Editorial
There is a similar incident from the life of Swami Adbhutananda, another direct-disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. For some time Adbhutanandaji stayed at the Basumati Press of Upendra Nath Mukhopadhyay, a householder devotee of Sri Ramakrishna. Once at midnight he was heard shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Shut up, devil; you to threaten me, who am a child of Sri Ramakrishna; all your tricks and threats would be of no avail. Know it for certain.’ Hearing his thundering voice, the people in the press who were sleeping and working in the adjacent rooms ran up and saw Adbhutanandaji sitting in virasana ‘with his eyes fixed in front and blazing like fire-balls.’ Truly, every sincere sadhaka has to, at some stage in his spiritual journey, face and overcome an anti-spiritual force which seeks to bind him/her down to the sensory world and thus to the cycle of repeated birth and death. To help us identify and confront this force, which appears in various forms, it is sometimes personified and given a clear profile as the evil
tempter. Buddhism calls it Mara, and Christianity and Islam identify it as Satan. There are a number of stories which narrate how Buddha and Christ faced this ‘destroyer of spiritual life’. These narratives help devotees to make sense of their own temptations and it also awakens faith to overcome them.
Both Buddha and Christ faced strong temptations before achieving enlightenment. They were tempted to experience physical enjoyments, to fear death, and to desire power. Siddhartha Gautama sat under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya with the firm determination: ‘Let this body dry up; let the skin, bones, and flesh of the body fall apart; but I will not leave this seat until I attain that supreme knowledge.’ Mara then appeared on the scene to break this resolve. At first he sent beautiful women to tempt Siddhartha with their charms. When this weapon of lust failed, he tried to frighten Siddhartha with torrential rains, thunder, and hordes of demons attacking him. But Siddhartha remained immersed in deep meditation unmoved by the idea of death. As a last resort, Mara tempted Siddhartha with power over men. He pointed out that being a kshatriya, Siddhartha’s dharma was to rule a kingdom and not to renounce and seek nirvana. He offered him the sovereignty of the whole world. But Siddhartha remained firm in his resolve, and rose up only after attaining Buddhahood. Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in the Judean desert, seeking to draw nearer to God. By giving up food and water he sought to
October 2019
I
t was a very still, late night on the banks of Ganga where Swami Turiyananda, one of the directdisciples of Sri Ramakrishna, was sitting in meditation. Matching the outer peace was the silence in his mind. In that perfectly calm moment, Turiyanandaji heard a voice telling him, ‘Enough, get up. Let us go home.’ The startled swami looked around to see who was disturbing him. But there was none around. Then like a thunderbolt, the truth hit him: it was his own mind that had tempted him to stop his sadhana!
9 The Vedanta Kesari
PA G E S P O N S O R : S R I K R I S H N A M U R T H Y K . N . , C H E N N A I
Know It to Be Your Foe
