Sri Brahmachaithanya Pravachan – Sept.2

Living in Nama Transcends Death

If a child falls sick the parents pray to God to spare his life; they vow that the child will be dedicated to God if it survives. This means that they will withdraw their feeling of possession or ownership over their child. How does it matter then, if the child dies today? It is only for their own happiness that the parents want the child to survive the illness.
How unwise it is to ask for avoidance of the ultimately inevitable death, instead of praying for deliverance from the entire cycle of births and deaths! If death is a certainty for everyone, why should we not aspire that it should be auspicious? Death which is not followed by rebirth is the most auspicious death. In fact, to forget one’s real ‘self’, is equivalent to death. You should not therefore lose any opportunity to attain our objective while our mind, which is constantly fluctuating, is steady.
We are tormented by conflicting desires. Therefore it is necessary to kill the desire itself by constant utterance of nama. To remain in nama is to kill desire, which amounts to transcending death. The real way to avoid death is to belong to God. There is no fear of death when one realizes God, who is the destroyer of death. A realized soul is never afraid of death. To be merely alive is no life at all. One must have some objective or purpose in life, and that objective should be to remain in constant awareness of God. It should be considered a very fortunate day when one leaves this body while chanting nama.
In fact, we daily die and are reborn. If we sleep and do not wake up again, it is certainly death. Therefore, go to bed while chanting nama, so that you will wake up in His remembrance. However, to remember nama at bed time, you must have previous practice of it during working hours. Similarly, how can one remember nama at the time of death, unless one has been in the habit of constantly chanting it? Let us therefore, start the practice of nama-smarana right from today, this moment.
When Sant Tukaram says, ‘I have seen my death with my own eyes, it implies the experience of complete destruction of desire.

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Sri Brahmachaithanya Pravachan-Aug.11

Contentment is Found Only in God
What appeals to our sense of logic and also tallies with our experience, can be accepted as the truth, disregarding opposing thought or advice. For this we must be sure that our logical faculty is reliable and experience broad-based. In today’s world we find that thoughts and intellect can be easily swayed; to maintain them against persuasion or opposition is by no means easy. Even right-minded persons may have their opinions challenged, modified, reversed. I do not ask you to accept a statement merely because it appears in the scriptures, nor because I make it. But I put it to you, consider your own experience, and decide whether you wish for real contentment; and you will arrive at the conclusion that such real contentment is not to be found anywhere but in God, the Supreme Being. If so, determine that you will stick to this conviction, come what may. I shall narrate to you a true incident illustrating what firm determination can achieve. In a certain town there lived a man of about sixty, who employed his bright brain in deriding others, by putting disconcerting questions. Once a visiting sadhu was delivering a highly interesting address on devotion, and the audience was listening with rapt attention, when this man suddenly rose and put an utterly irrelevant question: ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘instead of talking about futile theoretical things like God and devotion, tell me about a matter of close concern; when will this country achieve political independence?’ The sadhu calmly replied, ‘We’ll talk about it later, but tell me, now you are pretty advanced in age, and there is no knowing when death may pounce on you; have you ever thought of achieving independence from the thousand and one bonds that will have to be severed, and the bodily ailments you may have to face, when death finally closes His clutches on you?’ This counter-question not only silenced him, but set him thinking. He called on the sadhu later and said, ‘I had never thought about those crucial points before; but now tell me what I ought to do.’ The sadhu said,’ Eschew talking for two years, and engage yourself in ceaseless nama-smarana.’ He followed the injuction resolutely, and when, after two years he met the sadhu again, he said with tears in his eyes, “Sir, intense nama-smarana has given me thorough contentment, and now I need nothing more”. * * * * *