Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

‘X’ was murmuring to me that I should speak about ‘How to love a quality’. If she had asked me, what are the qualities to be loved, I could understand. She is asking me to speak about, how to develop love for a quality. Well, anything is a question and it has to be answered.

What is meant by quality itself? I think quality has got two meanings. I have not consulted the dictionary and thought about it very specially. Whatever little knowledge comes to me, I am speaking about it. Quality has got two meanings. One is the characteristic of a product. Salt is saline. Milk is white and fluid. Ice is cold. Fire is hot. All these are considered to be qualities or characteristics of the respective products. Another meaning of the word quality in which sense ‘X’ should have asked me, another meaning is that, something that qualifies a person. The qualification can be bad as well as good. For example, untruthfulness or lying. He is given to lying, that is his quality, when we say, obviously it is a bad quality. And whatever is a good quality, be truthful, be honest, be straightforward, be loving, be kind, be considerate, have patience, be tolerant, all these are qualities which are good. I hope ‘X’ must have asked me about how to develop love for good qualities.

I have a definition. ‘Goodness is good indeed. Love is lovable.’ Do you disagree or agree? Whatever is good, goodness is good indeed. And love by its very nature is lovable. Hate by its very nature is hate-able. So, there are qualities which are not desirable. The undesirable qualities by their very undesirable nature are to be kept away, are to be rejected and dissuaded. And qualities which are good are to be sought, cultivated and preferably mastered. Is there any doubt about it? Otherwise the word quality will not have any meaning at all. Any good quality by its very nature, mark my words, any quality by its very nature will qualify the individual to become better in every way.

We must always cultivate health, health, health, not ill health. So health is something that is enriching to the body, it makes the body pliable, functional, flexible, tolerant, it also develops immunity. Health has got so many qualities which nobody can hate or dislike. In the same manner, either the qualities are qualifying the body or they are qualifying the mind and the intelligence. You can even say, we can qualify our ego to become flexible and humble whenever it is required and to become assert, confident, like Hanuman deciding to jump over to Lanka, can you imagine how lofty and exalted his ego was? “I am a lover of Rama, a servant of Rama, a devotee of Rama, whatever my Lord wants me to do and accomplish, I have the power, wish and will to, to accomplish.” Thus saying he took a leap to Lanka from Mahendraachala. Is not devotion then, a decorative factor ornamental to the human mind?

Any good quality by its very nature will, what? Will strengthen your personality, will make it more and more functional. It will improve your characteral worth, behavioral majesty and interactional efficiency. It will make you more and more lovable, amiable, acceptable. It will help you to interact with anybody at all. It will make you sharper, more focused, more concentric. It will make you enlarged, expansive. It will make you very flexible; it will make you persistent, persevering. You will have the ability and the skill to apply your senses, mind and intelligence with tenacity, tenacity, pointed-ness. Any quality is like that.

Krishna describes the stitaprajna. The word itself is something very great. What is that? A man of stable mind, stable intellect, the mind and the intellect will not waver, will not swerve, they will remain firm, resolute and they will apply themselves tenaciously to anything that is required. There are so many qualities mentioned. Whenever you hear about them, when you understand the word and what it signifies, automatically you will have to fall in love with that quality. Otherwise it is not a quality at all. Fire is hot, it will heat. So whenever we require something to be heated, we resort to and seek fire. Milk is nourishing. Whenever you want to have some food, you use milk as part of it. We are taking vitamins, why? We are resorting to treatment whenever we are sick, what is the reason? Because in the hands of the treatment, our health will be restored, ill-health will be dispensed with and we will be more functional in this world.

So, in the matter of a good quality I don’t think there is any choice and there need be any compulsion by its very nature. Whenever you want to see something, you put on the light because light has got the quality of illumining the things in front of your eyes. So, in the matter of resorting to light there is no second thought at all. There is a blanket, you feel cold, immediately you wrap up your body with a blanket because it has got a capacity to insulate yourself against cold. You put on the fan when you are sweating. If these are all bodily relevant, many of these qualities are relevant to the mind and the intelligence. Try to be good, try to be honest, try to be open, try to be sincere, try to be humble, develop the power of assimilation to the mind, develop the art of thinking, introspecting, so that the intelligence will improve.

I always say, anybody who is spiritually exposed, who imbibes spirituality to any degree in any kind and level, if he is a student he will perform better. This is what I say. If you take normally one hour to read any portion and understand it, if you have spiritual affinity and association, you will find you will be able to read and understand if not in thirty minutes at least in forty minutes. Is it not an improvement? If you are given to something like scoring 60 percent, you will find by chanting Vishnu Sahasranama, by being exposed to spirituality, reciting Bhagavad Gita, your intelligence will become sharper and subtler and you will be scoring 85, 90 percent.

Any kind of a good quality is always, it is an addition; it is an addition, a functional addition, an interactional addition either to the body and senses or to the mind or to the intelligence or to the ego. When this is the nature of qualities, what else than loving them is the option before man? You cannot but fall in love with them. I would like every one of you to fall in love with a quality the moment you hear about it. I read many years back a verse from Uddhava Gita.

All are qualities. muniḥ – the ascetic person. prasanna gambheero – he is profoundly cheerful or he is cheerfully profound. prasanna-gambhīraḥ.

All of you are cheerful. But I don’t find your cheer to be persisting. You are cheerful when the stomach is full, somebody speaks a few good words, you get the article of your choice, some exchange, some pleasantries, cut jokes, laugh, this is not prasanna gambheeratva. You have to be profoundly cheerful. You have to either gain something or discover something or have an anchor by virtue of which you feel, ‘Yes, I have got this. My mind will not swing or swerve. Therefore, I can comfortably laugh and smile not fearing anything. This moment I laugh and smile, next moment I am assailed. No. I don’t have to be. In grief as well as joy I have found an anchor from which I will never be dislodged.’ When you understand in this manner your cheerfulness becomes profound.

durvigāhyo duratyayaḥ – it is not easy to measure the inner magnitude, poise, majesty and magnificence of a knower of truth, very difficult to measure. You have to become a knower to understand a knower. durvigāhyo duratyayaḥ – don’t pick up any competition or jealousy with a knower. You won’t be able to excel him easily. Try to emulate him. Try to adhere to what he says. Don’t try to excel. It is very difficult, unsurpassable.

agādhabuddhiḥ – he has got deep, deep, profound intelligence.

akṣobhyaḥ – he will not be agitated, agitated.

stimitoda ivārṇavaḥ – a lot of evaporation takes place from the sea. The sea does not get reduced. A number of inflow from rivers also takes place, it does not swell. So neither swelling nor declining, the sea remains firm in its own content and majesty.

When I read this verse, my dear souls, I would like every one of you to be like me. This one verse was sufficient for me to understand what spirituality, spiritual wisdom and the bounties it bestows are.

What more do you want? Is there anybody in this assembly who will not fall in love with this kind of a quality which fulfils the human being? So this is my answer. Any quality when you understand it, instantly it is imperative that you develop a fondness for it and you start cultivating it. The process of cultivation is in loving it, remembering it, spending mind-hours on it. This is the way.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.