The “Holi” Festival is celebrated in different parts of India in honour of Spring. With the return of Spring is this festival observed every year. Again and again, has the feeling grown on me, that an influence flows, a fragrance emanates from trees and stones, from streams and stars — on the Holi day. That day a new life moves on this ancient Earth: the southern breeze blows beautifully, and the birds sing their new songs of hope and love. Verily, the “Holi” marks a new turn in the cycle of seasons: and there is joy that day in Hindu homes.
On that day was born a prophet of love — Sri Chaitanya. He was born in Nadia — still a seat of Sanskrit learning. Like
Guru Nanak and Saint Kabir, Sri Chaitanya bore witness to Divine Love and out of him moved out influences which shaped the deeper life of Bengal and Orissa, of Bihar, Assam and the Deccan.
Sri Chaitanya in Bengal and Sankara Dev in Assam taught the cult of bhakti or devotion to Krishna and Radha. Sankara Dev’s Vaishnava movement, like Sri Chaitanya’s, was a protest at once against intellectualism and ceremonialism. Both, Sri Chaitanya and Sankara Dev had a simple ceremonial consisting of devotion, hymns and prayers. The message of Sri Chaitanya and Sri Sankara Dev is, also, the message of Holi: it is the message of Divine Love — love for God and love for man. The
coloured water poured on the Holi day is but a symbol of the love which should flow out of our hearts to this broken, shattered world. Both, Chaitanya and Sankara Dev rediscovered Krishna and Brindaban. Krishna was love incarnate and Brindaban was the shrine of love. The message of the Holi calls us to the new life of love. Without it the world would belong to armed brutes. Under the influence of Chaitanya, processions of men moved through the streets, singing the Name of God, with flags flying and drums beating. Chaitanya called the processions, Nagarkirtan, praising the Name in processions moving through the town. What a joy filled their hearts as they sang the Name! They would sit together for hours, singing the Name of God with musical instruments.
The kirtan, the hymns, the teaching of the Chaitanya movement — “die to self and win new life,”—influenced the poetry of India’s beloved poet —
Rabindra Nath Tagore — and the thought and life of India’s beloved bhakta and preacher —
Shri Keshub Chandra Sen.
Years ago, I read a saying of Mahaprabhu Sri Chaitanya Dev: “Be like a Tree! The Tree giveth shade even to him who cutteth off the branches of the Tree.” The words have clung to my memory.
When shall we listen to this message? When shall we be banded together into a loving Brotherhood? When shall we be like that “Tree”?
Sankara Dev gave in Assam the same message of love, the message of “Supreme Devotion”. Listen to his words:
What dost thou gain if thou possess the whole Earth
But lose the beauty of the inner self?
What dost thou gain if thou dost spend thy years
In meditation and in penance, In pilgrimage and in prayers, In Kasi and Gaya?
What dost thou gain if thou art versed
In the arguments of Yoga, But dost move with a clouded mind?
Know thou not this, That except through Supreme Devotion
There is no mukti, no Liberation?
In another beautiful poem, this great Poet-seer of medieval India peals his message thus:
Oh mind!
Why art thou blind?
Seest thou not
The vanity of life?
Why still wilt thou slumber on?
Oh mind!
Awake! Awake!
Think of Govinda!
Except through Rama
There is no hope for thee!
Contd. on page 17
“I go!” said Tukaram. “To Vaikunth I go!” Vaikunth is the “Paradise” of peace. The deepest longing of Tukaram’s soul was for Peace. “Where is peace?” he cried.
When he resolved, at an early age, to close down his business, he entered upon the path of Self-realisation. Step by step, he moved onward. Five steps I trace in Tukaram’s development on the path of self-realisation.
I. The first step he called “inner purity”. The “inner” was
*March 9 is sacred as Sant Tukaram Jayanti.
distinguished from the “outer”, briefly, thus. Outer purity, he said, was ceremonial washing in the waters of a sacred river. What was essential to spiritual enrichment, he pointed out, was inner purity, the washing of the heart.
1. He who would wash his heart must rise above what Tukaram in one of his abhangas calls the “sensuous life”. “Cleanse the heart,” he says. Therefore, first, learn to repent for what you have done
amiss in the past. Spiritual life begins with repentance.
2. “Serve others,” Tukaram says. “If you serve them, your service reaches God.” And again: “Offer actions to God: this is worship.” And again: “Become a friend of the oppressed: become a servant of the poor and needy.” Shun greatness. In the words of Tukaram: “He, indeed, is a true worshipper of the Lord who identifies himself with the lowly and the lost.”
3. But, thirdly, in all your work, your service of the poor and lowly, see that you do not eliminate God from your work, your thoughts, your aspirations. As Tukaram says: “Brother, act, but leave the burden and the care of your actions to Vithal – the Beloved! “
II. The second step – chant the Name! Meditation and singing of the Nama entered, more and more, into the heart of Tukaram, enriching his soulconsciousness. When Tukaram gave up earning money, he linked himself, more and more, in meditation and song, to the one Name – Vithal. In an abhanga, he says: “The Name will teach us to utter the Unutterable and bring before us the attainable!” In another abhanga, Tukaram says: “Let
me call on Vithal, see Vithal, bring Vithal into my own soul.”
In meditation, Tukaram grew in the thought that he should be at the feet of Vithal and, sitting at His feet, sing His Name. Tukaram says: “I have embraced His feet and have plundered His wealth.”
Tukaram refers to two thoughts as essential in his outlook on life. The first thought is Nama. The second thought is what he calls “fever”. There is “fever” in life: samsara (phenomenal world; the universe) is full of “fever,” – feverish activities, feverish desires, feverish pursuits of money, honour, fame. This “fever” does not go, until in the heart of the bhakta or worshipper the One Name doth flow.
Great is Tukaram’s reverence for the Nama, the Name. It is the essence of interior life. It is, also, the inspiration of all that is good and true in outer life. Without Nama – the Name of the Beloved – none may hope to cross the sea of samsara. Sing, again and again, the Name and you will reach the “Other Shore.” Tukaram says: I will secure the raft of Vithal’s Name
And I shall swim to the farther shore.
How may the Name flow into our consciousness and our daily activities?
1. Do kirtan as often as you can – at least once a day. Sit in the kirtan circle and sing and continue to sing the Name of the Beloved.
2. Who is there who may say he sings of Him worthily? The secret of true kirtan is humility.
Never forget that you live in a world of storms and passions, of suffering and pain. Tall trees are pulled down by storms. Be not, therefore, a tall tree! Be a humble blade of grass. “In a great flood,” Tukaram says, “trees perish, but little blades of grass survive.” Tukaram asks us, in another abhanga, to think of water. It is a symbol of the spirit of humility. It goes down and touches what lies low, uncared for by the world. Water descends and touches and purifies. “Water,” says Tukaram, “penetrates to the lowest depths.”
3. Tukaram asks us to rise above the illusion of action. Around us we have woven this maya, the tangled web of work. Tukaram says: “Let us be done with this chain of action!” Let us give more and more time to kirtan, singing the Name of the Lord.
III. Renunciation. As Tukaram grew in reverence for the Name, he developed more and more, the spirit of renunciation, until there came a time when he said: “In joy I grow, when I am not in crowds – when in meditation and everyday life, I sit by myself.” In an abhanga, he says: “I have dismissed the illusion of the senses and the illusion of intercourse with men.” Tukaram adds the significant words: “The crowds repel me.”
In yet another abhanga, he says: “With renunciation I have renounced all! Illusion will never return to me.”
IV. Tukaram, at last, takes the fourth step. In one of his abhangas, he cries the cry of a “homeless” man. He looks there: he finds there is nothing in the world which he can claim as his own. In the wide world there is no resting place for him: he feels as a stranger! He treads the Path with a feeling of loneliness in his heart. Yet he knows he is not lonely: Vithal is by him. Again and again, he feels wearied with much wandering. There is sorrow in the heart: for there is suffering in this world. Unhappy are men, and time is running fast. Life is ebbing out, and he must no longer wait.
He must find a way out of this world of suffering and pain.
Tukaram says:
I have wandered here.
What can I claim as mine?
Where have I found a resting place?
I am a friendless one, a stranger.
I feel as one who is blind and lame.
And I tremble as I follow the Path before me.
Many have travelled on this Path,
Yet none hath returned:
And I still move on!
How weary am I with much wandering
Through countless villages!
Verily, this world is a prison of sorrow!
Then, in one moment of ecstatic examination, Tukaram bursts forth into a cry:
O my heart!
Hold fast to Hari, the Beloved!
And rush with lightning speed
From this world of suffering and pain.
V. Tukaram now is ready to touch the goal of his life. The final step in his journey is communion with the Divine. He takes the one step upward. He ‘ascends’ to the Highest. Is not every infant a child of
the “vertical”? Men belong in action, active men, are children of the horizontal.
Tukaram, taking leave of all whom he hath known and blessed on the earth plane – Tukaram, bidding farewell to everyone, now moves upward, alone to the Alone. Yet he desires not “absorption”. Tukaram desires “communion”. “I desire not liberation,” he says. He begins to “ascend” higher and higher to sit in the very Presence of God and see the face of his beloved, Vithal.
In his heart has opened the great mystery of love. Love he says, is a gift of God: and Tukaram realises that God hath granted him this gift. Tukaram cries out: “Vithal is my Mother! Vithal is my Mother!” Now, too, he realises that purity, inward purity, is fulfilled in love. Tukaram says: “They are pure, indeed, who love God with lasting love.”
One essential mark of the true lover is that he speaks not but in silence gazes at the Face of the Beloved. “Be a pilgrim,” says Tukaram, “and gaze and gaze on Vithal, the Beloved.”
In another beautiful, little passage, Tukaram says more explicitly: “Vithal, the Beloved abideth before my eyes.” Yes, Tukaram now is able to behold
the Face of Him who is pure and fair beyond compare.
Filled with joy now is Tukaram. He has crossed the earlier stage of melancholy and sorrow. He hath gazed at the beauty of the beloved and gazing at His beauty, he has become a part of His Being. He feels he now is “released”. “He who communes with Vithal,” says Tukaram, “becomes Vithal!” The “knots” of illusion are cut. Tukaram is free, even as Vithal Himself is free. Vithal has touched Tukaram, has filled him from end to end of his being. “My body,” says Tukaram, “is filled with Vithal.” In another passage, Tukaram says: “Vithal came and embraced me.”
The great privilege of Tukaram now is to behold and be blessed. “Whatever happens,” says Tukaram, “I will look on!” Yes, Tukaram now is become a “spectator”, concerning whom the rishi of the Upanishad and the seer of Greece, Plato, speak in rapturous strains. “I will sing and dance with joy,” says Tukaram. “Such men,” he adds, “blessed beyond measure, have become Vithal themselves.” “Wherever I look,” says Tukaram, “He stands – the very heart and centre of the universe.” “My
life,” he says, “is God-led.” “Enough of pilgrimage: I am through with it!” Tukaram no longer wishes to wander. “God fills the world,” he says. “And there is none but He.”
Then, in a flash of intuition or a burst of inspiration, Tukaram utters the words on which I seldom can meditate without mine eyes being touched with tears. Tukaram says: “God is the true servant of the simple.”
Tukaram’s longing has now fulfilled self in quiet stillness, in a life of communion. He has run away, it is true, from noise and strife. But he has attained to a fuller, a richer life – the life of communion and silence.
Unnoticed, Tukaram leaves the crowds in the stillness of the night. He follows the Will of God. The test of this kind of life is: Does it express itself in world peace? Tukaram’s life is filled with peace – the peace which passeth understanding. His life is henceforth a life of contemplation and prayer, of reunion with God. It is a life lifted beyond this world – a life lived in the new dimensions of a new world. How different it is this – the new world, the Realm of Light – from the world in which many us live, from day to day!
The one great need of our troubled world in this age of deepening darkness is the power of the spirit. Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani often said to us, “In the chaos and disorder of these days, in a world marred and mangled, a broken and blood-stained world, I say to all whom my voice may reach: ‘Go to God; and He is not from you afar; He is within you’.”
God is the secret, the hidden source of the shakti within us! “God is the secret of man,” Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani asserted. He would have agreed that it is women who realise the truth of this hidden shakti that is within all of us!
In his quiet but tremendously influential work among youth and women, Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani’s emphasis was on shakti. His aspiration was to build a “school of shakti” for the service of India and the world. He founded the Shakti Ashram at Rajpur for this purpose. It was to awaken this tremendous shakti within women that he founded at first the Sakhi Satsang, and later, the Mira Movement in Education.
Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani was a visionary who believed that women had a great potential – a great shakti –which could be utilised for the betterment of the society and
the nation. It was not long before the enlightened people of Hyderabad (Sind) began to appreciate the service being rendered to the community by Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani’s devoted disciples. A number of men who were inspired by the Master begged him to permit them to join his satsang. The Master graciously consented and the satsang and its activities were open to all. This was how the Sakhi Satsang now became the Brotherhood Association.
Many of us mistakenly equate shakti with power or force. And power is always associated with masculine energy. But the Hindu way of thinking is different. In the Sanatana Dharma, shakti is essentially the feminine principle, the Goddess or Devi as she is worshipped by millions.
It is not without reason that every major deity in the Hindu pantheon has His own consort or Shakti. She represents his better, kinder, more compassionate half. Shakti worshippers believe that without Her, He has no power. It is Shakti who uses Her intuitive feminine powers to bring balance to the world. Shakti is also the Divine force that helps in destroying demonic forces. Shakti complements the
masculine and provides a sense of balance. Indeed, She is the inherent power in all things, the primordial manifest being, the Cosmic Principle of Life.
The Divine image of Shiva as Ardhanarishwarar presents this ideal – of the Divinity as half male and half female. This image symbolises the affinity and unity between the two principles, which may be opposed in visual appearance, but are nevertheless indivisible and function in harmony in each act of the creation. They are two aspects of the same being, both to be adored and venerated as much as the other. I must add here, that it is not without significance that every woman in India is seen as a manifestation of this Divine Principle, Shakti.
May I say to you, shakti is not merely a force; shakti is integration, in the truest sense of that term. Today, disintegration is setting in.
Woman, who is the centre of social integration, can stem the tide that threatens to destabilise our society. To reassert Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani’s claim: “The woman-soul has the shakti to rebuild the shattered world on the strength of her intuitions, her purity, her simplicity, her spiritual aspirations, her sympathy and silent sacrifice.
The woman-soul will lead us upward, on!”
Consider Sita; the delicate princess who followed her beloved Rama into vanvaas with a smile on her lips; Sita who defied the mighty Ravana even in captivity. Consider Maitreyi, who rejected her husband’s offer of material wealth and comfort and insisted instead, that he should share his wealth of wisdom and spiritual knowledge with her. Consider Mira, who rejected social conventions and gave up the life of a queen to seek Krishna. Indian scriptures, epics and history stand testimony to the greatness of the woman soul.
Given this background, it is sad that what we are witnessing today is a detrimental movement away from this concept of the sacred feminine.
I read an ancient Greek story about a city that was threatened by an awesome mythical monster, called the Unicorn. The warriors and other brave men of the city could not stand up to the monster and fled in disarray. But a pure, simple, virtuous young maiden confronted the monster – and it was the monster that had to flee from the shakti that she represented.
I find this story deeply symbolic.
For our world today is threatened by the nameless, faceless monster that is compounded of hatred, violence, intolerance, insensitivity, ruthlessness and avarice. It is only the woman –pure, gentle, virtuous, strong in the spirit of simplicity, service and sacrifice, who can take on the monster and conquer him with her spiritual shakti.
The world functions by very different yardsticks at different times in history. There was a time when in India women were worshipped as Goddesses. In those days, people had respect for the scriptures and respect for values. Today, the three things people value most are money, pleasure and power. In many parts of the world, women are still comparatively less educated and are unable to occupy powerful positions and draw fat salaries. This probably explains the oppression and neglect you speak of. However, times are changing. One to one, women are capable of handling authority, responsibility, leadership and administration and also capable of earning more money than men, if they set their hearts to it. Women who make it to the Forbes Fortune 500 are talked about. Women who figure in the
top ten of the world’s most powerful people are looked up to! It is these things that matter in the eyes of the world! I believe the day is not far off when women will be held in high respect for all the right reasons.
It is social conditioning over the generations, that has led to this attitude in some men –please take note, I said “some men”, because many men think differently. As things are now, might is right, and men have the upper hand. They wield more power and resources than women do. But as I have said earlier, times are changing.
Time and again, I have had the opportunity to recall the stirring words of my beloved Gurudev, Sadhu Vaswani: “The woman-soul shall lead us upward, on!”
Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani was, in many ways, the initiator of a great liberating movement which aimed to give women their rightful place in society, in the hidebound and conservative world of undivided India, as early as the 1920s. The women of Sind were the first beneficiaries of this quiet, non-violent revolution that he spearheaded.
Feminism, women’s liberation and the empowerment of women have become much used, almost
clichéd expressions now. In the days before the word ‘feminism’ was even coined, Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani did everything he could to break the shackles of superstition and hidebound ‘customs’ that had kept Sindhi women restricted and confined for centuries. He offered the purdah-clad, kitchen-bound women of Sind, spiritual liberation in the true sense of the term. Indeed, I would say that he was the initiator of a unique women’s movement, which focussed on the spiritual strength of women. How many of you reading this will believe me if I tell you that this great liberating movement began in a satsang?
His Sakhi Satsang, a spiritual association of women formed for the purpose of helping them to realise their true potential, enabled many women to become decisionmakers for the first time in their personal lives – by the very act of voluntarily joining his satsang. It would be no exaggeration to say that he inducted Sindhi women into what had until then been the domain of men – the practice of religion in the true sense.
He spoke out against the purdah as also against the deadly custom of deti-leti (dowry). At the same time, he was also aware of the dangers of excessive ‘modernism’,
warning women against aping western fashions blindly. He encouraged them to cultivate the virtue of simplicity in their dress and in their daily life.
The Sakhi Satsang was quite revolutionary in its spiritual, social, cultural and economic impact on Sindhi women, if one were to consider the Movement in all its aspects. For the first time, women learnt about economic independence, accountability and trust, when they were given the management of Sakhi Stores. They took their first steps on the path of self-reliance, outside the secure confines of their own homes.
At the Sakhi Conference organised by him for their benefit, they had the chance to make themselves heard on matters concerning themselves; on social evils like dowry, child marriage and exploitation.
Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani’s Seva Ashram opened a new world to women who wished to tread the spiritual path. Above all, he emphasised the spiritual shakti of women, exclaiming aloud to the male-dominated society, “The woman soul shall lead us upward, on!”
Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani’s contribution to women’s education was equally significant. The Mira Movement was, first and foremost, an educational movement
exclusively devoted to the development of woman power. His ideal of the triple training of the head, the hand and the heart added a new dimension to the education for girls.
In my own way, I like to think that women are superior to men; for he is only a part of she; male is only a part of female; and, needless to say, man is but a fraction of woman!
I offer for your reflection the beautiful words of Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani:
A New World is in the making.
The man-made world has proved to be a broken, bleeding world.
Man has blundered badly, for man has believed in force. Even marriage at one time, was marriage by capture.
Man has had his chance. Masculine mentality has blundered.
Now woman gets her chance. She is called upon to build a New World.
She is a symbol of shakti in the Hindu scriptures. And shakti is not force.
Shakti is integration.
Today, disintegration is setting in. A woman is the centre of social integration…
Our homes must move in a new atmosphere of the simple life; else they will break up for they cannot stand the strain of this heavy drain…
The woman-soul has the shakti to rebuild the shattered world in the strength of her intuitions, her purity, her simplicity, her spiritual aspirations, her sympathy and silent sacrifice.
The woman-soul will lead us upward, on!
The Message of Holi Contd. from page 6
And thinking of Holi, as I think of Beloved Sri Krishna, I recall some words in yet another beautiful poem of Sankara Dev: On this Earth all is passing, All uncertain!
Wealth and kinsmen, Life and youth
The world itself, Children and family, Uncertain are all!
And like a drop of water
On the lotus-leaf
Is the mind, unsteady!
So I pray to Thee, O Krishna!
The Dweller in my Heart!
To pilot me safe
Across this world of pain!
Turn my heart to Thee!
Lead me to Thyself!
Vouchsafe to me the Truth
And Thy Way and Thy grace!
Be Thou my Mind!
Be Thou my Destiny!
Be Thou my Guru and my Guide!
And lead me safe
Across this Vale of Tears and woe!
In these words is the cry of him who moveth on the pilgrimpath:
I fall at Thy Feet,
O Singer of the Flute !
I fall at Thy Feet!
Thy servant am I!
Oh save my soul!
And in this cry is the word and the voice of the Holi — the word and the voice of the Vaishnava Faith:
I ask not for salvation!
I do but ask that I may grow
In bhakti at Thy Lotus-Feet!
A. Falguni Nayar B. Mary Kom C. Indra Nooyi
