A small story:🔗

Once a sadhu, a wandering mendicant, was passing through a village, when he received a complaint from the villagers about a cobra that was playing havoc with their lives.

The sadhu was known to have the power to communicate with animals, so they begged him to convince the cobra to spare the villagers.

So the sadhu spoke to the cobra, and the cobra promised not to bite any of the villagers anymore.

A few months later, the sadhu was passing through the same village when he came upon the cobra, badly bruised and almost dead.

'What happened to you? Why are you hurt?' Asked the sadhu.

The cobra cried, 'O sadhu! It is you who made me promise never to bite the villagers! I have kept my promise to this day. But the villagers, who were earlier in fear of me, took my mildness to be weakness. Seeing that I don't bite, they started torturing me everyday. See what a state I have been reduced to!'

The sadhu replied, 'My poor foolish friend! I only asked you not to bite. Did I ask you not to hiss?'

You need to use anger in the right way in the right quantities. Anger is a tremendous energy if we know how to use it rightly.

Knowledge about anger reduces anger.

Many people come to me and tell me, 'Swamiji, I love my wife so much. That

Knowledge about anger reduces anger. is why I want her to change for the better! That's why I fight with her.'

I tell them, 'You don't love your wife; you love the image that you carry in your mind.'

You love your image and whenever your wife matches the image, you love her. Your real love is not for your wife; it is for your mental image. If you really loved your wife, you would change your image to suit your wife. You would not expect her to match the image.

Most of us love our images. That is the beginning of unrest in our homes. That is the beginning of an intimate war! Honestly I tell you, lovers are intimate enemies. They are intimate but constantly on guard. They are constantly trying to dominate each other.

Real intimacy is when you are totally relaxed with the other. That is real intimacy.

feeling of condemnation. When you say the words 'accept him with all his faults', it is like a silent complaint. It is like saying, 'What to do, we have to live with it.' No! I tell you, welcome the other person into your life, just as he or she is. There is a difference between accepting and welcoming. Accepting is like making a compromise. Welcoming is opening out your being to the other person without any expectation, unconditionally.

The whole of creation is a gift to you from Existence. Receive it with grace and humility. When you do this, the tremendous energy that is usually locked in imagination, expectation and greed can be made available for creativity, for business, for life, and for reality!

Not only that, you will find your house becoming a kshetra, a shrine of peace. Our houses are meant to be dharmakshetras - abodes of righteousness, but they have become kurukshetras - abodes of war! And why have they become abodes of war? Because we are chiseling human beings. If we chisel idols or wood, we can make

Welcome the other person into your life, just as he or she is. beautiful forms and furniture, but if we chisel human beings, only suffering will follow.

One man asked me, 'Swamiji can you please tell me a way to find a connection with the eighteen-handed Devi.'

I told him, 'First you try to find a connection with your two-handed wife and then we will see how to establish a connection with the eighteen-handed Devi!'

Another man came to me and asked for blessings for a divorce.

I told him that I would give blessings for marriage but not for divorce.

I asked him what the problem was and if I could sort it out.

He told me, 'Swamiji, this morning, I asked for coffee. She came with the coffee with such haste that she spilled it on my clothes.'

I was shocked and told him that the incident seemed too trivial to ask for a divorce.

He went on to say, 'Swamiji, you don't know. Today she poured coffee, tomorrow she will pour acid.'

I was shocked. I told him, 'Ayyah, why do you want to move from coffee to acid without any reason? All she did was spill coffee in some anger and haste and in any case, she is going to be the one who is going to wash your clothes!'

He continued, 'Swamiji, during our marriage ceremony, there is a custom wherein three pots of water are kept and the couple are meant to put their hands in all three of them to try and find a ring which has been dropped in one of them. As early as that time, she scratched my hand with her fingernail!'

In order to zero down the distance between the couple, small games such as these are played during Hindu weddings. The man had been keeping a 10-year track of such trivial incidents!

I asked him, 'Ayyah, if you maintain such a police track record, how can one live with you?'

You see, there are two things that we do: One is, presenting arguments and looking for a judgment, while the second is, forming a judgment and then collecting arguments to support that judgment. The second is what we do 99% of the time.

There are many things happening around us but we register only what we want to register, never what is really happening. Because of this, we miss reality. Reality continuously exists but we see only what we want to see. In marriage, within the first few months, the man or woman forms a judgment about the other and from then on, whatever the other does, he or she sees from the point of view of the judgment. They search and collect arguments to maintain their judgment.

That is why, if you decide that your wife is a fool, she will always look like a fool no matter what. If you decide that your husband is the type who controls you, he will always appear in that way to you, whatever he may be doing.

If you do this, you will never be able to see the real aspects of your spouse; you will see only those aspects that feed your judgment. This is like when you are hungry, only restaurants hit your eye on the road. In the same way, before killing a dog what do we do? We call it a mad dog and then kill it.

Drop this attitude. Only then you will find a certain freshness in every person and thing that you come by.

A small story:

A man walked into a police station to complain that his wife was missing since three hours.

The policeman asked him, 'Can you give me details about her height, weight etc.'

The man said, 'Oh! I don't know.'

The policeman asked, 'What was she wearing when she left the house?'

The man said, 'I did not notice, sir. But wait, she took the dog with her. I know that.'

The policeman asked, 'What kind of dog is it?'

The man replied, 'A dalmation breed with grey spots instead of black; he weighs 50 lbs and has a pure white tail with no spots on it; he wears a brown collar with a silver chain. His name is Spot.'

The policeman said, 'That's enough. We will find them!'

A husband and wife live with each other with a certain freshness for probably a few months after marriage. In those few months, they collect judgments about the other. After that, they don't relate with each other at all. They don't actually see the other person itself. They relate with the judgments, that's all.

The husband relates with the judgments that he has collected about his wife and the wife relates with the judgments that she has collected about her husband. The actual husband and actual wife are different! They become four people in one house.

Just do an honest check. How long is it since you looked into the eye of your husband or wife and spoke to him or her? A very long time I am sure. And we feel that the early days were golden days and that life has become boring. If you really see, it is your attitude that makes it boring.

You give absolutely no room for a person to evolve. You are in such a hurry to typecast them. You don't want to take in anything new on their account. I tell you, you don't even see your wife or husband after a few years of marriage because you are happy relating with your image of them.

What will happen then? You will land up like this man who was clueless about his own wife's particulars! Not knowing a wife's particulars is a very superficial level problem. The understanding I am trying to express goes deeper than that. You actually miss the real person who is living with you. You live with your idea about the person.

For just 24 hours, make up your mind that you will see your wife or husband as if you are seeing her or him for the first time. Receive every word or action of hers with a freshness and innocence without jumping to conclusions. Feel lovingness in you towards her. Even if she says things that provoke you, listen to those statements with awareness and respond in a calm and loving way, instead of in the usual resistive way. You will see that you are actually opening out new avenues for both of you; you are giving the two of you a new space to relate.

Suddenly, you will realize that all along it was your attitude that made things look miserable. Of course, you might say that the other person too must reciprocate. You have the power to transform yourself and others. With just a change in your mental make-up, you can do much. When you decide to change, the other person will automatically change their ways too.

A small story:

A man was walking past a cemetery one day when he heard a

You have the power to transform yourself and others. With just a change in your mental make-up, you can do much. loud cry from inside. He felt obliged to stop by and see if he could offer help. He walked in and saw a man crying loudly near a tombstone. He was repeatedly saying, 'Why did you have to go? Why did you have to go?'

The man felt really sad for his suffering, so he went near him and asked, 'Sir, I am sorry. Was it your wife?'

The man replied, 'No. It is her first husband.'

Relationships turn out to be a trauma because of a sheer mismatch between one's own imagination and reality. Still worse, people move from one relationship to another thinking that the next one is going to match their imagination. They go with it for some time and find out that there is something lacking there also and move onto the next. It never occurs to them that there is nothing wrong with the other person.

Relationships turn out to be a trauma because of a sheer mismatch between one's own imagination and reality.

Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult for youngsters to tolerate one another and marriages are breaking up so easily. It is such a pity to see these things happening. An awakening is needed now. Only a deep understanding can bring about this awakening.

If you read all the love stories written until now, you will find that nowhere have the man and woman stayed with each other on a full- time basis at a functional level, in reality!

In a story about eternal lovers written by Rabindranath Tagore, the hero and heroine decide to live as eternal lovers on the two sides of the river Ganga. Periodically, they come by boat, meet each other and get back.

If they do this, obviously they will be at peace during the time they meet. Every time they meet, there will be freshness in the air, and as they know that they will be together for only a few hours. These moments becomes precious!

All eternal lovers, be they Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu or Ambikapathi and Amaravathi, never really lived together!

The problem is, life doesn't have background music! When you watch the love stories on television, they all come with background music and so you easily enter into a fantasy world. All the scenes that you see, especially the love scenes, come with background music. You enjoy it so much because of the background music. You are completely mesmerized by the atmosphere created in the television box.

In real life, you search for that music and don't find it! But if you find that music within yourself, then you won't look for it outside. Finding it within yourself is nothing but creating the beautiful space within you where everything is experienced as wonderful part of Existence.

Remember that your husband or wife is a creation of God. Your creation cannot compete with God's creation! Only His creation will win!

Today, there is a very large instance of pornography, fantasy, dreams and perversion in society. People have started going to other poor substitutes to fulfill their fantasies. Pornography does not fulfill sexual life; it creates more fantasies and perversion, that's all. But there is such a

Finding it within yourself is experiencing everything as a wonderful part of Existence. compulsion for fantasizing. Understand one thing: unless you are weak, nothing becomes a compulsion for you.

When you are strong, you can drop anything.

(A lady shares her views) Swamiji, you ask us to be as we are. But how can we live in society just as we are? I think we have to change according to the family, the society.

Yes, everybody faces this problem on a practical level. You say, 'Swamiji, I have to act according to the other.' I ask you, why not also make sure that others act according to you? True, in society, we have to be dependent on each other. There is no other way. But be very clear of your limits.

Be independently dependent!

Be very clear, which is your space and which is the other's. Try your best to enrich your own life, without disturbing one another.