BUTTER, THE MIND

There was an engineering college located in the holy city of Dwaraka. The college was known for producing excellent minds as admissions were open only for the bright students unlike the current educational system in India. The college along with the usual portions
taught the students ancient values, values only ancient in their birth although. In that college studied two girls, Meera and Radha who bonded really well and got very close. Everybody believed they added a new meaning to the term friendship. Out of the two, Meera lived in a village while Radha, born with a silver anklet, earrings, chain apart from spoon lived in the same city of Dwaraka. When the vacations came, Meera invited Radha to their village. The rich Radha had gone to Meera’s village for the first time from her city-dwelling. On the first day, before retiring to bed, Radha opened a pot in which there was cow’s milk and added little buttermilk to it. Radha asked Meera– “Hey, that was butter milk; and why have you mixed it with Milk? The milk may be spoilt!”
“God!Radha” answered Meera “ Since it is Krishna-jayanthi tomorrow, we require butter and by adding buttermilk to milk, we get butter.”
“But where is butter in it, Meera?”
“It is in every drop of the milk, dear Radha; but you can’t see it now. I will show you in the morning.” In the morning Radha, to her astonishment saw that what was liquid(milk) had become solid overnight(curd).
Meera put a churning rod into the vessel and started churning the curd vigorously. Butter began to float on the surface of the curd. Then she gathered it all up and presented it to the wonderment of Radha.
Meera explained-“The addition of buttermilk curdles the milk. Milk is transformed into curd. Then you have to churn it. By this process the butter which was all-pervasively hidden in the milk appears. At first you were not able to see it; it was hidden. From where has it come now? It has indeed come from the milk only.Do you understand now that it was there all the time? It awaited the process of churning to reveal itself to your great joy.”
Then Radha too followed the same process and got the butter for herself.

Eternal-happiness or supreme bliss like the butter lies within the mind which is the curd. However the search for the same must be begun as early as possible for nobody ever waits when on a journey of finding supreme-priceless treasure.Do we?
Questions such as how,when,why,where will be answered in the posts to come
Apart from Radha learning the nuances of butter-making from milk, the story incidentally points out at another fact ie : people living in the city may be better in terms wealth and technology though the lack of knowledge in a lot of basic things is definitely for the worse.

Chant

Hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare
Hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare

and be happy

Visit http://namadwaar.org/

thank you

jai gurunath

RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA'S PARABLE

There is a very thin line which separates needs from wants.It takes tremendous intelligence to recognise the true needs of an individual.Many times wants disguise itself as intellectual needs and gets the individual entangled into the web of misery.Ofcourse the basic needs of of food,shelter and clothing are absolutely necessary for sustaining a vegetative life.Here is a humorous tale based on Sri Ramakrishna paramahamsa's parable.
'I cant stand it anymore,enough is enough' said Joseph ramkrishna khan, a person who got bored of the material life,wanting to attain self realisation.He was very desperate in this respect and he was supremely convinced that he cannot achieve his goal if he stayed in a place inhabited by people and hence sacrificed all his ownage and left for the forest. En-route he turned an ascetic. He possessed only those equipments that are required to perform rituals by ascetics apart from two holy-robes which meant that while he would be wearing one of them, the other would have to washed and dried for the subsequent day's use.The fourth day after he'd reached the forest, while he was involved in intense meditation,he heard some noise in the direction of the drying-robe.
When he opened his eyes, he was shocked to find that a rat was tearing apart his robe. Since that was his only reserve-clothing, he got a little worked-up. He felt like killing the rat instantaneously but then his ascetic-status prohibited the same.Just when he thought he had ran out of options, his mind pointed out that he could rear a wild cat which would kill the rat in any case.Following his mind's order, he got a wild cat. A week had passed by. The second robe was now fully torn by the rat.The wild cat was of no help.The ascetic again while thinking about the same believed that it was due to the cat's poor health condition that it couldn't kill the rat.Hence he concluded that milk would make the cat healthy and hence got a cow from the forest.While the purpose of turning to a forest being meditation and god realisation, the renunciate didn't want to waste time milking the cow.Therefore he wanted to appoint somebody to milk the cow, but he knew too well that nobody would agree to work in a forest. Consequently he thought that marriage was his only resort as his wife would have to stay with him all the time.He got married.His wife was okay with everything only for a few days, she also started complaining about the forest and asked him to get her constructed a wall, a fence wall which would prevent wild animals from entering the place. The renunciate thought it was fair-enough and got a wall constructed. Again she got unhappy about the
conditions(Earlier,in the 3rd post we saw our mind being a monkey).She wanted her ascetic-husband to get her constructed a house. The sanyasi again felt it was fair and went on to construct a huge house, more like a bungalow.The ascetic now got worried and insecure about the future of this big super-structure ie: his house regarding its ownership and maintainence and it is said that a year later his wife gave birth to a baby.
The sanyasi,a renunciate that he is, sacrificed everything and came to the forest only to live a normal human being's life after falling into the renunciate-order.
With this example,one can easily differentiate between needs and wants.Though they may appear to be synonymous, they quite aren't.

Chant
Hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare
Hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare

and be happy

Visit http://namadwaar.org/

thank you
jai gurunath