Self Judgement: Swami Dayananda Saraswati

[Guest guest]

Dear All:

 

Below is a satsang by Swami Dayananda

Saraswati. Many consider him

to be a Mahatma. (I do not know

either way nor am I qualified

to assess)

 

The Swami shared the stage with

Amma at the Millennium Peace

Summit at the United Nations

The talk is called SELF JUDGEMENT.

I feel better after reading it.

Below the talk is a brief quote

by Amma. (tangentially related

in subject matter.

 

SELF JUDGEMENT by Sri Swami Dayananda

 

Suppose I say, I am a failure, it is a judgement. A

lot of people have this problem. Everybody has a

judgement somewhere in a corner. I am a failure, I am

worthless, I am useless, I am ugly. Even Miss Universe

has this problem. You may wonder, how? She is declared

by a panel of judges, to be the most beautiful woman.

She is crowned also. All the newspapers and T.V. write

and talk about Miss Universe. It means the whole world

has accepted her as the most beautiful woman. One

cannot be more beautiful than that. Humanity has

accepted her. Only gods have to declare whether she is

beautiful or not. And she has to decide whether she is

beautiful or not. We need not bother about gods. In

the eyes of gods, everything must be beautiful.

Therefore only she has to accept herself that she is

beautiful. Hereafter this woman need not prove herself

to anybody. So from the next day she can come out in a

simple dress. She need not have any make-up. But I

tell you, now she has more responsibility. Being a

Miss Universe, she spends more time with her cosmetics

that she did before. Because after all she is Miss

Universe. How can she come out like that? She is not

convinced that she is the most beautiful!

Everybody has a self-judgement. That is called

ahankara. It is always small. Until you gain

Self-knowledge, there is self-judgement. So what is a

judgement? A judgement is based on some data and that

means it is not knowledge, really. That is why it is

called a judgement. All the judges when they judge,

purely go by evidence. They have to be as objective as

possible, keeping their subjective feeling etc.,

aside.

That is called a judgement. Knowledge is different. A

judgement may be other than what the fact is. If the

judgement and fact happen to be identical, it is your

luck. But knowledge has to take place. Till then it is

a judgement. Therefore if you make a judgement about

yourself, instead of realising you are ananda, you are

amrta, which is the fact about the Self, you are

always going to judge yourself smaller than what you

really are. If I am less than infinite, what am I?

Finite. And what is the distance between infinite and

finite? Infinite. That is the problem. In the absence

of knowledge of what you confront or deal with, you

have to judge. You cannot avoid judgement. That is the

reason why we are always seeking, because there is a

judgement which we cannot live happily with. So we

seek. That is the original beggarly problem of the

human being. We want to prove ourselves better than

what we think we are all the time.

The judgement is invariably based firstly upon our

body and mind and then upon the body-related and

society-related things. Therefore in a society where

cows are wealth, you must have, a few cows. Then you

are rich. In a society, where power means something,

you must have power. Then you are big.

When you say "I am a failure", on what basis you are

saying that? "Oh, I started a business and I lost even

the capital and a friend too." So, that particular

undertaking was a failure.

Then you took up a job. There also you could not do

well. That was again a problem. When it happens twice,

thrice, your wife and others also start saying that

you are a failure and that they knew you would fail

even before you started. So people around are not very

helpful. They confirm your own opinion.

Now on this basis you say, "I am a failure." This is

exactly what is called lumping - putting a lot of

things together. We are lumpers really speaking! To

say "I am a failure", you should be of a failure all

the way, that is, if you wish to lift your leg or

hand, you should fail to do it. Then you are a

failure. If you eat, you should fail to digest the

food. Then you are a failure. But you do carry out

hundreds of tasks everyday where you are successful.

Only one or two are the tasks you failed in. Even that

business which you call failure, is also not a total

failure, really speaking. May be you did it for two

years during which period, you took money out of it,

you lived out of it. Then why not call it an

experience, which in fact it is?

There is no failure in life. There are only varieties

of experiences. We learn from experiences, not from

failure. We become sad by failure, wiser by

experience. Memory is meant to serve us, to enable us

to remember, not to become a basis to make judgement.

If you do not remember what happened, how are you

going to judge? "I am a failure" is purely based on

memory. Memory is meant not to make judgements about

you. Memory is just to help you remember that you

already had your lunch; otherwise you will be eating

another lunch! It is purely for that purpose. Memory

is also a karana, a means. But we make a karta, an

agent out of it. There, too, you take a part of it,

just blow it out of proportion and then place yourself

under that judgement completely and conclude, "I am a

failure".

Nobody is a failure. This self-judgement is purely due

to non-recognition of the fact that life is a variety

of experiences. You learn from them. Nobody every

fails.

 

...

 

Amma said:

 

"Mother participates fully and completely in whatever

She is doing at the moment. While receiving Her

children during darshan, Mother offers Herself to them

and forgets Herself. Mother doesn't care about Her own

body or any physical comforts. She is completely

available to Her devotees, offering them Her whole

being as She participates in their happiness and

sorrow, their success and failures. She is fully

present without the least presence of an ego or any

judgement."

 

Sri Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Awaken Children, Vol. 7 p77