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A Householder and A Sanyasi
A Householder - who loves and sacrifices;
A Sanyasi - who has run away from the burdens of family;
The Adi Guru of our system has said one very great thing. He
said, "It is only in the Grihasthashrama that we learn two things -
love and sacrifice." A sanyasi may think he has sacrificed but my Master
says, "No. Few sanyasis have ever sacrificed anything. They are better
off economically, they have more name, more honour, more publicity in
the press and they are better looked after by their devotees. In addition,
they get badam and milk, things which they could never have afforded
in family life!
In contrast, in family life you have to think of your wife and your
children. With what little you earn, you have to make sacrifices at
every stage. You don't have new clothes for Diwali, but your
children must have them. You think that you are not educated, as your
father being a farmer, could not afford it; but you certainly feel that
your son must have education. So instead of being self-centred, we start
thinking of others and their welfare. We teach ourselves such things
in the family life." Therefore, in Sahaj Marg it is said that without
Grihastha life we cannot really achieve anything.
Grihastha life has been recommended by the Master not for the pleasures
and the joys that it promises so much as for the idea of love that it
creates in you - the real love - and for the sacrifice that it helps
you to make. We see families suffering before us, our own and others;
neighbours, relations, precisely because these two elements are in most
cases lacking. They have not been able to generate love sufficiently
to overcome their problems, and they have not been able to make sacrifices
enough to assure harmonious existence, and that should be a lesson.
It should be an eye-opener to the younger generation that it is not
marriage per se which is at fault, it is not grihastha life which is
at fault, it is the way that life is handled, which is at fault. It
is like a man saying, "Every time I take out a knife, I cut my fingers
with it. So we should abolish all knives." There is a right way of using
a knife. You have got to learn to handle the element in which you have
been put. So what is it that we have to do in grihastha life? Learn
to live a grihastha life as it was meant to be lived - which is to try
to generate love.
What is the real vairagya? One should lead a simple and pious life
absorbed in constant Divine consciousness, discharging properly, at the same
time all his worldly responsibilities and duties. There is not the least
justification for anyone to flee away from home in utter disregard of his
worldly duties, and wander about without any definite aim or purpose. As a
matter of fact, even in that state of so-called vairagya, one is seldom
free from feelings of worldliness. If a grihastha who has ignored God
can be presumed to be deceiving God, the so-called vairagi will prove a
worse sinner. Saint Kabir has aptly remarked:--
"God remains twenty paces away from a brahmachari
and thirty paces away from a sanyasi;
whereas He resides within a grihastha
who entertains him in his heart."
We should really try to be with God, and in God all the time, and never
be away from Him even for a moment. When we come up to this state we
are all the time in a state of vairagya. Thus, attachment with God results
in detachment from the world, and that is true vairagya.
The Purpose of Life
The first law of spirituality is, "You are entitled to your daily bread,
give enough time for that." What should I do with the rest of the time?
Master said, "Think of God." Because that is your main purpose of existence.
If it was merely to live and to earn and to fill your stomach and to
satisfy your urge for security and go on amassing wealth, God would
have surely made you a honey bee or an ant or perhaps a squirrel. But
when He made you a human being and gave you the intellect, and the willpower
and the idea that there is something superior to you which has created
you and which is beckoning you on to Himself, that is your true purpose.
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