the smallest details alongside with the striving to the very essence is the highest example of true service.
To learn to live and perform your duties before relations, colleagues at work and the whole of mankind in such neat way, so that not to harm anyone either by thoughts, words or actions, so that not to become the cause of pain for others’ in fact is the way to eternity. “MIRTYOR MA AMRIT GAMAYA – LEAD ME FROM DEATH TO IMMORTALITY”, I chant this and clearly understand that I can possibly achieve it only relying on his strong arm.
In this earthly life Guru Ji came to us from far away. At first when you look at his unusual (for our region) appearance some embarrassing thoughts slip in the mind: about national, religious and alike differences. Anyway ,Guru Ji teachers us not the things which divide, but the ones which unite; in spite of dissimilarity of folk customs, spiritual convictions and political views. Any content should have its form – these are the laws of the nature on the Earth. And what garment the true Divine Love should be clothed in, so that it could be accepted? What language of the world should the truth be imparted, so that it became sainly one? Here is we have God’s lila. This way He tests us whether we are able to distinguish the true from imaginary, and to recognize the eternal surrounded by the temporal.
I never get tired to wonder how the problems and questions seemed complex and intricate are melting near him and turn into clear principles of daily life. Probably the main I understood on meeting my Teacher is that the true spirituality is very practical, easy to understand and apply in every man’s life. And thus sequentially, tenderly and endlessly patiently Guru Ji teaches a wife to be good wife, a friend to be true friend, the leader to be wise leader, and the worker to be honest worker… He teaches us to be true People. You only need to keep your heart open in order to being beside him learn to listen to and to hear, to look at and to see, to notice and to comprehend. The divine love is recognized by heart, the truth is appreciated by the only soul...
And some more. Only with Guru Ji I appreciated the true silence. True silence is not strenuously clenched jaws when t malice does not allow babbling a word, it is not the speechless embarrassment when you fear to see not so much clever and businesslike… The silence that Guru Ji disclose in me is the quiet and patient confidence when everything is far too clear and thus any words feel themselves to be cramped inside and outside. Just this inner silence forced out my former friend migraine, which (I feel) liked my stress, polyphonic choir of thoughts and tireless merry-go-round of constantly revolving problems. I know now what a great gift I have got from my Teacher – the opportunity to learn and to become the part of great Silence and confident Calmness. No earthly wealth can give such comfort for soul.
Glancing back I see to what extent my life changed – if not outwardly, then it changed inwardly very much. I never cease to thank God who brought me to the Teacher, and I thank the Teacher who is leading me to God – to Light, to Knowledge and consequently – to Immortality.
To bhakty
Everybody who has ever tried to speak about the true love knows that it is not a simple thing. Apparently, it is the very inmost that a man’s soul can reveal and that is why this love is hard to describe with words. But to speak about bhakti, the divine love or the love to God is even more difficult. No rational explainings can be applied to this feeling. This inconceivable thing still before meeting with the Teacher rang as void in my heart, wept as inexplicable anguish and flew down from my lips as the words “It looks like everything in my life is quite all right, but anyway I feel lack of something.” It draw me to the indefatigable search and eventually brought to The Teacher. Bhakti recognized him and accepted; it began revealing itself on all its beauty and might; it became clear to me that there is nothing on the earth to compare it with…
Bhakti revealed itself gradually in me… For the first time it gushed by tears during Aarti – the prayer of gratitude to the Teacher. Then I suddenly realized how dear this Man is to me, what a great feeling draws me to Him and how strongly I want to call it a love. It seemed strange and unknown, because it was not the same as love to a man, to some relation, or to the parents, or to the son. It was something new and different from everything earthly, which I have already succeeded to learn. This new feeling penetrated the bygone void of my heart and filled it; the anguish of my soul vanished in this feeling and it imbued me with the timid thought “I have found at last what I have uncosciously been searching for so long time…”
Later bhakti opened in me at very unexpected moments, for instance through bhajans – the songs about love to God. Music is very close to my soul, but I never liked Indian films. There are too many songs and dances, sweet melodies and twisting voices. First, when I was told that the disciples of Guru Ji sing bhadjans, I pricked up my ears. “Well, if it is needed much, I will endue.” I love singing very much, but what the bhajans are I did not know, because there is no such genre in my folk music. Lithunians, probably, like other peoples as well sing much about earthly love, about beauty of the nature, about fun and even about war. And I know hundreds of such songs, folk and contemporary. But to sing about love to God – it was something new for me and therefore interesting.
The real turning point happened to me when I heard how Guru Ji himself sings bhajans. So quietly and cautiously, so attentively, listening to every note and merging in every syllable. Why, God hears everything, no need to bawl to him! And I sang following him.
When I stayed at the hospital, the strong wish to sing bhadjans came as if all by itself. I began singing every day lying on a drip, while expecting the doctor’s examination; in the evenings before switching on the light so that to sit down to read; I sang them aloud and silently. Other women in a ward did not know and did not understand what I am singing of though, I noticed that since the day I started singing bhajans, one granny next bed ceased to feel shy and hide and began to pray openly. And thus we were treating ourselves. Our doctors did not stop wondering why the recovering goes so well.
When I am asked whether I understand what I am singing of, I say “Yes, about love!” And the meaning of the words is not of too much importance, my soul recognize them some way. All which is spare is melting in the center of my chest; I begin perceiving my heart. You even couldn’t call it weeping, the tears are simply running and all the useless is going away; all which is not combined with the love to the Teacher, with love to God.
It is absolutely clear to me now that this love become the core of my soul. I understand now more distinctly, that the essence of love is not those beautiful words and elevated phrases that we talk of it; this essence is in our actions and deeds by which we display it.
From the very childhood we were taught many important and necessary (from worldly point of view) things, understanding and skills in order we were a success in communication with other people, in performing our duties. We exercised long how to hold a pen corretly and how to write neatly, how to use a fork and a knife, how to address the adults politely; later on – how to carry on the negotiations, how to achieve the goal defined, how to be useful and to get profit and alike. But why weren’t we taught to love. Why didn’t they teach us to beautifully manifest this feeling in everyday life, in daily labour?
I am unusually lucky: I met Guru Ji, and it is just he, from whom I can learn all this now. On seeing how his bhakti is streaming out with each word, gesture, light smile or a serious look; how each one to a man is being gifted with this, I feel that all splinters are melting in my soul all the knots are being untangled – his love fills my heart, his bhakti engenders bhakti in me. I know that my heart like a full bowl will be ready to share this good with those around. And I even being very tired will find the patience late in the evening whenever he asks, to explain to my son those unclear problems; I will be able to keep my balance in a conflict at work and won’t yield to blunt emotions; I will be able to find the words and call my muddler-neighbours to clean the stairs at the nearest day off. I will be capable of everything when I do it with love as the Teacher does it!
I am unusually lucky: I met Guru Ji and I am never tired now to thank him for my full heart.
Yurga Bayoryunene, Villnus, 2009