Beautiful Bhajan :))

Happy HOli . !!

Excerpts from Guruji's talk on Holi

Life should be full of colors! And each color is meant to be seen and enjoyed separately, for if seen all mixed together, they will appear all black. All the colors like red, yellow, green, etc. should exist side by side and simultaneously be enjoyed together. Similarly, in life, different roles played by the same person should exist peacefully and distinctly inside him. For example, when a father continues to play his role of a 'father' in office, things are bound to go for a toss. In our country, a politician is sometimes a father first and a leader later!

In which ever situation we are in, we should play the corresponding role to the hilt and then life is bound to become colorful! This concept was called 'Varnashram' in ancient India. This meant - everyone, be it a doctor, teacher, father, whoever or whatever, is expected to play their roles with full enthusiasm. Mixing professions will always be counter productive. If a doctor wants to do business, he should run a business separately and secondary to his profession and not make business out of medicine. Keeping these 'containers' of the mind separate and distinct is the secret of a happy life and this is what HOLI teaches.

All colors emanate from white, and when mixed again, they become black. When your mind is white and consciousness - pure, peaceful, happy and meditative, different colors and roles emerge. We get the strength to play various roles with full sincerity against the background. We have to dip into our consciousness time and again. If we only look inwards and play around with colors outside of us, we are bound to find blackness all over again. Between roles we have to take deep rests, in order to play each role sincerely. Now, the biggest impediment to deep rest is desire. Desire means stress. Even petty desires cause high stress - the higher goals give relatively less botheration! Desire tortures the mind at times.

So what does one do?

The only way out is to focus attention on the desire and surrender it. This act of focusing awareness or sight on desire or Kama is called 'kamakshi'. With awareness, desire loses its grip and surrender happens and then nectar flows out from within. The goddess, Kamakshi, holds a sugarcane stem in one hand and a flower in the other. The sugar-cane stem is so hard and has to be squeezed in order to obtain sweetness, while the flower is soft and collecting nectar from it is so easy. This truly represents life, which indeed has a little of both! It is far easier to obtain this bliss from the inside than it is to try to extract pleasure from the outside world - which needs a lot more effort.

Lift Your Spirit with Joy of Color - By Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

There is a famous story associated with the festival:

The word purana comes from the Sanskrit word 'pura nava', which means 'that which is new in the city'. It is a new way of presenting things. Puranas are full of colorful illustrations and stories. On the surface they may appear to be mere fantasy, but actually they contain subtle truths.

An asura king, Hiranyakashyap, wanted everyone to worship him. But his son Prahalad was a devotee of Lord Narayana, the king's sworn enemy. Angry, the king wanted Holika, his sister to get rid of Prahalad. Empowered to withstand fire; Holika sat on a burning pyre holding Prahalad on her lap. But it was Holika who was burnt, Prahalad came out unharmed.

Hiranyakashyap symbolizes one who is gross. Prahalad embodies innocence, faith and bliss/joy. The spirit cannot be confined to love material only. Hiranyakashyap wanted all the joy to come from the material world. It did not happen that way. The individual jivatma cannot be bound to the material forever. It’s natural to eventually move towards Narayana, one's higher self.

Holika stands for the past burdens that try to burn Prahalad's innocence. But Prahlad, so deeply rooted in Narayana Bhakthi could burn all past impressions (sanskaras) and joy springs up with new colors. Life becomes a celebration. Burning the past, you gear up for a new beginning. Your emotions, like fire, burn you. But when there is a fountain of colors, they add charm to your life. In ignorance, emotions are a bother; in knowledge, the same emotions add colors

Each emotion is associated with a color- Anger with red, jealousy with green, vibrancy and happiness with yellow, love with pink, vastness with blue, peace with white, sacrifice with saffron and knowledge with violet.

Knowing the essence of the festival, enjoy the day with Wisdom.

Interview with God

I dreamt I had an Interview with GOD.

"So you would like to interview me?”, GOD asked.

“If you have the time.”, I said.

...

God smiled, “My time is eternity. What questions do you have in mind for me?”

“What surprises you most about humankind?”, I asked.

God answered...

"They get bored with childhood. They rush to grow up and then long to be children again.

That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health.

That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither in the present nor in the future.

That they live as if they will never die, and die as if they had never lived.”

God’s hand took mine and we were silent for awhile and then I asked...

"As a parent, what are some of life’s lessons you want your children to learn?"

God replied with a smile...

To learn they cannot make anyone love them, what they can do is let themselves be loved.

To learn that there are persons who love them dearly, but simply do not know how to express or show their feelings.

To learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others.

To learn that a rich person is not one who has the most, but is one who needs the least.

To learn that it only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in persons we love and it takes many years to heal them.

To learn to forgive by practicing forgiveness.

To learn that it is not always enough that they be forgiven by others, but that they must forgive themselves.

And to learn that I am here... "ALWAYS”....