:) Kathamrita , 100th Visit of M. 7-Sept-1884 Vol 4, Section 18, Chap 4
* V e n u *
Worldliness or non-worldliness – Adhar’s job – admiration of the worldly and taking a job under them
It is evening. The lamplighter has lit the lamps in the long southern verandah and the western semi-circular verandah. In Thakur’s room the lamp has already been lit and incense burnt. Soon the moon rises. The temple courtyard, the garden path, the bank of the Ganges, the panchavati, and the tops of trees are all flooded with moonlight.
Thakur is sitting on his bed, repeating the name of the Divine Mother and meditating upon Her.
Adhar comes in and sits down. M. and Niranjan are also in the room. Thakur talks with Adhar.
Sri Ramakrishna: “Well, my dear, you have come now. How much kirtan and dancing we had! The kirtan was by Shyamdas, Ram’s music teacher. But I didn’t like it very much. I felt no desire to rise from my seat and dance. Later I came to know about him. Gopidas’ substitute told me, ‘He has as many mistresses as I have hair on my head.’ (All laugh.) Did you get the job?”
Adhar is a deputy magistrate with a salary of three hundred rupees a month. He had applied for the vice chairmanship of the municipality of Calcutta, which paid a salary of one thousand rupees a month. Adhar had met many prominent people of Calcutta to get this job.
Non-worldliness is better – to adore worldly people of poor understanding to get a job
Sri Ramakrishna (to M. and Niranjan): “Hazra said, ‘Please pray to the Divine Mother a little so Adhar can get the job.’ Adhar also asked me. I prayed to the Mother a little: ‘Mother, he comes to see You very often. If it’s all right, let him get the job.’ But I also said: ‘Mother, what poor understanding he has! Instead of asking for knowledge and devotion, he asks You for things like this.’
(To Adhar) “Why do you associate so much with people of poor understanding? You have seen so much and heard so much! To read the seven sections[18] of the Ramayana and yet ask whose wife Sita was! Such-and-such Mallick is a man of low intelligence. He arranged for a service boat when I planned to go to Mahesh. And when we reached his home, he asked Hriday, ‘Hriday, have you arranged for the carriage?’”
Adhar: “One has to do all this to run a household. You haven’t forbidden me from doing that.”
About the temple treasurer asking Thakur to sign a receipt for his monthly salary when his state of madness for God was over
Sri Ramakrishna: “Indeed, desirelessness is good, not worldliness. After that state of mine, I was called by the treasurer to sign a receipt for my salary, like all the others. I told him, ‘I can’t do that. I’m not asking for any salary. Give it to someone else if you want.’
“I’m only the servant of the Lord. How can I be the servant of anyone else?
“Noticing that I would be late for my meals, Mallick engaged a brahmin cook for me – for only one rupee a month. I was embarrassed. I had to run to the kitchen as soon as he called for me. It would have been different if I could have gone there of my own will.
“Worshipping people of mean intelligence! Such things do happen in household life – and much more.”
His earlier story – Thakur’s prayer after his state of divine intoxication – contentment
“When I attained that state and saw how the affairs of the world are run, I said to the Divine Mother, ‘Mother, please change the direction of my mind right now.’ No more food from the beautiful lady. I cry after taking it. No more, no more of it.”[19] (All laugh.)
Childhood story – about seeing the deputy magistrate, Ishwar Goshal, in Kamarpukur
“Go on with the job that you are doing now. People hanker after a salary of fifty or a hundred rupees. You are receiving three hundred. I saw a deputy magistrate in the village of Kamarpukur, Ishwar Goshal. He wore a turban on his head. People trembled at his sight. I saw him when I was a child. Is being a deputy such a small thing, my dear?
“Go on serving him whom you are serving now. Service to one person soils the mind and you are seeking service under so many!”
Condemns service – Sambhu and Mathur’s love and regard for money – Narendra as headmaster
“Once a woman felt attracted to a Muslim. She invited him to talk to her. The Muslim was a holy person. He said that he wanted to urinate and would go and get his piss pot. The woman said, ‘You can do it here. I can give you a piss pot.’ He said, ‘That won’t do. I will use the same piss pot to which I have already been exposed. I don’t want to be immodest before a new piss pot.’ Saying this, he left. The woman came to her senses. She under-stood that the piss pot meant a paramour.”
Narendra has fallen on very difficult days after his father’s death. He is looking for a job to feed and support his mother and brothers. For a few days he had worked as headmaster in Vidyasagar’s Bow-bazar school.
Adhar: “Well, would he accept a job?”
Sri Ramakrishna: “Yes, he would. He has his mother and brothers.”
Adhar: “Well, Narendra can manage with fifty rupees. He can manage with a hundred, too. Will Narendra not try for a hundred?”
Sri Ramakrishna: “Worldly people have great regard for wealth. They think there’s nothing like money. Sambhu said, ‘This is my desire – to place all this wealth at His feet when I depart.’ Does God need worldly wealth? He wants spiritual know-ledge, love, discrimination and dispassion.[20]
“When the jewelry was stolen from the temple, Mathur Babu said, ‘O Bhagavan, could You not guard Your own jewelry? Goddess Hamseshwari protected hers so well!’
Difficult rules of conduct for sannyasins – Mathur's suggestion of gifting some land
“Mathur Babu said that he would transfer a piece of land to my name. I overheard it when I was in the Kali temple. Mathur Babu and Hriday were in consultation. I came out and said to Mathur Babu, ‘Look, give up this idea. It would be very harmful to me.’”
Adhar: “There may not have been more than six or seven people like you since the beginning of creation!”
Sri Ramakrishna: “Why do you say that? There have surely been men of renunciation.[21] People come to know of them only when they have renounced their wealth. And there are others whom the world does not know. Are there not such people in western India (Punjab and United Provinces)?”
Adhar: “I know one such person in Calcutta, Devendra Tagore.”
Sri Ramakrishna: “What are you saying! Who else has enjoyed pleasures of life the way he has? When I went to his house with Mathur Babu, I saw many small children. A physician had come and was writing out prescriptions. If the one who is a father of eight sons and some daughters will not meditate on God, who else will? The world condemns people who have enjoyed so much wealth but don’t meditate on God.”
Niranjan: “He repaid all the debts of Dwarkanath Tagore [his father].”
Sri Ramakrishna: “Stop this. Don’t bother me anymore about it. Is he a real man who has the wherewithal and yet does not pay off the debts of his own father?
“But worldly people remain completely im-mersed in worldliness. Compared to them, he is a great deal better. They can learn from him.
“There is a tremendous difference between a householder devotee and a genuine all-renouncing devotee. A true sannyasin, a devotee of real renunciation, is like a bee. A bee sits nowhere else but on a flower. It drinks nothing but honey. The other – the householder devotee – is like a fly. It sits on sandesh as well as on a festering wound. He is sometimes in a fine spiritual mood and other times he is busy with ‘lust and greed.’
“A real all-renouncing devotee is like a chatak bird. A chatak bird won’t drink any water but rainwater when the star Svati is ascendant. The seven seas and the rivers are full of water, but it doesn’t drink from them. A person of real renunciation will not touch ‘lust and greed,’ nor will he keep them near him lest he become attached.
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