CHENNAI: When you sit for meditation, all your negativity will be thrown out of you at first and then the nectar of wisdom will overpower your sense of logic, reasoning and analysing. The guru’s lotus feet are the nectar of life, which can take us to enlightenment.
The nectar of wisdom will bubble up and flow from inside us. This wisdom only can lead us to liberation from our problems, worries and troubles. With constant and consistent guru dhyana or meditating upon the guru, we will develop concentration and control of senses.
Lord Shiva initiates us into the sacred guru mantra. He says, “Start chanting ‘Om Jai Gurudeva’ internally as you sit for meditation. When this mantra is chanted with faith, devotion and dedication everyday, after a while you will have a mystical experience of hearing the guru’s voice chanting this mantra from inside you.”
Lord Shiva says that we must chant the guru mantra even to sanctify the food we eat. This culture is prevalent amongst Christians who say grace before their meals. Muslims too pray before they eat.
In sanatana dharma, a special Sanskrit mantra is chanted which says ‘this food is earned by me by honest means; I thank god for it’.
Sanskrit prayers have an advantage. They are powerful because every syllable in Sanskrit is a mantra. Saying ‘thanks’ in any other language is also good, but not as powerful. It is like a motorbike racing with a Jaguar car — the latter has a distinct advantage. But when the mantra comes from the guru in any language, it becomes charged with power. Never mind if you do not know Sanskrit or the mantra for purification of food. Just place your left hand across your chest, your right palm on the food and say Krishnarpanamastu.
The food will be purified. Krishnarpanamastu — offering all our actions to god, is thus a guru mantra. Beautiful and famous people enjoy name, fame, wealth, adulation and prosperity in society because they had rendered selfless service to the downtrodden and the sick in their past lives. They have cleaned bodies of lepers, carried them, given them food, treated them for diseases etc. If they had said Krishnarpanamastu — that is, offered all their actions to god — they would not have been born at all; but they did not, and have earned lots of good karma. So god has granted them this lifetime to enjoy the fruits of their good deeds. He says, go ahead and get all the name and fame that is due to you. It does not matter even if you don’t remember me! But invariably, after a certain age these people go back to charity and doing social work, as it is a habit from their past.
Extract from The Force of Nirvana by Shri Shri Nimishananda
