"Rudra": Bringer of Tears

[Guest guest]

Dear friends,

 

I am delighted to share with you another extract from the book

"Thousand Names of Vishnu" (Vishnu Sahasranamam) written by

Sri.Eknath Eswaran. I really enjoyed reading it and am hoping you

will all too.

 

Regards,

 

dAsan,

Sudarshan

 

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(QUOTE)

RUDRA

 

Another of the Thousand Names associated with 'karma' is RUDRA, which

comes from the root 'rud' which in Sanskrit means "to cry". We

associate the Lord with love, so we find it difficult to understand

how he can be called "he who makes us cry". But if God is all, he is

suffering as well as joy. As Rudra, he personifies the unavoidable

fact that most of us learn from our mistakes only because they bring

us sorrow. Suffering is not the Lord inflicting punishment on us. Our

ignorance in making choices is responsible for most of the sorrow we

bring upon ourselves.

 

A certain amount of suffering in life is not only inescapable but

even necessary for growth. It took me a long time to understand this,

though my spiritual teacher tried to teach me very early in life.

When I made a mistake and suffered for it, she would be very

sympathetic. She didn't gloat over my suffering or withdraw her

support of me either; but in wordless ways, she helped me to learn

not to make that mistake again. At the time I didn't understand what

seemed a strange lack of sympathy. Today I know that if someone has

been behaving selfishly, it is much better for that person to suffer

the consequences and learn to change than it is to remain blind and

fail to grow, which just means letting problems grow instead.

 

Everyday I see the verification of the law of karma. Ill health is

often an instance: if we do not take care of our body and maintain

our peace of mind, our health is bound to suffer. That is Rudra

making us cry. When our breathing is laboured, when our digestion is

upset, when our equanimity is destroyed, we do cry -- and this crying

is a signal, a red warning from body and mind, reminding us that

something fundamental in our life is wrong. Pain, illness,

insecurity, and mental turmoil are all loving signals from the Lord,

who is telling us, "It's time you gave yourself a checkup. It is time

you learned to change your ways". That is Rudra speaking to us.

 

Sometimes we manage to delay payment in the operation of karma, but

then it hits us with heavy interest. I prefer the cash karma, where

if you make a mistake you pay for it immediately. However painful

this may be for the moment, there is no interest hanging over your

head. You give out six dollars worth of inconsiderateness, and on the

spot you get six dollars worth in return. The debt is cancelled. When

you make a mistake, in other words, it much better to take the

consequences on the chin than to try to put them off, for

consequences tend to compound, making the karma load bigger and

bigger.

 

When I was growing up, it was considered imprudent in my village to

have any kind of debt. No one would borrow unless they absolutely had

to; the consequences of debt were just too serious. If you borrowed a

small amount and paid it back quickly, the penalty wasn't bad. But

there are certain moneylending practices in India whereby the

interest on the loan ends up greater than the principal, so that the

longer the loan is drawn out, the more you owe. You can borrow a

thousand rupees, pay interest every month, and find out after three

years that you owe not one thousand rupees but fifteen hundred.

Similarly, in the spiritual realm, the weight of unpaid karma can be

a tangible liability. When you accumulate karmic debts, therefore,

pay them back right away, because interest builds up. Don't be

tempted to reschedule your karmic debt, and don't wait for interest

rates to go down; it doesn't happen.

 

IN India we have a peculiar phrase, "to file the yellow paper". It

means to declare insolvency, and it is looked upon -- especially by

creditors -- as being less than fully honest. When you go to ask for

a loan, the lender always asks you to declare that you have no

intentions of filing the yellow paper.

 

One of the perennial paradoxes of the human condition is that if you

want to avoid filing the yellow paper in life, the only way is to

give. By giving you can never go bankrupt, because the more you give

of yourself, the more you receive. In fact, it is only by giving that

you can avoid going bankrupt. When you go through life refusing to

give, the yellow paper comes and sticks to your forehead.

 

Most people who are insecure, for example, have difficulty giving of

themselves. Insecurity is a warning from the bank within that you are

getting low on funds. But such people needn't go on to the point that

they become actually bankrupt in love. They can make themselves

solvent again, even rich, by learning to give. As St.Francis de Sales

says, we learn to give by trying to give; we learn to give more by

giving more. Instead of dwelling on ourselves and asking what we can

expect from others, we should start looking for ways to give our

time, energy, and resources to causes more important than ourselves.

 

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(UNQUOTE)

 

 

 

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