Sivananda's Personality - 26.

-

26.

The Master gave without embarrassing the recipient. Maybe a distressed man came to him with a plea, "Swamiji, I am a poor Sadhu. I am in need of a blanket. The cold wind is freezing me."

The Master would say, "Achcha Maharaj, kindly sing a Kirtan. You have a very good voice."

The Sadhu would sing or chant "Ram, Ram, Ram" or "Radhe Shyam" for a few minutes.
The Master would then quietly give a ten-rupee note to him, saying, "Kirtan bahut achcha hai—the Kirtan was very nice."
The money took on the colour, not of a lofty gift, but of a present, a token of the Master’s earnest appreciation of the Kirtan.
What mattered more than the money was the heart. The Master had a large heart.

Sri N. Ananthanarayanan
 To be continued  ...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Biography :

-
Image
Personal Life & Legacy : Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel tied the knot at the age of 18, to Jhaverba, who was twelve years of age then. Following the traditional Hindu customs, which allowed the bride to stay with her parents until her husband had a decent income and an established household, the two stayed apart for a few years until Sardar Patel had definite income to fall back on. Along with Jhaverba, he set up a house in Godhra. The couple was blessed with a daughter, Manibehn, in 1904, and a son, Dahyabhai, two years later. In 1909, Jhaverba, who was suffering from cancer, underwent a major surgical operation. Though the operation was successful, Jhaverba’s health continued to decline. She passed away the same year. Patel was against remarrying and instead raised his children with the help of his family. Patel’s health started declining in the summer of 1950. Though he was taken care of intensely, his health worsened. To recuperate, he was flown to Mumbai, where he
Read more

20. BALASUNDARAM :

-
Image
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH by Mohandas K. Gandhi Part-2. 20. BALASUNDARAM : The heart's earnest and pure desire is always fulfilled. In my own experience I have often seen this rule verified. Service of the poor has been my heart's desire, and it has always thrown me amongst the poor and enabled me to identify myself with them. Although the members of the Natal Indian Congress included the Colonial-born Indians and the Clerical class, the unskilled wage- earners, the indentured labourers were still outside its pale. The Congress was not yet theirs. They could not afford to belong to it by paying the subscription and becoming its members. The Congress could win their attachment only by serving them. An opportunity offered itself when neither the Congress nor I was really ready for it. I had put in scarcely three or four months' practice, and the Congress also was still in its infancy, when a Tamil man in tattered clothes,
Read more

Sivananda's Personality - 15.

-
Image
In 1949, opening a cupboard, the Master’s attendant found a bedsheet bitten by a rat, and inside the sheet were four of its newborns. They had hardly opened their eyes. He took them to the Master. When the Master saw the baby rats, his heart was flooded with compassion. He felt greatly pained that they should have been disturbed. He asked the attendant to put them back immediately in the same place and condition, lest their mother should miss them. This was done. But in a day or two, the mother rat got killed by a cat. Soon after, the little ones also died. When the Master saw the dead rats, he felt sad and did Maha Mantra Kirtan for a pretty long time for the peace of the departed souls. His attendant also joined him in the Kirtan. The Master fed ants with sugar, birds with rice, monkeys with gram, fish with bread. He kept water in pots for birds. "This will develop mercy and cosmic love," he said. "It will soften the stony heart
Read more