‘Shreyas karmas’ are the ones which are difficult to perform and not very pleasant in the initial stages but are highly beneficial for us in future. While ‘Preyas karmas’ are those karmas which are very pleasing and enjoyable in the beginning but produce ill effects in future in long term.
The beneficial or ‘Shreyas karmas’ are advantageous, benign, health giving and have positive and wholesome effect in our lives. They give peace, longevity and abundance. So perform only positive actions. But this path of selective good actions is sometimes long and arduous. Our feet get tired, we lose hope and courage, we find ourselves alone with no companion, people ridicule us as majority of them do not validate our views, and finally we see that there is no energy left in us to walk up the steep hill.
But do you know my lovable child, that you should never give up your ambition because our aim is very blessed and unselfish. Our motives very pure and therefore God provides us help in accomplishing our benign goals. Although the greedy and selfish man also works hard to achieve his goals and selfish intentions, but God never provides him any encouragement or support.
God provides help only to his sweet children by giving them ‘shakti’ or force in their minds by planting thoughts of determination, fortitude, discrimination, goodness and self-belief to continue walking on the rocky path of God-realization. Whoever makes attempts to redeem, purify and wants benediction, God promotes and backs up every little effort of ours so that we make consistent and considerable progress for atonement, self discovery and God realization.
God is non-doer, a silent spectator and is responsible for nothing that we do. We are responsible for whatever actions we take whether physical or mental or otherwise. But when you invoke God by the perfume of your virtuous acts, He blesses you like a Father to a son for your good acts and supplants fatigue with good energies, high spirit, a fine intellect and extraordinary physical and mental energies to cover up the gaps when we take giant strides to make our spirit blossom.
But those people who harbour evil thoughts, jealousy, anger and shrewdness, they all live in hell. They emit a foul smell as they have a very small heart. Such people slowly become lazy in nature, they do not get success in their goals and their mind gets constricted. They fall and regress and further regress on the ladder of human evolution.
Now there is one question which may crop up in our mind in the process of salvaging ourselves. Which actions should we chose from so many possibilities as sometimes our mind gets blurred? There is always a choice that we have to make and we do not know what is right for us? What is the criteria of selection?
We should only choose to do those karmas which will raise our soul higher, which will produce enthusiasm and zest in our lives and which will make our life a blissful paradise.
What sort of life should we lead to enable us to do the right actions?
Our life must be simple, it should have sweetness. It should have love in abundance. Our life should be brimming with devotion, love and goodness for all!!
A few lines in Hindi are flowing spontaneously at this point in my mind summarizing the topic of all the three posts. I hope you will appreciate my small effort in expressing myself what I wish to say. It goes something like this..,
Agar atma prakash karna chhate ho to shubh, hitkari, swarthheen karam karo.
Nishkam karam mukti ka dwar hai, rasta hai.
Nishkam karam man ko shanti deta hai.
Nishkam karam-bandhan se mukti deta hai.
Nishkam karam do dilo ko jodta hai. Raag, bhaye ko door bhagata hai.
Nishkam karam punyai ka ambar lagata.
Nishkam karam se Arjun ko Krishna mil jata hai.
The translation in English.
If you wish to have Divine Illumination, then perform beneficial, selfless actions.
Selfless acts are the door to salvation, is the path of salvation.
Selfless acts give peace of mind.
Selfless acts free us from the bondage of results of our actions.
Selfless acts join two hearts. It eliminates anger and fear.
Selfless acts add to your treasure trove of virtuous acts.
With selfless acts, Arjuna (devotee) finds his beloved Lord Krishna (God)
Please refer the last post for more description and explanation)
(Concluded)
This was a beautiful series!!! as u discussed of long-term good, i agree that it can be quite a task when u are faced with decisions to make, especially if another being is also involved.
many a times i have observed a couple who when in courtship will have a lot of patinece and understanding, but eventually become intolerant of each other’s habits / misgivings….i thought of this when i was reading your bit about selfless acts.
what is love if not selfless? and when u do not expect back a prescribed form of behaviour to complement your acts of love, its selfless, but its so easily forgotten…and people lose their special bond amidst the web of materialistic and conditioned thinking!
the concluding lines are beautiful!!
mandira and i have accepted that we are way too similar in our thinking and likes and dislikes…so we must be twins!!
henceforth, i’m going to take the liberty of assuming that when you write “my child” it means me too! 😀 hehehehe
i could stay awake all night long to hear you speak and to discuss these topics with you!
hugs!
Wonderful series. Feeling good and relaxed after reading them all 🙂
Selfless acts give peace of mind. So true dear mom. I recently visited this NGO in Bangalore city which supports mentally challenged children. It was a wonderful feeling to just shower love on them and to play/smile with them.
Posting short info about them below in case anyone else wants to visit/support them :
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Swanthana, is a mission of the Daughters of St. Camillus, is a center providing love, care and a joyful home to the abandoned, mentally challenged and spastic female children (infants to pre teens).
This is the only female care center for mentally challenged in the entire Karnataka. Sis. Rigina was heading the center and along with her 6 more sisters that work there. She went on to tell the daily routine, these kids has to be given bath 3-4 times daily just to keep them away from the bad smell they develop and had to feed them 6 times a day with proper diet.
Few of these kids don’t sleep in the night and keep crying and the sisters have to be awake all the night taking care of them. Sleepless nights are part of their routine. The care they take cannot be described, the patience they have.. it’s just amazing.
The sad part of this is they don’t have support. They don’t have any continuous financial assistance. The government promised and is supposed to give Rs.450 per kid towards the monthly expenses which they never got. It purely runs on donations from the public. Sister told how some times when they don’t have the next meal they call people and few help.
These people need a lot of support. Even if not financially you can give them moral support by visiting them.
Phone: 080 28441153,
Mobile: 09986951855
Om shanti.
Shahid, I appreciate your kind gesture. I have already got in touch with this organization, Swanthana, the very same day. Thanks for telling us about it.
Glad to read that you have contacted Swanthana-Thanks mom <3
Please accept my humble pranam Maa. while reading this insightful post, i could not get this line – “God is non-doer, a silent spectator and is responsible for nothing that we do.” I have read many times that God is the doer and if man thinks himself to to be the doer, then it implies he is being egoistic. So, I wonder what you meant by referring to God as the doer in this post.
Dearest Resham,
Pranam,
Indeed a very good question from you which perplexes many.
God has created this Universe and everything else, including us. He created us and gave us three options where actions/karmas are concerned.
They are- in a particular situation we can act, we can decide not to act or we can be just indifferent or neutral.So God is non doer here. We initiate an act and after that God answers and responds. But before that God was a silent spectator. God did not do anything, we did. We can choose any option after which the consequence is ours.
We say God does everything because whatever is happening in every being, action and activity anywhere and everywhere, God’s Force is used, hence God is everything. We have not made or created any force or power or anything, we are merely using all those forces. If we think we are the doer, we are egoistic.
Now if we remove our ego, surrender completely, we begin to see the silent working of God and we become non doer….in this way, we escape the bad route which we could have made for ourselves.
In short, we can say that we have the power to decide, act and then bear the consequences, we become the actor/participant because God has given us those powers but to choose what is to be done and what is to be avoided we have to know that. God is merely a spectator in this whole gamut and hence called non doer…..
Hope there is some clarity about it now. As we mature on this path, all the revelations come to us as a grace from God and all these fundamentals begin to unfold, ask for grace and you will know better.
God bless you and all
Ma.
I could not get the entire thing. I think this must be the case with most of the readers. So could you please explain with some examples or illustrations? I think Resham has raised one fundamental question which perplexes many.
regards,
Jerry.
Thanks a lot my Maa for putting efforts to explain this point to me. I will re-read it many times to properly grasp the explanation. Love & regards
My Dearest Maa, Pranam and my many thanks to you and all My Divine Gurus for blessing us by way of this blog. Many times, when I think deeply, I feel how will pay the debt of my Gurus for their unending grace. Such an insignificant person I am! I can be only humble and obey. Maa, I again thank you sincerely for being so kind. I read the 3 interconnected posts and picked up these lines from the 2nd and 3rd post for my today’s learning. 🙂
# Mahavatar Babaji hates it if we waste our precious time in frivolous, trifling and wasteful activities.
# The Guru asks us to retrace our steps from the materialistic and illusory world to the Divine world and teaches us to be good by serving God through human beings.
# We can start by first taking a firm resolution and setting our goal to achieve the Divine Abode. Once our aim is laid down and set firm, the next thing the aspirant has to do is to perform suitable actions in synchronization to them.
# What is good for me on long term basis? Perform only those actions. (Which means we should prefer doing Shreyas Karma over Preyas Karma)
# A wise man comes to the world and finds out first the path to God by disciplining his senses and mind through self-control, discarding ego and contemplation on God, devotion, service, charity, kindness, good behaviour and many such virtuous acts.
# When you invoke God by the perfume of your virtuous acts, He blesses you like a Father to a son for your good acts and supplants fatigue with good energies, high spirit, a fine intellect and extraordinary physical and mental energies to cover up the gaps when we take giant strides to make our spirit blossom.
# we should only choose to do those karmas which will raise our soul higher, which will produce enthusiasm and zest in our lives and which will make our life a blissful paradise.
# Our life must be simple, it should have sweetness. It should have love in abundance. Our life should be brimming with devotion, love and goodness for all!!
Pranam at your Holy Feet Maa. I have learnt how to worship the Holy Ones and many good things from you. And I am still learning. 🙂
– Resham
II Jai Sat guru II
Loved this para-
When you invoke God by the perfume of your virtuous acts, He blesses you like a Father to a son for your good acts and supplants fatigue with good energies, high spirit, a fine intellect and extraordinary physical and mental energies to cover up the gaps when we take giant strides to make our spirit blossom”.
Agar atma prakash karna chhate ho to shubh, hitkari, swarthheen karam karo.
Nishkam karam mukti ka dwar hai, rasta hai.
Nishkam karam man ko shanti deta hai.
Nishkam karam-bandhan se mukti deta hai.
Nishkam karam do dilo ko jodta hai. Raag, bhaye ko door bhagata hai.
Nishkam karam punyai ka ambar lagata.
Nishkam karam se Arjun ko Krishna mil jata hai.