Saints Of India - Their Contribution To Hinduism-Part VIII

Swami Chinmayananda

oi-Staff

By Staff

Friday, May 29, 2009, 12:14

All the Bakthas, all the great Saints of India have believed in the name of the Lord. Being in Karnataka. you know Purandhara Dasa. He once told Vittala, He told Krishna. "I don't need you". Krishna got disappointed. He said: "Don't let me down. I love you so much" "I don't need you at all" said Purandara Dasa.

What do you need? He said , I need your name!".

Neenu Yako. Ninna Hungu Yako Ninna Namadha Baia Ondhu Idharey Saku

"I just need your name" because to me 'Name' is power. 'Name' is shakthi. 'Name' is absolute faith. This is what Gnaneshwar had. Gnaneshwar wanted to bring to the public, to the masses, the great gospel of the Gita through which he wanted to educate.

Passing on further, we have the life of Purandara Dasa. Purandara Dasa who was the master of Carnatic music as most of you know, had nearly five lakh compositions to his credit. Most of us cannot write five poems in one's life time. I am not talking of verses. Verses all of us write because I call it verbal carpentry -- putting phrases together is not poetry. "Inspired poetry". When poetry comes, inspired it comes, as it came to the Sages. Purandara Das was a miser, a person given to total miserliness. Even by accident he did not do charity. Such a man one day was turned from a miser into a mystic. He gave up nine crores of gold coins to go into the street where anklips carry the tambura and sing the name of the Lord bringing people together, as one mankind under one canopy of grace. This is what they did. Excuse me if I sound rather audacious.

When I say, constitutional amendations, our police and our military, our governments and our ministers, are not going to bring back India together. It is only the saints and their remembrance. Everything in India is dividing us. Thank God. we don't say, it is a North Indian Thulasi or a South Indian Valmiki. a North Indian Meera, or a South Indian Purandara Dasa. Nobody says that. That is why we know that these are the real national, why international integrators. They are the ones who bring everybody together. William James in his book on 'World Religious Experience" said: "Saints shake hands across continents".

That is how they grow. They stand far and large above political people, governments, above great intellectuals, the so-called self-styled intellectuals. It is these who shake hands across continents and bring people together because for them the entire world is the world of the Lord and every human being is their own. Was it not this view which made Vivekananda popular?

Swami Vivekananda went across the sea and called foreigners: "Brothers and Sisters"; the only thing was that they were fairer counterparts of ourselves, perhaps a little taller and yet they belonged to us. It is this which made our great sages come out with these statements of universal love and universal compassion.