http://www.vedantauk.com/magazine/2011/Mar-Apr2011.pdf



Swami Bhuteshananda

Moulding Our Lives
with Sri Ramakrishna’s Teachings

One of the sayings of Sri Ramakrishna which he repeated
many times, was, “I have made the mould and leave it for
you, now you cast your life in that mould. I have lit the fire, now
you warm up yourselves. I have cooked the food, now you sit
down to eat from the dish already prepared for you.” Each and
every word of this saying is deeply significant. Many of us
worship Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of God. We say many,
because there may be some among us who do not look upon him
as such. But everybody can accept him as a consummate man, if
not an incarnation.
When God incarnates Himself, He conceals his splendour
under the guise of a man. When He is born as a human being, He
behaves like an ordinary man, the natural weaknesses in a man
may be found in Him sometimes. Birth, death, old age and
disease, these are inevitable stages in a man's life. An incarnation
has to go through them. Yet we say he is God. This is known as
an incarnation of God. An incarnation is a synthesis of both man
and God. The natural qualities of a man are inherent in him. But
when we wish to judge him by the standard of a man, we find
that he rises far above the common human standard.
How we refer to such a superhuman being is not
important, but we must know that we have to make our goal in
life with his example. We have to build up our keen desire to walk
along his path. We must receive the inspiration from him to reach
the goal. We have to get the directions of the path from his life.
He incarnates as a man to show us the way. Had God remained
as God, the All-Controlling Power, the Omnipotent, Omnipresent
and Omniscient One, what good would it do to us? He would
have remained beyond our reach. We are ordinary men. We
cannot comprehend such a transcendent being. When God sees
that man is becoming completely detached from Him, man is
burning in the sorrows and miseries of this world, man is failing
to taste the most invigorating nectar of the Lord, and finds himself
in a state of utter confusion, God incarnates Himself so that man
can find his way once again, make a clear conception about his
Goal, and can feel the Infinite within his reach.
It does not matter much whether or not man can fully
comprehend Him. There is a description in the Srimad Bhagavatam.
The moon is reflected on the water. The fishes swimming in the
water consider it as another fellow aquatic animal and play with
it. Similarly when God incarnates among us, He comes like man,
and behaves as our playmate, our very near and dear one. We
feel no diffidence with this strange man, no fear of him. We can
spend our whole life with him. We do not know whether God
has any need of such a human form, but we certainly need Him
as an incarnation. If He never embodied Himself in such a way,
man could not have any conception of God or a high spiritual life.
Someone may say, “Why? Are not these truths all written
in the scriptures?” But all scriptures would appear as heaps of
paper, if God never came among us as an incarnation. They could
never touch our life. God comes to put life into the scriptures
which then become inspiring, active, and take vivid shape to
render the message of God in clear accents. When God comes as
an incarnation, He illumines the Vedas by his splendour. The
incarnation invigorates our spiritual life by his life. His spiritual
power attracts us towards him, and thus gives inspiration to our
life. We make progress toward our goal by making him our pole
star. As a lighthouse helps a ship to sail along the right direction,
an incarnation helps us to move along the right spiritual path by
providing us with his beacon. This is the purpose of the advent
of God. He comes to raise a man to His supramental state, and as
a means to this, He adopts a human form, and accepts all human
attributes.
There is no harm if we look upon Sri Ramakrishna as a
perfect man or as an incarnation of God, because the life of an
incarnation is the wonderful synthesis of two aspects, of God and
man. When we consider Sri Ramakrishna as a man we notice that
he is not different from us in his hunger and thirst, disease and
sorrow. When his nephew Akshay died he felt the anguish as if
his heart were being wrung like a towel. Such is the divine play
of an incarnation in which we see him as a man. We brave to build
up a relation with him. We can open our mind to him. He would
sympathize and guide our spiritual life. Sri Ramakrishna, the
incarnation of God, thus gives us a rare opportunity to love and
worship God in man and thus realize God through him.
The 150th birth anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna was
celebrated only last year. Even now the four quarters are
illumined by his radiance. His presence is still being felt by all.
Quite a few among us have come in direct contact with his
apostles, though not with him. Their lives have been gratified by
the grace from these apostles. We feel he is still around us.
The day to day events of his life have been recorded in
such a way that it has no parallel in the case of any other
incarnation of God. This is unique. We can witness his life more
lively, more comprehensively than the stories of mythology.
Sri Ramakrishna was a wonderful man with varied
spiritual ideas. The numerous ideas which may be found in the
minds of men, particularly the seekers of truth, are all reflected
in the life of Sri Ramakrishna, and through him, they are
becoming clarified, clearly understood. When anybody
approached Sri Ramakrishna with any doubt about his spiritual
life, the Master would tell him, “Look here, I used to have similar
problems and I did so and so which removed my doubts.” There
is no better way to encourage a seeker of Truth. He faced all the
spiritual doubts in his own life, and offered the solution to them
all (by his own experience). This is known as making a mould.
We do not know why he practised the various religious
austerities. A devotee may follow any path of sadhana (religious
practices) to know the truth. But what was Sri Ramakrishna's
necessity of performing so many varied religious practices and
austerities? He had already realized God. He had no further
necessity. The answer to this is that he had actualized all possible
spiritual practices in his own life, and left conclusive proof
thereof, so that, other seekers can get the necessary instructions.
The poet Tagore wrote, “All the streams of religious practices
performed by the Sadhakas have finally met in your meditation.”
All have gained fulfilment through his sadhana. Just as all the
rivers flow through different routes and finally meet in the ocean,
similarly various spiritual thoughts finally find their destination
in the vast ocean of varied spiritual realizations in the life of Sri
Ramakrishna. There was the source, as well as the confluence of
all the rivers. All the spiritual attitudes were generated in his
mind, and they finally reached their culmination also there. When
we analyze his life we can understand this uniqueness of Sri
Ramakrishna.
How many types of religious worshippers and ordinary
seekers of God, assembled around Sri Ramakrishna. The young,
the old, and the women, all gathered round him. All of them
received full satisfaction from him. He was a child with the
children, a young man with the youth, and a man of profound
knowledge with the old. In him was the totality of so many
wonderful ideas. That was why the author of Sri Sri Ramakrishna
Lilaprasanga (Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master) said that the Master
was the king of ecstasies, the arbiter of all spiritual moods, and
their supreme end. The life of Sri Ramakrishna thus illumines the
path of God realization. His was not an ordinary, dimly flickering
light. It was like a blazing sun illumining the whole world of
religion with extreme brightness. Whether one was a non-dualist,
a qualified non-dualist or a dualist, a Jnani (follower of the path
of knowledge), a Bhakta (follower of the path of devotion) or a
Yogi, everyone could find the fullest gratification in him. Vijay
Krishna Goswami once said, “One could possibly find drops here
and there, but here (in Sri Ramakrishna) was the full ocean itself.”
If we want to reach the goal in our life through the
teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, we find that he welcomes all of us
in the spiritual journey, however varied may be our ways. We
can say without hesitation that there was never a trace of
despondency in him. He never uttered a word of dejection, there
is hope for all. Nobody is expelled from the Kingdom of God. Sri
Ramakrishna had given assurance to each one whether one was
a monk or a householder, a yogi, or a Jnani, rich or poor. He never
excluded anyone.
His sayings are numerous. In course of explaining the
various classes of men, he said that there are four types of men,
namely, those bound by the fetters of the world, those who are
seekers after liberation, the liberated, and the ever-free. He then
described a soul-in-bondage, which is almost identical with
modern man without God. A bound soul is one who never wants
to know anything about God. It is in bondage but has no feeling,
no pain of bondage. He is like a fish trapped in a net. It clings to
the net with the net in its mouth, not knowing that the fisherman
would soon drag the net along with him to the shore, and it would
die. He further compared the bound soul to the filthiest worm
found in the filth which would die if it is taken out from there,
and kept in a nice spot. It could not bear the nicer place. Similarly
a bound soul cannot bear the name of God. He loves nothing
other than petty material things. This is how once he described a
bound soul. One amongst his audience got frightened, and asked
with great fear, “Sir, is there no way out for such a soul in
bondage?” Sri Ramakrishna assured him, “Yes, there is a way.”
He further explained that it was the way of singing in praise of
God, enjoying the company of His devotees, meditating on Him,
and living in solitude. The first thing he said was, “Chant the
name of God, sing in His praise.” What will happen then? The
mind will become purer day by day, and it will feel attracted
towards Him.
Then he spoke of holy association with monks, which
means association with the devotees of God who have already
started their journey to God. What will be the result? Through
this association people would realize how to lead a life centred
on God. A holy man is one who is entirely devoted to God.
Then he suggested the need of living occasionally in
solitude, where the devotee would easily retain the idea of God
formed in his mind, and go on reflecting on it. There he can
meditate on Him in loneliness and cogitate on what he had seen
and listened to in the holy company. The continuity of this process
will gradually make our mind pure.
Then he said, “What is the next stage after the mind
becomes pure? God would then manifest Himself to His devotee.”
One who is forgetful for ever, has to be awakened with a shock,
if necessary. We are in deep slumber, we have to be roused. A
mother adopts any means to wake her child. When required, she
even shakes the baby, at times even by pinching the child. Why
does she do all these? The child is sleeping all the time. It wants
to remain inactive and indifferent. Mother does not want that.
She wants to play with her children. She does not want that they
should be forgetful about her. She desires that the children should
be attracted towards her, should come within the world of her
influence, and thus they should know how to tackle with the
imminent worldly afflictions.
The Mother of the universe reincarnated Herself as Sri
Ramakrishna to show the path of salvation to the afflicted souls.
Sri Ramakrishna's teachings are all-embracing and all-engulfing.
He never had any narrow-mindedness, bias or prejudice. There
is nobody who is left out of the perview of his teachings. Those
who are hated, ignored, and rejected by the society as poison,
even for them there is compassion in his heart. For them, too, he
gave teachings in order to take them to higher strata. Sri
Ramakrishna is eager to do that. People who are ignored in the
family, even the drunkard, the debauch, and all sorts of
mischievous persons, are not neglected by Sri Ramakrishna. His
heart bled even for them. This all-embracing, all-engulfing
compassion for souls in bondage is the special characteristic of
Sri Ramakrishna. Though he was holiness itself, the impure
people could come near him and could leave with him the
responsibility of all their misdeeds and of their salvation. He was
always accepting them. He would lead the particular person to
his suitable path. One of the teachings of the Master was not to
disturb anybody's mood or temperamental tendencies. One
should proceed to God according to his own inclination. This was
easy for Sri Ramakrishna, who is the harmonizer of all ideas, the
master of all ideas. That is why he could lead anybody according
to his natural mood. He is the ideal of the monks as well as of the
householders.
When he speaks about renunciation, he makes no
compromise. He says, “My son! Nothing can be attained except
through renunciation!” Wherever one may be stationed in life,
there is no way out for him except through renunciation. If
someone raised any doubt, “We are householders, how can we
renounce everything? This is not possible for us,” immediately
came the rejoinder from him, “You do not have to renounce
externally, it would be sufficient for you to have inner
renunciation.” We must keep it in mind that he never
compromised. He never said that realization was possible without
renunciation. On the contrary he said, “For some renunciation
must be both external and internal; but for others inner
renunciation would be sufficient.” And how many types of
examples he furnished himself by his own life! In the life he lived,
the true nature of an all-renouncing ascetic is shining brightly.
One can also find in his life examples of an ideal
householder, as he lived in family with his near and dear ones.
Sri Ramakrishna wanted to serve his mother so that she would
not suffer. For this reason he took sannyasa (vow of renunciation)
secretly so that his mother did not suffer mental anguish. While
in Vrindaban, the Master met a lady devotee, known as
Gangamayee, whose devotion impressed him and who was also
greatly impressed by him. This spiritually advanced sadhika used
to call the Master as Dulaly, in the sense that he was the
embodiment of Sri Radha. The Master said, “I have a weak
stomach which can not stand all types of food. If I stay here, who
is going to cook for me?” She replied, “I shall cook your food.”
So it was decided that he would thenceforward live in Vrindaban.
At this moment he remembered that his mother was living alone
in the Nahabat in Dakshineswar. Who would look after her if he
stayed at Vrindaban? So the idea was abandoned. He could not
stay at Vrindaban, but returned to his mother. Is it right for a
monk to have so much attachment for his mother? The reply to
this is, an ascetic is not a brute. No; his heart is not a burial ground,
he must have a tender heart but it must not be sold out to one
person or one thing only, his heart will have no constraint, it will
remain open to embrace all.
We notice in the life of Sri Ramakrishna that his love is
all-embracing. He feels sorry in the sorrows of others He feels
joyful in the joy of others. Throughout his whole life what earnest
efforts he made to express to all what is inexpressible, to bring all
within the purview of the supreme spiritual knowledge he had
realized in his own life! We must comprehend these, his life, his
efforts, his teachings. If these fail to lead us in the right direction
we should consider ourselves worse than the souls in bondage.
If we study his life, his teachings, we see what great treasures are
lying there. We should think how much of these we can put into
practice. There we can get all the ingredients and provisions we
need in our life. In so lucid and simple words he uncovered so
many deep mysteries of religious life. He said, “If you feel
attraction towards Him, if your heart weeps for Him, that would
be sufficient. Nothing more would be required.” To pray to him
with extreme humility is the highest form of spiritual practice. If
a devotee wanted to perform further spiritual practices, he would
open out to him the limitless treasure of his own spiritual
practices. Numerous types of sadhana in the paths of Bhakti, Jnana,
Tantra, and the Vedas, he practised. He also called on God in the
mood of Shanta (meditating on the Lord as Asbolute Brahman),
Dasya (worshipping the Lord as His servant), Sakhya (to consider
oneself as the friend of the Lord), Vatsalya (to care for the Lord as
one's child).
His teachings are equally applicable to all.We have to keep
in mind that he is the mould for the multitude, not for one or two
seekers of God only. Nobody is required to change his ideas in
order to cast himself into that mould. Everyone would find in
him the supreme manifestation of his individual ideas and ideals.
This is the most significant characteristic in the life of Sri
Ramakrishna for which we consider him as the confluence of all
religions, harmonizer of all religions. Votaries of various ideas
would find in him the culmination of their individual ideal. He
said, “You keep to your ideal, but you have no right to criticize
the ideas of others. How little do you know about your own ideal,
and yet you dare to criticize others?” He again said, “Do not limit
the ideas of God. Do not say that He can be so and so and nothing
else. His Ideas are infinite. Nobody can put a limit to them.” Sri
Ramakrishna is sympathetic to all. He is the Ideal for all. It has
been particularly described in Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master
that various seekers would consider him as a fellow seeker, and
they would be charmed to witness the splendid manifestation of
the Supreme in him, whichever path they may be following. This
is his special characteristic. If someone enquires about the
significant characteristic of Sri Ramakrishna, if he wants to know
whether he was a Jnani or a Bhakta, a dualist, a qualified nondualist
or a non-dualist, we can straightway say that he belongs
to all spiritual paths. No path has been left out by him. He is the
King, the emperor in the realm of Divinity, as the author of
Lilaprasanga said about him. He was the Master of all spiritual
moods and attitudes.
Let us meditate on Sri Ramakrishna. It would be sufficient
for us if we can surrender to him. Our lives will be illumined in
his splendour. I pray to Sri Ramakrishna for all. Let his light
remove the darkness from our lives. Let his influence attract us
towards him, his affection inspire us to surrender to him. Let his
advent among us be meaningful. Let our lives become full.

Reprinted from Prabuddha Bharata, June 1988

Location: New Delhi