The New Year Dress
In the following discourse, Bhagavan Baba explains what and how we should celebrate the New Year.
The New Year must usher in a new step in spiritual discipline. The old must be rung out; the new must be rung in. How do we celebrate the New Year day? We sweep, clean, remove the cobwebs, paint the walls, hang up festoons and greens, decorate with floral garlands and croton leaves, wear new dresses, and feast on new types of dishes. For one day, we feel fresh and rejuvenated.
At this time of the year, nature, too, puts on a new garb of green, and every tree is gay with flowers. The green carpet on the earth is speckled with multicoloured floral dots. In this festival of renewal, man alone continues with his old prejudices and tendencies, and his outworn habits amid moth‑eaten principles. Should not he, too, brush the cobwebs from his mind? Should he not get rid of opinions and motives that tarnish and demean?
The word Yugadi means the day of the inauguration of the Yuga (Age). The spiritual discipline for each Age has been prescribed by the scriptures: for the Krita (First Age), it is dhyana (meditation); for the Treta (the second age), it is dharma (righteousness); for the Dwapara (third age), it is archana (ritual worship), and for the present age, the Kali, it is namasmarana, the remembrance of the name of God. So, on Yugadi day, you must resolve to accept it and practise it to the utmost. This involves giving up all habits that interfere with the constant remembrance of God.
Without grief, there is no joy
As a matter of fact, life is a series of acceptances and rejections; of attachments and detachments; of joys and griefs; of benefits and losses. This year itself has got a rather forbidding, foreboding name: Virodhikriti, meaning the year of making enemies. Do not have any apprehensions; the only foes you will be meeting will be the evil habits and meaningless pursuits that you are giving up.
Take everything that happens to you as the gift of Divine grace. Of course, you must act with all the skill and devotion you are capable of. Do this act with as much sincerity as you worship God. Then leave the result to the All‑powerful, All‑knowing, and All‑merciful God. Let whatever ensues ensue. Why do you hold yourself responsible? He prompted it, and He got it done through you; He will give whatever result He feels He must.
Without grief, there is no relish in joy. The orange has a bitter rind, a bitterness that guards the sweet juice from marauders; you cannot have a sweet sugary rind for the sweet fruit, for then it will be consumed entirely by all and sundry then and there. The urge of the fruit is to travel far so that the seeds may grow into trees in open spaces in the distance and not under the shade of the parent tree. The tree desires its progeny to spread far and wide.
So, if the rind is bitter, the eater will take it with him and travel some distance while removing it and start scattering the seeds only many paces away. You cannot keep gold safe in a gold box. You must have a steel almirah [cupboard] to store it. The gift of joy comes packed in the rind of grief. Do not pray God to give you only joy; that will be foolish; instead, pray for the fortitude to realize that grief and joy are but the obverse and reverse of the same coin.
Only effort wins God’s grace
Today in every home, the priest reads the New Year’s calendar called the Panchangam (almanac) ‘of the five limbs.’ Which are these five limbs? It is not as is usually understood: the position of the Sun, Moon, stars etc, but it refers to the five senses of man, which yield him the knowledge he gathers through sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell. These have to be pure so that the knowledge can be truly genuine.
The hour and the moment have to be auspicious so that auspiciousness may result. Hence, the careful study of the calendar is prescribed. The planets cannot prevail over the grace of God, which is the most potent influence to guard and guide man. Thyagaraja [a saint who composed songs on Rama] sang that Rama’s [the Avatar’s] grace could counteract the evil effect of the worst conjunction of stars. People resort to vows and rites, hoping to ward off the evil that stars may bring about. But no effort is made to win God’s grace. The pomp and the paraphernalia of puja [ritualistic worship] are merely superficial; they do not confer lasting benefits; at best, they prevent you from using that much time and money in harmful ways. It is the ‘why’ of these rites that matters, not so much the ‘how.’ The ‘why’ has to be the realization of the reality of the individual, which is also the reality of the Universal.
Be devoted to the Universal; be eager to become that. When you pray to God for a job, or a son, or an award, it shows that you are not devoted to God, but to the job, the son, and the award. Pray to God for God; love because it is your nature to love, and because you know nothing else and you cannot act otherwise. Expand yourself, and take in all. Grow in love. That is the new dress you have to wear and shine on this day.
Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 11
