Thought of the Week :)

A man once asked the Mystic Bayazid Al- Bistami:

“Who is the true Prince? The man who cannot choose, said Bayazid :

But the man for whom God’s choice is the only possible choice.”

The Lord is extending the Gift of Immortality to each of us, but we do not reach out to take it because we are holding a few pennies in our hands. I don’t knowif you have seen infants in this dilemma; it happens at a particular stage of development, when they have learned to grasp but not quite mastered the art of letting go. They have a rattle I one hand; you offer them a toothbrush , and for a while they just look back and forth at the toothbrush, then the rattle, then again at the brush. You can almost see the gray matter working: “ I want that toothbrush, but how can I take it? My hand is already full.”

Similarly, all of us look at the Lord’s Gift for a while, asking “ What is this? How do I know its real? Give it to me first ; then I’ll let the pennies go.”

The Lord smiles and waits. He can offer the Gift, but for us to take it, we have to open our hands. And there comes a time when we want something more than those pennies so passionately that we longer care what it costs.

Then we open our hands finally, let go of our possessions and discover that for those pennies we have dropped, we have received an Incomparable Treasure :)

Lord Krishna says in The Bhagavad Gita,
( The Sacred Scripture of Hinduism)
" It is indeed impossible for any embodied being to abstain from work altogether. But he who gives up the fruit of action, he is said to be the Relinquisher." Chapter xviii- Verse 11

The Gita insists not on the renunciation of actions but on performing duties with renunciation of desire for the fruits of such actions.

" An action which is obligatory, which is performed without attachment, without love or hate by one undesirous of fruit, that is said to be of Goodness." Chapter xviii- Verse 23

Thought of the day :)

" God remembers us, though we remember Him not." the Master said.
"If He forgot creation for a second, everything would disappear tracelessly. Who but He holds in the sky this mud ball of earth? Who but He impels the growth of trees and flowers?
It is The Lord alone who maintains the beat of our hearts, digests our food, and daily renews our body cells. Yet how few of His children give Him a thought! "
"The mind, " Paramahansaji said, "is like a miraculous rubber band that can be expanded to Infinity without breaking. "

-Sayings of Sri Paramahansa Yogananda (PBUH)

The Cosmic Audition

In India, we have a story about a man who was the perfect model of respectability, who always did what the letter of the law demanded. When he died, he was taken before Chitragupta, the Cosmic Auditor.
Chitragupta looked at the man’s record. There was not a single entry on the debit page. He was impressed. Then he turned to the credit page and stared in astonishment. This page, too, was completely blank. Chitragupta didn’t know what to do. The man had never helped anybody, never hurt anybody, never offended anybody, never loved anybody.
He couldn’t be sent to heaven, but he couldn’t be sent to hell either.

So Chitragupta took him to Brahma, The God of Creation, and said, “You made this guy. What shall I do with him?”

Lord Brahma looked at the statute books and couldn’t find a precedent to cover the case, so he said, “Take him to Krishna.”
Lord Krishna said, “The buck stops here.” He examined the records very carefully and there, almost illegible, was an ancient credit entry: “Gave two cents to a beggar at the age of six.”

“There,” Sri Krishna said, “Return his two cents and send him back to earth to try again.”

Until we have learned to give freely of ourselves, we have not learned how to live. Give to the world what you desire the world to give you... and do that with all your love because Love has no errors, for all errors are the want of love :)

And as The Corinthians 11 states beautifully, “God loveth a cheerful giver.”