Divine Wisdom

Celestial Poems of Sathya Sai Baba

"If you bring bunches of flowers and worship Him,

He neither appreciates nor accepts.

If you offer the lotus of your heart,

He readily accepts with a compassionate heart.

Do not ever forget this good and noble word."

~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba ~

Quotable Quotes

"Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.

Bitterness paralyses life, love empowers it.

Bitterness sours life, love sweetens it.

Bitterness sickens life; love heals it.

Bitterness blinds life, love anoints its eyes."

~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~

Food for Thought

"As is the food, so is the mind;

As is the mind, so are the thoughts;

As are the thoughts, so is the conduct;

As is the conduct, so is the health."

~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba ~

Forgotten Treasure

Once upon a time there was a rich village. The wealthiest of the villagers decided to hide a huge lump of gold to protect it from bandits and robbers. So he buried it in a nearby rice field.

Many years later, the village was no longer rich, and the rice field was abandoned and unused. A poor farmer decided to plow the field. After some time plowing, it just so happened that his plough struck the long forgotten buried treasure.

At first he thought it must be a very hard tree root. But when he uncovered it, he saw that it was beautiful shining gold. Since it was daytime he was afraid to try and take it with him. So he covered it up again and waited for nightfall.

The poor farmer returned in the middle of the night. Again he uncovered the golden treasure. He tried to lift it, but it was far too heavy. He tied ropes around it and tried to drag it. But it was so huge he couldn't budge it an inch. He became frustrated, thinking he was lucky to find a treasure, and unlucky to not be able to take it with him. He even tried kicking the huge lump of gold. But again it wouldn't budge an inch!

Then he sat down and began to consider the situation. He decided the only thing to do was to break the lump of gold into four smaller lumps. Then he could carry home one piece at a time.

He thought, "One lump I will use for ordinary day-to-day living. The second lump I will save for a rainy day. The third lump I will invest in my farming business. And I will gain merit with the fourth lump by giving it to the poor and needy and for other good works."

With a calm mind he divided the huge lump of gold into these four smaller lumps. Then it was easy to carry them home on four separate trips.

Afterwards he lived happily.

The moral is: "Don't bite off more than you can chew."

(Source: Jataka Tales)

Divine Wisdom

Offer your Ignorance

"What is it that you have to offer to God?

Not a leaf, a flower, a fruit or holy water.

You have to offer yourself to God.

Then you become one with the Divine.

That is what God desires from you."

~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba ~

(Divine Discours - 11.7.95

As a Flower ...

"As a flower that is lovely and beautiful, but is scentless, 

even so fruitless is the well spoken word of one who does not practise it."

~ Dhammapada 51 ~

The Golden Mallard

Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Brahmin, and growing up was married to a bride of his own rank, who bore him three daughters named Nanda, Nanda-vati, and Sundari-nanda. The Bodhisatta dying, they were taken in by neighbors and friends, whilst he was born again into the world as a golden mallard endowed with consciousness of its former existences.

Growing up, the bird viewed its own magnificent size and golden plumage, and remembered that previously it had been a human being. Discovering that his wife and daughters were living on the charity of others, the mallard bethought him of his plumage like hammered and beaten gold and how by giving them a golden feather at a time he could enable his wife and daughters to live in comfort. So away he flew to where they dwelt and alighted on the top of the central beam of the roof.

Seeing the Bodhisatta, the wife and girls asked where he had come from; and he told them that he was their father who had died and been born a golden mallard, and that he had come to visit them and put an end to their miserable necessity of working for hire.

"You shall have my feathers," said he, "one by one, and they will sell for enough to keep you all in ease and comfort."

So saying, he gave them one of his feathers and departed. And from time to time he returned to give them another feather, and with the proceeds of their sale these Brahmin women grew prosperous and quite well to do.

But one day the mother said to her daughters, "There's no trusting animals, my children. Who's to say your father might not go away one of these days and never come back again? Let us use our time and pluck him clean next time he comes, so as to make sure of all his feathers."

Thinking this would pain him, the daughters refused.The mother in her greed called the golden mallard to her one day when he came, and then took him with both hands and plucked him.

Now the Bodhisatta's feathers had this property that if they were plucked out against his wish, they ceased to be golden and became like a crane's feathers. And now the poor bird, though he stretched his wings, could not fly, and the woman flung him into a barrel and gave him food there. As time went on his feathers grew again (though they were plain white ones now), and he flew away to his own abode and never came back again.

(Source: The Jataka or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births)

Celestial Poems of Sathya Sai Baba

"What is the use if the greedy one accumulates a lot of wealth,

As he does not enjoy it even in the least?

Even though the flowing stream has lots of water in it,

The greedy dog never feels satisfied even in the least."

~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba ~

Devotees are Baba's Very Life

"Devotees are Baba's very life.  Likewise, Baba is the very life of His devotees.  Both have the same life-breath.  If you thoroughly grasp this principle, then you will always enjoy Baba's protection wherever you are.

Those who are firm and steadfast in their devotion will never face any troubles or difficulties.  Surely, you must have heard or read many stories that illustrate that those who repose full faith in God never come to any harm.  You must have a pure heart and unsullied, steadfast devotion.

Devotion really means intense love for the Lord.  It implies pure and steady love, untainted by any selfish desires.  Such love knows no boundaries and is beyond all regulations.  The spontaneous outflow of selfless love from man to God is true devotion.

Love combined with worldly desires cannot be called devotion.  The only desire one must have is for God and all worldly desires must be set aside.

Nothing should be allowed to come between oneself and God.  The love coming from the devotee's heart must flow unimpeded to God.  Love for God must be totally impervious to the ups and downs of life, like pleasure and pain, gain and loss, etc."

~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba ~

(Summer Discourse - 19.5.2000)

Quotable Quotes

"Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation ... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding and trilling bolster his ego.  His anxiety subsides.  His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation."

~ Jean Arp ~

Divine Wisdom

This Too Will Pass

The new prisoner was afraid and very depressed.  The stone walls of his cell soaked up any warmth; the hard iron bars sneered at all compassion; the jarring collision of steel as many gates closed, locked hope beyond reach.  His heart sank low as his sentence stretched long.  On the wall, at the head of his cot, he saw scratched in the stone the following words: THIS TOO WILL PASS.

These words pulled him through, as they must have supported the prisoner before him.  No matter how hard it got, he would look at the inscription and remember, 'This too will pass."  On the day of his release, he knew the truth of those words.  His time was completed; jail too had passed.

As he regained his life, he often thought about that message, writing it on bits of paper to leave by his bedside, in his car and at work.  Even when times were bad, he never got depressed.  He simply remembered "This too will pass', and struggled on through.  The bad times never seemed to last all that long. Then when good times came, he enjoyed them but never too carelessly.  Again he remembered, 'This too will pass' and so carried on working at his life, nothing taken for granted.  The good times always seemed to last uncommonly long.

Even when he got cancer, "This too will pass" gave him hope.  Hope gave him strength and the positive attitude that beat the disease.  One day the specialist confirmed that 'the cancer too had passed.'

At the end of his days, on his death bed, he whispered to his loved ones, 'This too will pass' and settled easily into death.  His words were his last gift of love to his family and friends.  They learned from him that 'grief too will pass'

(From the book "Opening the Door of Your Heart" by

Ajahn Brahm)

Anger

"The sadhaka must be vigilant not to lose his temper even on small things,

for that will block his progress.  He must cultivate Love 

towards all beings.  Then undesirable habits will stay away

from him since anger is the parent of all wrong behaviour.

Anger can turn any person towards bad ways, at any moment and 

in any form."

~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba ~

(Dyana Vahini)