


Sharanagati
Collected words from talks of Swami Tirtha
Aug
24
(from a lecture of Swami Tirtha, 15.08.2017 pm, Ludasto)
(continues from the previous Friday)
What is the meaning and the importance of initiation? This is enrollment into a spiritual school. It’s the conversion of our life – when from simple ecstasy you get a chance to reach superior ecstasy.
Life is long and complicated. But we all need some support and some fixed and secure points in this long journey. Krishna’s grace is just like the full moon – always following the midnight traveler. This is a fixed point in our life. When we try to give our life, sell ourselves and dedicate our life to divine service, something becomes very strong in us. We lose a lot. What do we lose? We lose the absence of the goal for this life. We lose this deficit of proper values. We lose some part of our attachments. Well, some part will remain, so there is more to lose. But our commitment should grow.
This is like a beginning of a new life. And you know, when a child is born, the child itself is crying and everybody around are happily laughing. This is the beginning. And what is the end? If you had a bad life, offensive life, then you cry at the end and everybody is laughing around you, everybody is happy. But to live properly means that you can leave laughing and all those who remain here shed a tear for you. If we have started this worldly path, we have to accomplish it sometime. But meanwhile we have to do something very reasonable and very beautiful. And the most beautiful ideal that we can achieve in this lifetime is to dedicate ourselves to divine service. Therefore initiation is not like a simple birth when you are crying and others are laughing. Either you will cry and everybody else will cry, or you smile and everybody else will smile as well.
Diksha, initiation, is a change. It is a transformation of our life. Whatever we have learned, collected or experienced before, now it can be used in divine service. It is transformed into some spiritual essence.
Athato brahma-jigyasa[1] – “As we have taken birth as human beings, this is the time for the inquiry about the truth of the soul and the Supersoul”. This is a very glorious ideal. Are you satisfied with that? I thought you were not satisfied. Because to search for the truth – we can find it in so many places. But why do we attend a devotional school? Because our version of this sutra – athato brahma jigyasa – is transformed, it’s different. This is athato rasa jigyasa – “Now this is the time to search for rasa, for the eternal connection of the soul and the Supersoul”. Are you satisfied with that upgrade of the ideals? I think you are.
So, here is the field, here is the favorable environment. We don’t have a/the Milk Ocean, but we have our lives. To achieve the goal of its churning is possible by the grace of God. The amrita is the Holy Name. And if you chant it with devotion, with bhakti, then everything is accomplished.
[1] The beginning of Vedanta Sutra
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