Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
So, let’s begin. Namaste.
So I want to speak a little bit about compassion. What is compassion? You could say it’s a form of attention, kind attention, or even simpatico, a nice Spanish word, sympathetic attention.
Every baby, every pet, dog, or cat, or even cow, is crying out for this kind of attention, usually from the mother, father, or other family members, friends, and so on. Great attention.
What does that mean: sympathy, simpatico—that I feel what you feel, I understand your heart with my heart, I wish you the best.
So, compassion is what is missing in the modern world. It’s what’s missing in materialistic civilization. We’re taught that you have to put yourself first and go out and get what you want and need, and, you know, screw everybody else, dog-eat-dog world and all that. But then we wonder why we’re so unhappy.
Well, compassion begins with oneself as well. You should wish your own self the very best.
And there are different grades of compassion. For example, if I see someone lost and alone on the street, and I take them and buy them a meal. I do this regularly, by the way. Now that person has a full belly, at least for today.
But wait a minute, why are they lost and alone on the street? Why are they suffering? Ignorance, bad karma, the results of their previous actions, which got them in a difficult situation. So just to give them a meal, just to maybe give them a place to stay for a day or two or whatever; this is very small compassion. It’s soon used up, and then the person is back in the same fix.
What is great compassion? Well, one of the Mother’s names is Mahā-Karunā-Samudrā, the ocean of great compassion. Great compassion means to eliminate suffering completely, to take away all the causes of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and so on.
Now, this is something that is always available. The Mother is always there. She’s in everything. She is everything. And She’s in everyone as their life force, Kuṇḍalinī . And therefore, it’s not possible to get away from Her.
But what we do is we distract ourselves. And we make up so many stories about the cause of our miseries and so on. But the real cause is we’re looking in the wrong place for compassion. We’re looking to our neighbors, friends, family, our own, even our own mothers and fathers. But these people aren’t able or willing to give great compassion.
Great compassion means to remove suffering permanently, to eliminate suffering forever. Only God can do that. And only the Mother is the ocean of great compassion.
So this great compassion is available everywhere at all times. But why don’t we experience it? Because we are not qualified. We have not made ourselves qualified to receive it.
First of all, we’re seeking compassion and relief from suffering in all wrong places. By all wrong methods. First of all, we have to understand, why am I suffering?
Karma. What is karma? The result of previous life’s activities. Prārabdha-karma means that karma which is due to fructify into present life. This karma is inescapable.
But then, on top of that, we create anxieties and worries. We make all kinds of plans and we struggle against our karma, which is futile.
You will get the result of your karma. You can’t avoid it. It’s going to happen. It’s your destiny. It’s your fate. But we make it worse by these mental struggles and efforts, which create further karma for the next life.
So first of all, we have to understand the cause of our suffering. And then we have to see… Oh I should mention, this prārabdha-karma is visible in the astrological chart, when it’s done by a real astrologer, a Vedic astrologer, who knows their stuff.
I’m very fortunate I have a really good astrologer. But you can know it. You can just see how has your life gone, basically, for the last 10 years or so. Well that’s pretty much how it’s going to go in the future. And you can expect sudden calamities of different types to come along at different times. You have to always be ready for those.
So how to get rid of this suffering forever, permanently? Well we have to attain mokṣa. Actually that’s a misleading statement. We have to qualify ourselves for mokṣa, to receive liberation. And then the Grace of the Mother will come automatically.
She’s already waiting, ready to give liberation to all. But we have to qualify ourselves. What does that mean? We have to clean up our act. First of all, we have to study with a guru or a qualified teacher. These scriptures that explain all this, which is the Vedas, Upaniṣads, Vedānta, and so many other scriptures.
And also we have to worship. We have to do pūjā; we have to do sādhana. We have to follow the principles, the ways of life given in the scriptures.
Then we make ourselves eligible for mokṣa, qualified for liberation. And will liberation come? Well, liberation is already there, see? It happens every night when we go to sleep.
We’ve talked about all this before. So what’s new, what’s different? What’s new and different is the best way to qualify yourself for liberation is to help others qualify for liberation. As the Goddess of compassion, the Mother loves to see this.
She loves to see when we give compassion to others—and not just a piece of bread or one meal or a couple of nights of shelter, but to give them the knowledge that allows them to qualify themselves for the permanent relief of suffering.
That’s the real compassion. That’s why we do what we do. And we try to make these videos, and we try to publish scriptures.
Oh yeah, you should look in the description of this video. There’s a link to a treasure chest of knowledge about the Mother, about liberation, so many things.
So you should take these materials and study them and do what they say. I have, and it’s made my life so wonderful. It just keeps getting better and better. It’s hard to imagine, but it’s true.
Most people, as they get old, suffer more and more. I saw it in my family members. The older they got, the worse they felt, and it began with their mind and heart. Because their mind and heart was not clean, because they were involved in so many negative thoughts.
You know, there’s a saying, “What you think you will become.” So if you’re always worried about the future, struggling against the present, guilty about the past, then these thoughts are going to crowd out all the good thoughts and produce diseases in the body, negative emotional states, and so on.
By chanting the holy names of the Goddess, the wonderful thousand names and so on, this will relieve us of these negative thoughts. Practice of mantra is really the first step of authentic sādhana. Being a spiritual teacher, and honoring that teacher, being compassionate toward the teacher.
Huh? What a thought! Isn’t the teacher supposed to be compassionate to me? Well, of course, he’s going to be, but it’s a two-way street. The whole idea of the teacher’s compassion is to train you in how to be compassionate to yourself and then to others.
And this is the cure for the poison that we’ve all been given, the poison of betrayal, the poison of false knowledge, the poison of lies and intrigue, isn’t it?
We’ve all experienced these things. So the antidote for that poison is compassion. And that Mahā-Karunā-Sāgara, that ocean of great compassion, is always available. And we can approach Her simply by chanting Her names.
I mean, what could be better than this? But you have to do it. Don’t just look at this as entertainment; look at this as an opportunity to clean up your act and qualify yourself for liberation, which is the end of all suffering.
ĀŪṀ Tat Sat, ĀŪṀ Shakti ĀŪṀ.