Guru is not for fashion

Go to guru, to surrender. Surrender means that one will accept whatever the guru says. It is not that one thinks, "I do not care for my guru's order. Still I am a disciple." That is not actually accepting a guru. Just like Arjuna surrendered to Krishna. You must find out guru where you can surrender. Not that you keep guru your order supplier, "Give me some ashirvad and I may be benefited." He is not guru; he is your order supplier, your servant. Guru means he must order, "You must do this." If we agree, then he is a guru. Not that "I shall order my guru, and he will execute my order.” that the dog will do, not the guru. You ask your dog, "Sit down here," a dog will sit. That kind of guru keeping has no value. We shouldn't go to a guru simply because a guru may be fashionable at the moment. Just as you sometimes keep a dog as a fashion, if you want to keep a guru as a fashion—"I have a guru"—that will not help. You must accept a guru who can extinguish the blazing fire of anxiety within your heart. Everyone in the material life, in all species and varieties of life, is full of anxieties. So if you want to be anxiety-less, then you must take shelter of the guru, the spiritual master. And the test of the guru is that by following his instructions you'll be free from anxiety. However, a guru is not a person who simply manufactures gold or juggles words just to attract foolish people and make money. An actual guru is one who is fully trained in the ocean of spiritual knowledge.

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The Painting on the wall

There was a king who was a great admirer of art. One day an artist came and said to the king, “Oh King! Give me a blank wall in your palace and let me paint a picture on it.”

The artist was given the job. Just then, another young man said, “Oh King! Please allow me to work on the opposite wall. I too am an artist.”  The king said, “What would you like to make?” The man said, “My Lord, I shall make exactly what that man will make on the opposite wall. Moreover, I shall do so, without looking at his work. I would even request you to have a thick curtain put up between the two walls so that either of us cannot see the other.”

Everyone in the king’s court, including the king was intrigued. He decided to give the young fellow a chance. The following day a thick curtain was put into place and both the artists got to work. The first artist brought in a regular supply of paint, oil, water etc. The second one worked with some cloth and a bucket of water. After a month the first artist told the king that his work was complete. The king sent for the second artist and asked him, “Young man, when would your work be ready? I am coming to see the first wall this evening.” The man said, “My Lord, my wall is ready too!”

The king went to see the first artist’s wall. He was very, very impressed with the painting and gave a hefty sum as a reward to the artist. He then asked for the curtain to be opened up. Lo and behold! The same painting was to be seen on the opposite wall too! Amazing! But true! Each line, each minor detail was exactly as it was on the first wall. But this man had not been seeing what was going on, on the other side of the curtain. So how had he done it?

The king wanted to know the secret. He gave a double reward to the fellow. Then he said, “Young man, I am indeed very happy with your work. But you must tell me; how did you do it?”

The lad said simply, “It’s very easy! I just polished the wall every day till it shone like a mirror!” It was a wall made of white marble! The reflection of the painting across the room, showed up in it!

That is what it means to polish yourself. World is a reflection of you. Whatever you are, the world will seem to be that too. If you are happy, the world will look to be happy. If you are sad; jealous; angry; restless... that is what the world will seem to be to you!

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Pray regularly

 There is a story of about a sea captain who in his retirement skippered a boat taking day-trippers to Shetland Islands. On one trip, the boat was full of young people.

They laughed at the old captain when they saw him say a prayer before sailing out, because the day was fine and the sea was calm.

However they weren't long at sea when a storm suddenly blew up and the boat began to pitch violently. The terrified passengers came to the captain and asked him to join them in prayer.   

   
But he replied, "I say my prayers when it's calm. When it's rough I attend to my ship." 

 
Here is a lesson for us: 
   
If we cannot and will not seek God in quiet moments of our lives; we are not likely to find Him when trouble strikes. We are more likely to panic. But if we have learnt to seek Him and trust Him in quiet moments, then most certainly we will find Him when the going gets rough. 

There is no miracle

One man went out of his village, and after ten years, he came back, advertised himself that "I have become successful in yoga practice." So naturally villagers surrounded him. "Oh, what yoga practice you have learned?" "I can walk on the water." "Oh?" So the arrangement was that he'll cross the river, walking on the water. One old man came and said, "Sir, it is very wonderful, but it is two paise worth." "Why?" "Now, you will walk and go the other side; I'll take a boat, pay him two paise. I'll do the same thing. So what is your credit?" So those who are actually intelligent men, they will question, "What actual profit you have made?” Let us say you are a chemist and you combine acid and base and you make smoke, an explosion or whatever. To somebody ignorant, that's a miracle. But for everything there is a process, and so when you see a miracle, it's just ignorance of the process. So-called transcendentalists who have no real stock of knowledge they are fond of these miracles, and for the most part, because the innocent public is generally foolish, therefore they accept these magicians as saintly persons. So one who does not know these things, they say, "Oh, these are all stories." It is not story. It is no miracle. They are all possible. So there is no such thing as miracle. It is a process of doing. One must know how to do it. There is no miracle. We don't say anything miracle. The real knowledge means science or knowing everything about something. So this Krishna Consciousness is not a miracle, it is science, and because we are Krishna conscious, therefore we know everything.

 

Let go of the fear that if you're relaxed or happy, you're going to fall

When you eat too much, the energy that is usually directed toward normal body functions – healing, cell division, metabolism, and all sorts of other good stuff – must go toward digestion. This makes you feel sleepy and lethargic. You lose motivation and energy.

There is an emotional equivalent. You can extend this same metaphor to your tendency to be overly serious and immobilized over little things. When you are angry, bothered, and annoyed, virtually all the mental and emotional energy that could otherwise be used for creativity, spontaneity, and mental ambition is taken away.

When you focus on things that irritate you, it interferes with the process of creation. It keeps you down, stuck, focused not on the wonder and mystery of life and its many possibilities but on what’s lacking, what’s wrong, and all that makes you mad and frustrated.

As you lighten up, relax, and unwind, you open the doors of creativity and joy that were previously hidden. So, starting today, remind yourself that it’s okay to relax – in fact, it’s more than okay, it’s downright important.

 

The Akshaya Patra Foundation wins Marico Innovation Foundation Award

The Akshaya Patra Foundation won the Marico Innovation Foundation award at the 4^th edition of the Innovation for India Awards 2012 under the Social Category. The Foundation shared the award with three other organisations – Fractal Foundation, St. Jude and Teach for India for the innovations in the social sector by a social organization impacting Education, Health and  Poverty. The Akshaya Patra Foundation won the award out of the 145 applicants competing under the social category.
Congratulating The Akshaya Patra Foundation and emphasising on the need to appreciate innovations in the various sector, Harsh Mariwala, founder of Marico Innovation Foundation and Chairman and Managing Director, Marico Ltd said, "India is clearly burgeoning with talent, so corporate India and government must create an ecosystem to allow innovations to thrive. The awardees stood out among all the 432 entries on the basis of sustainability, impact and its inclusive approach." The Awards followed a transparent evaluation system with a Knowledge Partner – Bain & Company and an Eminent Jury panel led by Dr R A Mashelkar.
Sri Chanchalapathi Dasa, Vice President, The Akshaya Patra Foundation, said, “The award is yet another testimony to our dedication. The recognition boosts our innovative spirit which has been the underlying essence of our success story. We have grown from feeding 1,500 school children in 2000 in Bangalore to 1.3 million school children across eight states today.”
Marico Innovation Foundation institutionalised the “Innovation for India Awards” to recognize the greatest innovations to come out of India in the recent past - innovations that have positively impacted lives and have at their core a great idea coupled with a unique insight. The awards are given away in four categories: Product, Process, Service and Business Model.
The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation providing hot, nutritious freshly cooked classroom lunches for nearly 1.3 million underprivileged children in India.  It runs the world’s largest NGO midday meal program for underprivileged school children in India. In June 2000, Akshaya Patra started feeding 1500 children in 5 schools in Bangalore. Within just 10 years of its inception, Akshaya Patra today feeds nearly 1.3 million children in 8 states from 18 kitchens all over India.
A public-private partnership project, Akshaya Patra is a secular programme that claims to combine good management, innovative technology and smart engineering to deliver school lunch at a fraction of the cost of similar programs in other parts of the world. With an average government subsidy of 50 percent, Rs 675 can feed a child for a year. The foundation aims to serve 5 million children daily by 2020.

Everybody follows somebody

Everywhere there must be, one chief man. Either you are a political party or social party or religious party or Communist party... Just like Communist party, they have got their chief men. Lenin, Stalin. I asked this question from Professor Kotovsky, "Where is the difference of philosophy between your Communist philosophy and our Krishna consciousness philosophy? You have to accept one chief man, that Lenin or Stalin, and we have also selected one chief man, or God, Krishna. So you are following the dictates of Lenin or Stalin or Molotov or this or that. We are following the philosophy or the instruction of Krishna. So on principle, where is the difference? There is no difference." You cannot conduct your daily affairs without being dictated by somebody else. So that is the law of nature. Then why don't you accept the supreme authority? It is not possible that we can live without leadership. Is there any party, is there any school, or is there any institution that they're conducting without any chief leader or director? No. The principle is there, that you have to accept one chief. We have to accept the servitorship or to become underhand of some person. 
 
So the intelligence is that "Whom we have to accept?" There lies intelligence: "What kind of leader we shall accept?" So our principle is that Krishna should be accepted as the leader because Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita, "There is no more superior person or superior position than Me."; and "God" means that. In the dictionary "God" means the Supreme Being. Supreme Being means nobody is greater than Him; nobody is equal to Him.