Vows for the New Year
(Spoken on
New Years Eve, 1972)
What is our duty in the New
Year? What is the goal of our life, what is the objective behind us, what is
the purpose of our activities – what is it that we want finally in our life. This
is the subject of our contemplation on this eve of the advent of a new light.
Our duty is to be true to God
and true to one’s own self. We should take stock of what we have done – strike
a balance sheet, as accountants do: what good has been done and also what wrong
has been done, how much progress has been made in our soul’s longing and
aspiration for its destination, and whether we have been moving in the proper
direction or whether we have been sidetracked.
The greatest of vows and
dedications we can make on this holy occasion, this blessed moment of the New
Year, is that we shall be true to our own selves. Vigilance should be our
watchword in the New Year and pray to the Almighty to give us the power of will and understanding, wisdom
and sufficient knowledge and strength to withstand the onslaught of the senses.
When a weakness becomes an uncontrollable, vehement pressure upon ourselves, we
call it a passion.
Sadhakas,
seekers of truth, therefore have to take a disciplined vow that they shall live
a life of minimum comfort and maximum vigilance and understanding.
The needs of the senses, the
needs of the body and the needs of the mind have to be curtailed to the minimum
so that we may gain a double advantage. One thing is, we will not be thieves. A
person who enjoys more than what he needs is a thief, and he is culpable. He will
be punished by the law of nature. Also, this voluntary self-sacrifice that we
do by taking only what is the minimum necessity for our lives will be serving
society, and to that extent we will be ameliorating poverty in the country. Therefore,
the first vow we take is that our comforts should be to the minimum, to the
barest necessity of the physical body, merely for its existence and its normal
activity.
The second vow we take is: We
do not take more than what we have given. We are reborn into this world of
transmigration, samsara chakra, as we call it,
because we have taken more than what we have given. Putting to one’s own
personal use the ignorance and poverty and the helpless condition of other
people is exploitation, which is a sin. So we shall not take more than what we
have given. We shall not eat what we have not earned.
So, minimum comfort is the
first vow. We should not ask for more than what we actually need. The second
vow is we should not take more than what we have given. The third vow is, hurt
not the feelings of others – either in your thought, word or deed.
Among the three forms of tapas mentioned in the
Bhagavadgita, one form of tapas is speaking
sweet words. If we cannot speak sweet words, we need not speak at all. We can
keep quiet. Ahimsa is popularly defined in this
manner as not hurting the feelings of others.
The other vow is that we shall
not deliberately speak a lie. We speak lies for the satisfaction of the ego.
That should not be done. This should be one of the vows for the New Year.
And the most significant vow
of sadhakas and novitiates is brahmacharya. The control of the
senses and the restraint of the mind for craving for objects of sense are vows
which have to be fulfilled. Sattva increases
when ahara, or the intake of the senses,
becomes pure. When sattva increases
within us, our memory power, power of concentration and meditation also get
intensified. When the power of concentration is there, the knots of the heart
of bondage are broken. We become liberated.
These are the disciplinary
vows which we may undertake as a necessary step in our progress on the path of sadhana and God-realization.
Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the
Bhagavadgita says Kalah kalayatam aham
(Gita 10.30): “Among measurers, among disciplinarians, among restrainers, I am
the Time Spirit,” says God. Let us be cautious and be prepared now itself. There
is no saying when this call will come. So let us not weep in the end. Snapping
all these commitments from now onwards is the act of wisdom. Therefore, together
with a life of discipline we should also keep our goals clear before us, and
never be mislead or sidetracked, and be ready to quit, whatever be the time of
that order.
Together with this we should
also try, to the extent permitted by our knowledge, to lead a life divine. To
lead a life divine is to live a life of remembrance of God. Samsara means oblivion to God’s
existence, ignorance of the existence of God. Forgetfulness of God is called samsara, and not the existence of
things and persons.
Our freedom consists in
planting the love of God in our hearts and enshrining Him in our hearts so that
we may enter into Him later on and be thrice blessed. We are confused, and the
end of it all is that we do nothing because we know nothing. When there is no
knowledge, there is no action, no right activity.
Most difficult is to
comprehend this path of God, because it is not to be comprehended with the
faculties with which we are endowed – not through the senses, nor through the
mind, nor through the intellect. It is the soul that visualizes God, nothing
else. It is the Atman beholding the Atman, God seeing God, as it were, because
the soul has no senses, it has no body, it has no intellect, it has no
passions. It is pure luminosity of spirit; and it is this soul within us that
comprehends God as Universality.
May this light of the New Year
come to us as the light of God, as the light of freedom, as the light of
purity, as the light of discipline and as the light of knowledge, the light of
strength and power. This should be our prayer.
We cannot gain constantly in
this practice unless it is continued daily with a great intensity of ardor, fervor
and intense longing for it. It requires a long-drawn training of the mind in a
conducive atmosphere, in the atmosphere of a teacher, with the grace of God.
Dattatreya says that the love of God arises in the soul only due to the grace
of God.
[At this point the clock strikes midnight]
Krishna Bhagavan ki jai! Wish you all a happy New Year of love of God,
aspiration for God, and God-realization in this birth! This is the spirit
of the New Year which we have to keep up with: tenacity, and great power of
will born of understanding, study of scriptures and regular brushing up of our
memory through various sadhanas which
have been prescribed.
God’s grace is upon us all! We
have to remember again the untiring message of Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj: God
first, world next, yourself last. Always take God first. In every event, in
every action and in every enterprise keep God as the first element and the
principle; the world should be taken into consideration only afterwards; and we
have to be taken into consideration as the last element because God was first,
the world came afterwards, and we were the last after the world was created, so
we cannot take ourselves first. This great dictum should be remembered, and we
should try to practice it: God first, world next, yourself last.
God is the Supreme Reality and
is the only goal of life, towards which every atom, every blessed thing big and
small, every soul is gravitating. As rivers rush in to the ocean, all souls
move towards God – rush towards God, as it were – because the goal of all life,
all creation, whatever be its form, is the realization of God, the Supreme
Being, the Absolute.
Excerpts from:
Vows for the New
Year – New Year Message by Swami KrishnanandaArchives - Blog
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