The importance of studying

Some people are very lucky. Other people are not so lucky. Teachers are very lucky: two holidays in one month. They must have done navagraha the whole year. Actually ‘holiday’ doesn’t mean ‘holiday’ in the sense that you can go to gateway and do your nonsense. Use these holidays wisely. Study. You’ve got this opportunity. The way this education system is going now, you should make the best of it while you can. Many people are saying the teachers are not doing their job. I say the student’s attitude has really gone to zero.

You must sow your seeds to create a habit. And you must sow your habits to create an attitude. And sow your attitude to create your character. It is very important in this life. Especially as we don’t know if on the seventh of May we’re going to do the ballot or the bullet. We’re not sure. But come what may, you’ll still be here going to Verulam Secondary, to Mountview Secondary, and the school at the back-side of the Gayathri Peedam, called Glenhaven Secondary.

You know, it is our parents who give us something that nobody can take from us, and we go with it to our last day. It’s called ‘education’. Education is not about studying; it’s not about remembering. It’s about living. You have to use that education to live this life. Don’t be like some people who are studying for ten years and still not finished. And they are talking about studying again. For some people studying has become a profession.

Please use this time wisely. Education is the most important aspect of this plane. And as I said to you last week, there are eight million four hundred thousand species on this earth, and your soul has chosen this body because this body has what we call intelligence. Use it. When I drive past Glenhaven in the morning, sometimes I think there are chips outside. They are busy running around on the road and everywhere, chasing each other. And I think about when we went to school. Once we were inside the school property we could not get out until the school was finished. The principal was our guardian, our custodian. These days the attitude of the children – disgraceful is a nice word to use.

We need to make the best of this life because in three to four years from now education will be in a mess and you will be lucky to be out of the system. After the next election you’ll see what education will become, and you’ll think, ‘maybe I should do my best now and get out of the system’. Not all of you can be lucky like the ungrateful twins. Because they finished matric, went straight to work and got nice jobs. And now when I’m on the road they just drive past me. They don’t even stop to greet me – because they’re looking for mulberries.

So please, children, as much as I’m sounding like a joke to you – education is the utmost in this life. There’s nothing more than education. Your father can own one hundred and forty-seven trucks and twenty businesses but without education you’re useless. It is the most important aspect of this journey.

Just a piece of advice, since you’re all Hindu: if you want to get the best results, before you start to study recite nine times: Om Rheem Aheem Saraswathi Namaha, and see how you’ll attain. Some of you think this guru is mental. It works. Please study, study and study. You’ll get nothing else out of anything that you do, but by study you’ll get everything.

Good Friday

At around ten-thirty this morning there was an angel among all of you. I hope you had the experience. Only one other person saw it, and I saw her reaction. Once again, we are blessed: we’ve have the divine blessing of the Mother. This is why we have such good energy here today. I hope you take it home and enjoy it. I hope you don’t go home and become your miserable selves. That’s what many of you normally do – become a miserable person as soon as you go home. Just enjoy this energy, keep it and see how you feel the whole week. And next week Friday come for another top-up, your once-a-week fill-up. That’s the way it should be.

Coming here once a month, or once in a couple of months, won’t help you. The energy depletes. You don’t have within yourself the intelligence to create energy. But you have the ability to absorb energy. And that absorbed energy is what resonates within you throughout the week. And when you come back next Friday to top it up again, you’ll find that life will be good. If you don’t believe me, ask Radhika. She comes for a top-up every Friday, she’ll tell you.

Somebody said to me: ‘Theres two people you’ll never get into the Gayathri Peedam: Donovan Nair and Kriba’. And when I see both of them sitting here, I think about how much power the Mother has that she can draw them to Her. Donovan leaves functions just to be here on Fridays. He doesn’t go to functions because he wants to come to service on Friday. Bhakti yoga works like that. It is very subtle. It works so well that you start to have a luminescence within you.

But some people won’t come to temple, they’ll go to Tongaat for breyani instead. They are very sick but they can go to Tongaat for breyani. And I asked the person, ‘But you didn’t come temple, why you went to Tongaat?’ Her husband said, ‘The food is good there’.

Somebody asked me what is so unique about Good Friday. Everybody prays on Good Friday. In the early days, all the Indians lived in estates – not in Umhlanga or Brindhaven, but in the tea estate, or the Klipfontein Estate (where we pull the chariot to). And in the estates they had a temple. What used to happen, because it was a long week – and they were labourers – and it’s the most auspicious time in our calendar, according to the panchang – is that they would thank the Mother Earth for whatever she had given them. The North Indians did the dharad, put hardi stick in water, did a prayer and poured it on the ground to cool the ground. The Tamil people said, ‘Let us grind the rice and make rice flour to make porridge to offer to the Mother, then pour some onto the ground and drink the rest’. So it’s not a prayer just for the people in Brindhaven; it’s a prayer for the people in Tea Estate, in Redcliff, in Buffels Drive. It’s a prayer for farmers to thank Mother Earth, which is modified to ‘porridge jol’ in modern times.

Why they say that is very simple. Nowadays what happens is that they slaughter. And because they slaughter, they have to have alcohol. And they’ll say the alcohol is there for Mutharveeran – it means 'the bully in the city of madurai'. He used to bully everyone and upset everything when they were doing prayers, and everything was negative. He would ask for alcohol if they wanted him to stop, so they used to do it for him. Anyway, this filtered out as the people moved out of the estates and into their own homes, and they started doing it at home. So the slaughtering prayer is the lowest form of worship. You go to any book in any Hindu scripture and it will tell you that, including all the South Indian books, because the greatest teaching of Hinduism is that of ahimsa – which means non-killing and non-injury to animals and people. So if we are Hindus and we follow the first code of conduct of the ten codes of conduct – it is ahimsa. That is why the slaughtering prayer is the lowest form of prayer.

I’m going to tell you how you are affected by meat-eating. The highest karma goes to the consumer, not the abattoir, not the butcher, but the consumer. Why? It’s because they are creating the market for those two to exist. If everyone became vegetarian there would be no butchery or abattoir. When we do these prayers we shouldn’t be eating meat.

In the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, in niyama, the second step, one of the items there is ahimsa – non-killing, non-injury. And the ten Hindu commandments come out of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. So now, if you all want, on this auspicious weekend, you can all go to Mount Egecombe temple after I tell you this, and sit in your car, then go to the Hari Krishna temple, but please carry some hardi water with you. Hindus have a method called ‘drink manjal water’, which is hardi water – and your karma is gone. If it was so easy then we would all be there in Vaikuntha – we could just drink manjal water. So slaughtering is not what we should do. Becoming a vegetarian is the ideal Hindu way.

Hari Om.

Hanuman Jayanthi

Hari  om.

I'm sure all of you know that, starting today, we have an eclipse, and also Hanuman jayanthi and full moon. And for that reason the janda pooja was done a bit differently – we did the sankh pooja with one hundred and eight seashells, and we did abishegam afterwards. The reason we do it this way is so that whatever difficulties and obstacles might come our way will be avoided.

It's the first time that three planets have aligned in such a manner. They will stay aligned until some time after July 26. Many things can happen during that time. It was predicted thousands of  years ago that anything can happen, good or bad, in kali yuga. We don't know which it's going to be so we did the sankh pooja. Sukran, or Jupiter also moved to the east, which is not good.

Many of you know that Hanuman jananthi is actually tomorrow, which is correct. I'm not going to embarrass you, but the only reason we had it today is that if we had it tomorrow with pournami today you wouldn't come tomorrow because your quota for the month is finished. So we did it today. Stanger is very fortunate because we are doing the pooja there tomorrow. But it doesn't matter when Hanuman jayanthi falls, whether we do it today, tomorrow or next week. Hanuman jayanthi is the time that Ram had the first sighting of Hanuman – nobody knows when he was born. So it is this time, under this thirthi, nakshaktra, and yogam that Ram met Sri Hanuman. It is the appearance of Hanuman not the birth that we celebrate, so it's not that important when the pooja is done. In your life you can have an appearance of Hanuman any time. When you leave here and tell people that you did Hanuman jayanthi today and not tomorrow, they will tell you there's something wrong with this temple.

There is no such thing as Hanuman janda. It is the sign of victory within yourself. You have now conquered anger, hate, brutality, violence - whatever negative aspects you are fighting. You have conquered them, and are putting up a flag of victory. In India no houses have a Hanuman janda. Only in Mauritius and South African do houses have a janda. In the olden days only certain people, Hindi people, had jandha. Now everyone puts it up. It has changed. Everybody wants to show the sign of victory.

We can go into the deeper aspects of the Ramayan and of Hanuman, but I might confuse all of you. I just want to give you one significant point. For what reason do you do Hanuman prayer on Tuesdays? You don't even know. If I ask you why you're doing it on Tuesdays you'll say it's because your father, grandfather, and great grandfather did it. Hanuman's  day is Saturday, not Tuesday. But because you don't want to fast on Saturday that is the reason you do it on Tuesday – for convenience. Shiva's day is on Sunday but because you don't want to fast on Sunday you've moved it conveniently to Monday. This is human nature. We pray at our convenience. If we did Hanuman jayanthi over two days your convenience would have been affected. Which other day do you want obstacles to be removed? On Tuesday? On Saturday – Sani's day – you want the bad luck to go. Otherwise we'd do navagraha seven days a week. Ashok would have to leave work to come here full time.

And if you noticed the prayer took a very unique turn tonight and created a very divine energy. That is because of the sankh. What is the meaning of 'sankh'? 'S(h)ankara' is the name of Lord Shiva. It is believed that Shiva meditates in a sankh. When he is sitting in meditation he is  referred to as 'S(h)ankara' – one who has attained bliss. When they give that name to anybody. It is always 'Shankarananda' – one who is in bliss. That's where the name comes from.

I'm sure you've learned something today. Shiva sitting in the meditative posture is referred to as Sankara because he was meditating in a shell called a sankh. You can all add that to your vocab or whatever book you're writing.

Hari Om.