Great Indian Stories
by Sri Chinmoy
The future grows in the present
There was a very rich man who had a slave. One day the slave saved the rich man’s only son from drowning. His master was extremely pleased with him and set him free. Not only that, but he also gave him lots of gifts and money plus a large sailing boat.
Now that the ex-slave had money, he hired some people to work his boat and set out on a voyage across the ocean.
Alas, one day there was a terrible cyclone. The boat sank and everybody drowned, except this former slave. He began swimming towards a nearby island. When he reached it, he saw that many people were waiting for him, crying with delight, “The King has come! The King has come!”
The man said, “Why are you calling me King? I have lost everything except this loin cloth that I am wearing.”
Everyone said, “This year you will be King. Every year we have a new king. You are King for this year.”
“But I don’t understand,” said the man.
“We appoint a new king every year and now it is your turn,” they said.
“Why are you so kind to me?” he asked. Then he said to himself, “Perhaps God, out of His infinite Bounty, is doing this since I have lost my boat.”
So he turned to the crowd and asked, “Tell me only one thing. Is it only for a year?”
“Yes,” came the reply.
“Then what will happen?” he asked.
They said, “Well, we shall throw you off of the island.”
He asked, “Then where shall I go?”
They answered, “We only know that the King rules for one year. Then he must leave the kingdom.”
The ex-slave asked, “Please, send me the wisest man in the kingdom.” When the man came, the new King asked, “Is it true that each king rules only for a year and then must leave the island? Then God alone knows what happens to him. Is there any advice you can give me so that at the end of a year I don’t become a beggar again?”
“Yes,” said the wise man. “Now that you are King, try to make yourself another kingdom on a nearby island. Transform another island into a kingdom by sending your people to make roads, gardens, houses and so forth. Do everything in this one year. When you have established another kingdom, why do you have to worry? At the end of the year you can go there.”
“How is it that my predecessors did not do this?” the man asked.
The wise man explained, “I told them, but they did not listen to me. They kept saying, ‘In a few weeks we shall do it.’ Then, two months before their reign was up, I used to tell them again, but they didn’t think of their future.”
The King said, “I will definitely listen to you. People will go find a new place where they will build another kingdom like this.” The wise man said, “Will you do it, or will you have the same fate as your predecessors?”
“No,” said the King, “I won’t allow myself to have the same fate. I will start from today to send people to do the needful.
“Always we have to think of the future. Always we have to remember that the future grows in the present. If there is a gap between the present and the future, if we do not think of the future, then some calamity will always take place.”
So the King sent out his subjects to build a new kingdom, and at the end of a year, the King went there and started ruling it.
The poet and the King
There was once a King who used to appreciate poets and learned men in his kingdom. He would always shower gifts upon them and hold various contests in which he would give them awards.
There happened to be a poor poet who was poor not only in his outer life but also in his poetry. Everybody used to go to the palace and recite poems they had written about the King, and appreciate and flatter the King. But this particular poet would not or could not go.
His wife was very upset over this, and she kept telling him, “One day you have to go. How long can we remain poor? We have children, and we cannot meet with our expenses. You must go!”
The poet did not want to anger his wife because she had a bad temper and he was afraid she might do something drastic. So he went to the King and said, “I have written an excellent poem on you.”
The King said, “All right, leave it here and come back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” the poet asked. “You won’t read it today?”
“No, tomorrow,” the King said.
The following day, when the poet returned to the palace, the King was giving away alms to the poor. Many people were standing in line, and each one came up and received something from the King. Then the King started calling the poets to come to him. But the King did not call out the name of this particular poet. The poet was puzzled and surprised, but he did not know what to do.
At long last the King turned to this particular poet and said, “I have given my alms for today. It is all over. We have had a wonderful meeting and everything is all over. You go home and take a shower and have something to eat.”
The poet said, “When shall I come again?”
The King said, “Why will you have to come again? Don’t you have a copy of the poem which you have left me? When I have time, I just read the poems. I have already read your poem. It is not necessary for you to come back.”
The poet said, “Lord, Lord, I am very poor.”
The King said, “I know you are very poor. You told me some sweet words in your poem, and I am also telling you some sweet words: please go home, take a shower and eat.”
The poet said, “I have come here not to have appreciation for my poems, O great and rich man. I have come for something else.”
“O poet,” the King said, “your poem was beautiful, the metre was perfect, everything that a good poem needs your poem had in every way. Your poem about me was perfect. You have tremendous capacity, but you should not waste your capacity in writing such beautiful poems about a human being. You must write about God. He is the Creator, the Almighty. You have got divine capacity so you have to utilise it only for God. This kind of flattery I don’t deserve. If it is sincere then I don’t deserve it. If it is flattery, I don’t need it. Only God deserves this kind of praise, and infinitely more. Since you have the capacity, you write about God; write about the Supreme Poet Himself. By writing about Him, you will get more capacity and you will write infinitely better poems.” The King then threw away the poem which the poet had written about him.
The poor poet said to himself, “Alas, alas what am I going to tell my wife? To please her I came. To make her rich, I came. Now I have not got a rupee from the King. O God, bad luck is everywhere. He who is cursed with bad luck will have the same fate everywhere, for bad luck knows how to dog a human’s fate.”
The golden swan
The Buddha told this story as something that took place in one of his previous incarnations. At that time, he was a simple man with a wife and three daughters. He was always kind to people and was dearly loved by his family. Unfortunately, he died before he could marry his daughters so he felt very sad. When he entered into the soul’s world, he observed what was happening on earth, and saw that his family was almost poverty-stricken.
So he returned to his family as a beautiful golden swan and said to his wife, “I have come to you in this form. Once a month I shall come and leave one of my gold feathers for you to sell. In this way you will easily be able to meet with all your expenses.”
So every month he used to come and leave a golden feather.
The wife was very happy, and the daughters also were so delighted when they saw their father. The swan used to stay for a few minutes and then leave.
One day an idea entered into the wife’s mind: “My husband may not come regularly, or he may change his mind and stop coming, or he may grow old and die. The best thing is for me to catch him and strangle him the next time he comes, so that I can take away all his feathers.”
The daughters were simply shocked: “How can you do this kind of thing, Mother?”
The wife said, “All right, I won’t strangle him. But I will take away all his feathers. If he cannot fly anymore, no harm. You will take care of your father.”
The daughters pleaded with their mother, “Please, we love our father so deeply. He is so kind to us. He could have stayed in the soul’s world, but he comes in the form of a swan to help. Look at his love for us.”
But the mother would not listen. The next time the bird came, she caught hold of him by the neck and took away all his feathers, one by one.
It was most painful to the swan and he cried and screamed most pitifully: “What are you doing? I have been so kind to you.”
When she was finished, the bird was suffering like anything and it could not fly anymore. Then all of a sudden all the golden feathers turned into ordinary white feathers: they no longer were made of gold.
The greedy wife felt miserable and the daughters were smitten with grief. But what could the daughters do? Their mother was so cruel. Then the mother went inside her room and opened a box where she had been keeping the gold feathers that she had accumulated but had not yet sold. She knew that she still had many gold feathers, enough to meet her family’s expenses for at least six months. But as soon as she opened the box, she found that these feathers, too, had turned into ordinary white feathers; they were no longer gold.
The three daughters, with great love and affection, each day fed the poor swan and showed him tremendous concern. The mother was now helpless; she hated her fate. “This is what happened because of my greed,” she said to herself.
The daughters said to her, “This is what you have done! Even if our father had not come for six months or one year, we could have lived comfortably on the golden feathers that you had saved in your box. Now father does not have golden feathers anymore.”
The father said, “This is your fate, my fate.”
Slowly and steadily the feathers of the swan grew back again, but this time they were pure white, so the wife did not bother to take them from the bird. Finally the bird was able to fly away. The children were very happy that the bird was released. Now their father would be happy. They said, “He will be able to do everything in his own way.”
The mother felt miserable, not because the bird had gone away, but because of her stupidity. She was not going to get any more golden feathers and once again she was poor.
Published in Great Indian Meals: Divinely Delicious and Supremely Nourishing, part 5
You have the Golden Chance
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
about the New Year to his students, in New York
My dear children, this is my most and most blessingful request to each and every one present here. Each night before you go to sleep, while seated on your bed, only for three to five minutes please pray and meditate. Also, please sing or recite the new song, Bhulite diyona. This is the translation:
My Lord Absolute Supreme,
Do not allow me to forget Your Feet.
Do not allow me to forget Your Eye.
Do not allow me to forget Your Message.
Do not allow me to forget Your Dream.
In my life and in my death,
O Lord of my heart,
Do accept my prayerful obeisance.
My Lord, do not allow me to forget You.
Do not allow me to forget You, do not.
Those who have learnt the song and those who are good singers can sing the song, and others can just recite it.
Once more I am making my most blessingful request to each of you. At six o’clock in the morning, please meditate for ten minutes. Only wash your eyes, face, nose and especially your ears. When we meditate, at that time the cosmic sound reverberates in the depths of our aspiration-heart, so our earthly ears may get some benefit from the cosmic sound AUM, the soundless sound.
Then at night, whenever you go to bed — at ten-thirty, eleven-thirty or midnight — please meditate for three minutes at least while seated on your bed.
My dear children, my sweet children, what I am saying applies also to those who are not physically here. This year either we will be able to offer our supreme victory to our Lord Beloved Supreme, our Eternity’s only Goal, or we will offer Him the worst possible defeat. Remember, it is up to you to offer Him the worst possible spiritual defeat or your supremely glorious victory.
Please remember this poem:
I never want to count
My heart’s aspiration-moments.
I just want to multiply
My life’s dedication-hours.
Your life’s dedication-hours please multiply this year. Make yourself worthy of your inner life, your spiritual life. Dear ones, it is up to you. Take every moment seriously.
When I came to America, when I came to the West, the Supreme in me did expect to have supremely chosen instruments to manifest His Victory here, there and everywhere. My oneness with your heart, my oneness with your life, I shall never be able to make you feel — never, never. But if you yourself dare to feel my oneness with your heart and with your life, then you are bound to feel that your victory is my victory, and your defeat is my defeat, for I am one with you, inseparably and eternally. Because I have accepted each of you, your defeat is my defeat, and your victory is my victory.
You have the golden chance to be the pioneers of this divine vision that I embody, the divine vision that I have entrusted you to spread all over the world. I am extremely, extremely fortunate to have your souls — such beautiful, such loving, such self-giving souls — for my supreme cause. There is not a single soul that is not one hundred per cent sleeplessly for me. All your souls, according to their individual development, are here on earth only to love the Supreme in me, only to serve the Supreme in me, only to fulfil the Supreme in me. If you can dive deep within and if you can get just a glimpse of your soul for a brief moment, then you will see the inseparable connection and oneness that your soul has established with me to manifest the Light, the Peace and the Divinity of our Lord Beloved Supreme. I want that Light, that Peace and that Divinity to manifest in and through your lives.
I beg of you, I beg of you, I beg of you not to fail yourselves, not to fail your souls. Make me the happiest person both on earth and in Heaven by pleasing me and fulfilling me here on earth, for I am your own highest. Your absolute highest is your Master, Sri Chinmoy. If you have faith in me, you have faith in your soul. If you have faith in your soul, you have faith in me. We are inseparable.
Swami Vivekananda gave his Inspired Talks at Thousand Island Park in 1895. The West may not have accepted, or could not accept his light, but I know that millions and millions of Indians received boundless inspiration, boundless encouragement and boundless enthusiasm from his Inspired Talks. Over the years, I have also given many, many, many inspired talks. I know that those talks have helped you enormously in your inner life of aspiration and in your outer life of dedication. Again I am telling you now, please take your life of aspiration and your life of dedication as supremely important. I am begging you to dedicate more of your life. If you have the capacity, then give talks, here, there and everywhere. Give classes and, in as many ways as possible, inspire people. Work together, work together.
A great Indian figure happened to be a disciple of a spiritual Master of the highest order. Once, at a time when this particular disciple was suffering from one of the worst possible attacks of doubt — doubting his Master, doubting himself and doubting the spiritual life — he was asked by a seeker to talk about his Master. He spoke so soulfully, so powerfully and so profoundly that, while speaking, he brought his own tears of gratitude to the fore.
Then the disciple wrote to his Master, “I have been doubting you, Master, so much. I have been doubting my spiritual life. I have been doubting the whole world. Even a few hours ago, my existence had no value; everything was negative. But in speaking about you, Master, I have made everything positive, and I have made myself happy. How can it be? Surely I am the world’s worst possible insincere person. I am a hypocrite!”
The Master replied, “My child, how proud I am of you! While you were speaking about me, your soul got the opportunity to come to the fore and manifest your own divinity and your own light in the heart of that sincere aspirant. When you feel that you are doomed to disappointment, when all the negative forces are coming to you, at that time if you speak highly of your Master, highly of your spiritual life, highly of your path, do not think that you are a hypocrite, that you are fooling yourself or fooling the sincere seekers—far from it! During your mind’s darkest hour or your life’s darkest hour, your soul, on the strength of its inseparable oneness with the Supreme and with your Master, got the golden opportunity to convince your mind, which was either in the barren desert or in the thick forest. Your soul was able to grab your body, vital and mind and bring them into your own heart-garden to see how beautiful you are and how fragrant you are.”
These are my interpretations. The Master did not use these exact words, but I know what that particular Master actually meant. I am telling you all this because I see that some of you are at times sad and depressed; you may have all kinds of vital and mental problems. The golden way to overcome these problems is to talk to people about the spiritual life. If you feel that your consciousness has descended, then sing my spiritual songs or talk to your friends about the spiritual life.
Like today’s song, Bhulite diyona, all my soulful songs are bound to help you. If you want your own light to come to the fore, sing a few songs or listen to a tape of my voice. My voice has a very special connection with your soul and with your heart. No matter whether I am singing well or not, my singing voice has a very, very, very special connection with your soul, with the divine in you. Please listen to my voice or my flute or some other instrument of mine that you like.
This is God’s universal Game. When we play a game, who wants to accept defeat? We will do our very best to be the winners. In this case, who is our opponent? It is the undivine, unlit, destructive forces that are trying to threaten us and devour us. We call them hostile forces. Again, the Supreme has kept inside each human being a roaring lion. We must bring to the fore the roaring lion in us, and roar and roar to manifest the divine light that we already have. The more we can be of service to mankind, even if we only offer an iota of light to an individual, the more the Supreme is bound to bless us with His abundant Light. And when we offer our abundant light to others, then He will be able to give us infinite Light.
In my heart-garden I have employed you with my boundless love, boundless affection and boundless fondness. You are my helpers, and I want each of you to bring a few more plants with your aspiration, with your dedication. Try to make our heart-garden as vast as possible, as beautiful as possible, as fragrant as possible. My children, you have the capacity and you are the capacity. I want each one of you to offer the supreme success, supreme glory and supreme victory to our Lord Beloved Supreme.
I do not mind if you are not proud of me, but in all sincerity, I want to tell you how proud I am of your souls, for they know who I am and they know what I stand for. Their soul-lives and soul-breaths at every moment are for me, for me, for me. Your outer life may not be for me. It may be for yourself, for other human beings, for your career or something else. But your soul has a breath, Eternity’s Breath. Your soul’s breath is for me, for me, for me, only for me. Therefore, how grateful I am to your souls, how proud I am of your souls, you cannot imagine. It is far beyond your imagination the love, devotion and surrender that your souls have for me, for they know who I am and who they are. They are my supremely chosen instruments. In your souls is my life-breath.
I am begging each and every one of you to give me the opportunity and to give me the assurance to be inside your life-breath at every moment. I have you inside my heart. Unfortunately, some of you do not have me inside your heart. If you see me and feel me, my living presence, inside your heart, you will not be able to do even one thing wrong, discouraging or displeasing. The moment you do not feel my living presence or my nectar-smile, the moment you fail to see me inside your heart, alas, alas, you fall victim to self-doubt, lack of faith, frustration and other undivine forces.
I am telling you, I see inside you the living Presence of my Lord Beloved Supreme. Him I see and Him I feel at every moment inside you. Therefore, at every moment I am dealing with my own Guru inside your heart. Please feel my smile, my tears, my gratitude, my pride in you.
How many good things you have done for me over the years! I will not be able to count how many good things you have done for me. I am requesting all of you only to think of how many good things you have done for me, not how many good things I have done for you. I am begging all of you to think of how many good things you have done for me since you joined the path. Think of how many ways you have pleased me, how many ways you have loved me, how many ways you have served me, how many ways you have fulfilled me over the years. You will be so proud of yourself. Right from the day you joined our path, try to remember the special ways you have offered your love, devotion and surrender. Think of my oneness-divinity with your heart, with your life, with your soul. Then any discouraging forces that have now become part and parcel of your life are bound to disappear, for your golden moments are the most pleasing fragrance-perfume in your life and in my life. Forget about how many good things I have done for you. I am only telling you to remember and to count in how many ways you have pleased me over the years. Then all your divine qualities once more will come forward.
Do not think, even for a second, about whether you have disappointed me in any way inwardly or outwardly. I am begging you to take the positive side. Think in how many hundreds and thousands of ways you have pleased me with your love, devotion and surrender. Only remember where, when and how. I assure you, you will be inundated with your own divinity. It is you who are going to prove that you are, without fail, my supremely chosen instruments. You are not only for yourselves; you are for the entire Creation of our Lord Beloved Supreme. God the Creator is inside you, and He wants you to serve and fulfil God the Creation around you.
My dear ones, I am inspired and I shall remain inspired. I do hope my inspiration-light, which I have just now brought down from the highest Heaven to offer to you, has entered into you, and you have become a totally different person from this moment. I am a beggar for your smiling heart radiating on your face and from your eyes. The eternal beggar in me wants you to be happy, divinely happy, supremely happy, so that your happiness radiates on your face and from your eyes. From your outer life, it has to radiate all over the world to illumine the world.
I know who I am. Unfortunately, I cannot make you see and make you feel who you truly are, who you are to me, who you are to the Supreme. But if we work together, then I shall definitely be able to make you feel who you are to me and who I am to you. We need each other. I need you for the manifestation of the Supreme here on earth. You need me for the highest realisation. I will be known as the tree, and you will be known as the flowers and fruits. Immortality’s flowers and Immortality’s fruits I want to dedicate to aspiring humanity. Again, I am the bird and you are the wings.
Whatever I have said has gone very, very far, because it has entered into the Universal Consciousness. These words I get from the Transcendental Consciousness and I offer them to the Universal Consciousness. You are part and parcel of the Universal Consciousness, plus you are nearer than the nearest to me.
The most important thing I have said is for you to think of how many good things you have done for me. Only remember in how many ways you have shown your love, devotion and surrender to the Supreme in me. Think how readily, happily, cheerfully, willingly and eagerly you have pleased me over the years. You will be so proud of yourself. Just try to remember those golden moments. It will take a few months to count them! All your depression, frustration, feelings of uselessness and other negative qualities will disappear. Any kinds of spiritual fevers that you may have now, which are making you absolutely miserable and paralysed in the spiritual life, will disappear. You will no longer remain inside the dry, barren mental desert that you have been walking through, or the thick forest that you have created for yourself. You will come back again to your own heart-garden. Again you will be able to run faster than the fastest.
And also try to feel my presence. The way I feel your presence inside me, inside my heart, I want you to feel my presence inside your heart at every moment.
By remembering how many good things you have done for me, I shed tears of gratitude. I swim in the sea of my gratitude-tears. In how many countless ways you have served the Supreme in me, loved the Supreme in me and fulfilled the Supreme in me! Those are your possessions, your own divinity-manifestations.
Published in Live in the Eternal Now
Sri Chinmoy begins a new poetry challenge, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, in Cancún, Mexico. Read more…
Sri Chinmoy’s First Poem
My Lord,
You have commanded me
To offer You
Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees.
I shall obey Your absolute Command.
Published in Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 1
My Supreme’s Absolute Command
In the small hours of this morning, my soul was in my transcendental consciousness and my heart was in my universal consciousness.
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme stood in front of me and said to me, “No retirement, no retirement, no retirement for you, My child!”
I said to my Supreme, “What more do You want from me, what more?”
He said to me, “Seventy-seven thousand.”
Immediately I said to Him, “Is it Your Wish, is it Your Request, is it Your Will or is it Your absolute Command?”
He said, “It is My absolute Command.”
Then I said to Him, “I do not think I am going to live on earth that long.”
He said to me, “My child, I command you to start, I command you to start. You know and I know how long you are going to be on earth, but I want you to start. This is My absolute Command.”
“My Supreme, my Supreme, I shall obey Your Command, I shall.”
— Sri Chinmoy
24 January 1998
Published in Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 50
Fifty Oneness-Heart-Songs of a Perfect God and a Perfect Child
Sri Chinmoy speaks about the book and answers questions in Huangshan, China
Sri Chinmoy: When I wrote this particular book, I was really, really in a childlike consciousness. With a childlike consciousness, there is no mind involved. If we can approach children’s hearts, if we can be at their level, how sweet it is! In this respect, sometimes grandparents are so good. They are seventy or eighty years old and their grandchildren are little, but they never think of the age difference; they never try to give the little ones advice. On the contrary, they would like to be as simple and as spontaneous as their little ones.
If teachers can teach their students with the same feeling, the students will get tremendous joy from learning. In a child’s game, if a grown-up who is very strong and stout joins, and if this person just shows off and scolds the other players, then the children will get tired of playing with him. Why do they need him? But if the same grown-up comes and plays with enthusiasm, and if in spite of being an excellent player he makes mistakes, then the children get such joy. Similarly, when you are teaching children, you have to feel that you are seven years old. Do not feel that you are the oldest and wisest person. Do not think of your power-aspect. Think of your love-aspect.
Children are our dreams. Children are our heart-flowers. If we can welcome them with our hearts, it is to our great advantage.
Question: In your book, you present an ideal vision of childhood. What of those people whose childhood experiences were not sweet?
Sri Chinmoy: You are saying that in some countries, because of their poverty, children perhaps have not got sweet experiences from their childhood, from their parents. But, in general, even if they are poorer than the poorest, those children have received affection. There is not a single country where children are not shown affection.
In wartime it is different. During a war, there are horrible stories. There may be a dearth of food. But these stories are very rare. In general, no matter how poor a country is or how poor a family is, as soon as a child takes birth it receives affection. Affection does not depend on material prosperity.
I tell you, many poor people in India have more affection for their children than some wealthy people in America, forgive me to say. I come from Bengal, India. There, in one of the poorest countries, we have more affection and love than many people in the so-called rich countries. In America and in other Western countries, people have money. They can have a maidservant, this and that. Then the parents can go out to work and the children will be with the maidservant in the home. But in India it is not like that. When the children are born, the mothers give up their jobs. No matter how poor the family is, it is a matter of heart. What I am saying is a matter of heart.
If circumstances are adverse, the children may not get sweet experiences; but I wish to say that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, children have got sweet experiences in their childhood.
Question: What if your childhood experiences were of suffering rather than sweetness?
Sri Chinmoy: If you feel that your parents were not nice, if you did not get good treatment from your parents right from your infancy, then you have to take your imagination as a reality. Imagine once again your childhood. You were brought up in one family, but right around you, in your vicinity, some parents were extremely, extremely nice to their children. Identify with them, identify, identify! This is not a false approach. Your parents brought you into the world, true, but I wish to say that imagination is a reality of its own.
Always try identification. You did not receive love and affection, perhaps, but now you can definitely apply your imagination and imagine love and affection. Just think of one particular family where the parents were so indulgent to their children. That imagination will definitely give you sweetness, happiness and a feeling of inner fulfilment. Just spread your imagination-wings! You are like a bird. Spread your wings and just fly to a country, imagine a village and see a particular place. What you are seeing is so true!
Again, you cannot separate your existence from your parents. You were born into a particular family. Definitely you had a father and a mother. If you are dissatisfied with them, with their way of being, you will go your own way. Children grow up and start their own families. But after going their own way, can they say that their parents are no longer their parents? Never!
Now I am coming back to the question. If your parents were not kind, just imagine sweetness, sweetness, sweetness. Early in the morning, look at a flower, look at the dawn. If you can identify yourself with nature, you are getting tremendous joy. At that time, are you thinking about how your parents struck you black and blue? You are the same person, but your wisdom has to work. You have to bring forward sweet memories, sweet memories, sweet memories. If you do not have sweet memories in your immediate family, that cannot prevent you from getting sweetness from your childhood.
Now that you are mature, you have to use wisdom at every moment. Exercise wisdom, wisdom, wisdom! Sometimes in a family, parents get angry. They stop their children when they want to go to university, or they do not pay the costs. Then days turn into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. In the end, if one accepts the spiritual life, it means one has to forgive them. It is very difficult sometimes, when we do not forgive a person, to bring sweetness out of our memories of that person.
If your parents were not nice, first forgive them. By harbouring bitter memories of your parents’ so-called misconduct, you will never be able to bring your own inner sweetness to the fore. You have to forgive your parents and forget the sad experience. If absolute necessity demands, you may even have to forget about your parents. Only try to imagine yourself, with your consciousness as a seven-year-old, to see how children elsewhere were given tremendous affection, sweetness and fondness.
Question: How much does our childhood influence us?
Sri Chinmoy: It depends on the family, it depends on the parents, it depends on the environment. If you come of a religious family, a spiritual family, then there is every possibility that this will be stamped on your forehead, or it will be written on the tablet of your heart. There is every possibility that the seed that was sown by your parents will germinate and become a huge tree with many flowers and fruits.
It all depends on the individual. There are many people who have received tremendous, tremendous affection as children. It is stamped in them. I was mischievous to the extreme, I was notorious, but this did not prevent my parents from showing me affection. I still have the source, the inner source. My parents were good, kind and compassionate.
Sometimes, at the very end of one’s life, the parents’ affection and compassion remains because they have influenced the person’s life so much. Again, after fifteen or twenty years, some people do not care for their father’s good qualities or their mother’s good qualities. They want to stay on their own.
One particular disciple is one of those who thought of their parents’ strengths. She was not yet on the wrong side of fifty when her father died. Look how much affection she had for her father! By that time, he was unable to see; he was blind. How lovingly she took care of him! If she had not been a good daughter, she could have said that she had her own life, she had her own husband and children to look after. But the affection and love which she received from her father when she was a little child became so solid and permanent in her heart that at the very end of his life she was full of gratitude to him. Otherwise, during those last years of his life she could have said, “Oh, no — I have other things to do now.”
Many children keep no connection with their parents. When they hear that their parents have gone to the other world, only then they come for two or three days. Even for one day some children will not come. And, to my greatest astonishment, even if they live in the same state it may happen that they do not come. Even for two or three weeks at the very end, they cannot take care of their parents. They think that somebody else will do it, their brothers or their sisters will do it. They feel that they have played their role and the parents have played their role.
Everything depends on the individual — how much the individual wants to retain the affection, love, sweetness and fondness from his parents. In some cases, no matter how much you give to the parents, they want more and more and more. Their demands never end. Then what can you do? I have seen a few cases like that. At every moment the parents will expect something from their children. Even when the children are thirty, forty or fifty years old, even when they have their own families, the parents do not give them freedom. They will phone up in the morning and say, “Do this for me, do this for me, do this for me.” What can you do at that time? There is no hard and fast rule. Some parents make constant demands. They say, “Because I am your mother” or “Because I am your father you have to do this.” These parents have to think of their children’s new life as well.
Published in You Belong to God