The Sermonizer of Bhagwad Gita is Sri Krishna

[Guest guest]

, pyari_h <no_reply> wrote:

>

> Namaste all. _/\_

>

> Dear DSI,

> You may enjoy reading the quotes from many Scriptures given in my old

> message of March 06, 2002 posted on the occasion of 'Maha Shiva

Ratri' at:

>

> /message/3350

 

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Namaskar Pyariji,

 

Very nice is the message you have given at:

 

/message/3350

 

I read Swami Vivekananda books and this story by Swamiji seems

appropriate in the context and carries foward the message that you

were trying to give through your give in messages 3350 and 7466 ( I do

not know who deleted this message ) :

 

Take up one idea, your Ishta, and let the whole soul be devoted to it.

Practise this from day to day until you see the result, until the soul

grows. And if it is sincere and good, that very idea will spread till

it covers the whole universe. Let it spread by itself; it will all

come from the inside out. Then you will say that your Ishta is

everywhere and that He is in everything.

 

Of course, at the same time, we must always remember that we must

recognize the Ishtas of others and respect them — the other ideas of

God — or else worship will degenerate into fanaticism. There is an old

story of a man who was a worshipper of Shiva. There are sects in our

country who worship God as Shiva, and others who worship Him as

Vishnu. This man was a great worshipper of Shiva, and to that he added

a tremendous hatred for all worshippers of Vishnu and would not hear

the name of Vishnu pronounced. There are a great number of worshippers

of Vishnu in India, and he could not avoid hearing the name. So he

bored two holes in his ears and tied two little bells onto them.

Whenever a man mentioned the name of Vishnu, he moved his head and

rang the bells, and that prevented his hearing the name.

 

But Shiva told him in a dream, "What a fool you are! I am Vishnu, and

I am Shiva; they are not different—only in name. There are not two

Gods". But this man said, "I don't care. I will have nothing to do

with this Vishnu business".

 

He had a little statue of Shiva and made it very nice, built an altar

for it. One day he bought some beautiful incense and went home to

light some of the incense for his God. While the fumes [smoke] of his

incense were rising in the air, he found that the image was divided

into two: one half remained Shiva, and the other half was Vishnu. Then

the man jumped up and put his finger under the nostril of Vishnu so

that not a particle of the smell could get there.

 

Then Shiva became disgusted, and the man became [was turned into] a

demon. He is [known as] the father of all fanatics, the "bell-eared"

demon. He is respected by the boys of India, and they worship him. It

is a very peculiar kind of worship. They make a clay image and worship

him with all sorts of horrible smelling flowers. There are some

flowers in the forests of India which have a most pestilential smell.

They worship him with these and then take big sticks and beat the

image. He [the "bell-eared" demon] is the father of all fanatics who

hate all other gods except their own.

 

This is the only danger in this Nishthâ Bhakti — becoming this

fanatical demon. The world gets full of them. It is very easy to hate.

The generality of mankind gets so weak that in order to love one, they

must hate another; they must take the energy out of one point in order

to put it into another.

 

 

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Hope this story also drives the right point.

 

Namaskar,

DSI