Why complain? We go and eat the fruits of the forbidden
tree, lose all intuitive faculties, and then we are where we are. It is
silly to complain about evil and badness etc., as long as we ourselves
do not really change our ways.
How can we see things as they are, if we just wallow in the mire of lust and violent likes and dislikes, and wear glasses coloured with heaps of dirt and filth, physical and mental?
There is no sense in wailing continually,
“Oh, how bad the world is! How bad men are! How criminal this is!” No. It is bad, no doubt, but then, rather see that you transform your own lives and become a blessing, and let the world go on merrily with its bad ways and all its follies.
What has that got to do with you?
Take the case of fire. It burns no end of dirt and filth and rubbish;
it takes no end of shapes—the shapes of all the things it
burns, good and bad.
But it is never contaminated thereby. It is free.
It always remains the pure uncontaminated flame.
One thing is certain:
no one who cherishes hatred and dislike and aversion and attachment in his heart will ever be able to see things
and connections as they are, neither will he be able to make any
progress in spiritual life.
First these obstructions must be removed.
But who is willing to do that?
We feel so proud of our righteous anger, of all our aversions, so
strong; and yet only babies act as we do.
This is not the way to attain the goal.
Swami Yatiswarananda
READINGS ON THE GOSPEL OF RAMAKRISHNA
Wiesbaden, Germany, May 4, 1934
