Daily Readings from the Works of Swami Venkatesananda


Insights & Inspirations Venkatesa Daily Readings Vol 2. — The Snake Is Its Tail & Mouth

August 23, 2023

The Snake Is Its Tail & Mouth

 

from Vidyananda    Unless you frequently visit hospitals and infirmary's you forget the magnitude of human suffering. If you are part of the establishment of hospitals etc. you become immune to such suffering. But an occasional encounter with human suffering powerfully brings home the great truth which I have often heard from the lips of Sri Gurudev: “Your intellect fails when confronted by the magnitude of human suffering."

      We praying we struggle to sustain hope and faith, and surely these do work in the case of some sick people who are able to endure the suffering bravely. "A better life, they endure the suffering. Faith in the unknown diverts their attention from the tyranny of the known. But unless based on truth, these act as palliatives and tranquilizers, and by mitigating the pain they lower the vitality.

      Only a clear and direct comprehension of the truth can really and truly free us from suffering. That truth embraces not only the present suffering, but all its causative factors — which are the pursuit of pleasure, insatiable ambition, immoderate enjoyment, dissipation of physical and mental energies, and imbalance not only in diet but in work and rest, disharmony internally and psychologically, as well as externally in one's relation with others. When you see the whole truth concerning suffering, then you drop the cause and effect! When you see that the lovely tail and the dreadful mouth both belong to the same cobra, you do not touch the tail and you are not bitten by its mouth.

      Even in other fields of human life and activity, unless we take a complete and total view of every problem that confronts us we shall go around in circles forever, solving one problem by the creation of several other problems. Truth is not partial: which means it cannot be divided into 'because' and' affect', and it does not favor one and frown on another.

 

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We do what we want to do. If it turns out to be good, we take credit for it; if it does not say, "It is God's will". For instance, if it is a cake we take it; if it is a snake we put it on God. Hence perhaps Siva has so many snakes on his body point

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