Skip to main content

Christmas Meditation

Every festival be it Christmas, Janmashtami or Diwali should simultaneously be a day of celebration and a day of contemplation. Christmas is as much about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ as it is about remembering his life, his sacrifices and his teachings.



I thought of sharing a few teachings of Jesus Christ which when contemplated, practised and applied can truly make our lives meaningful.

What shall it profit a man, if he  gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his own soul?
  1. If God is all you have, you have all you need. 
  2. The kingdom of God is within your own hearts. 
  3. Knock and the door shall open, seek and you shall find.
  4. Don't build your treasures in this world - for it will be stolen by thieves, corroded by rust and rotten by time 
  5. If you have faith as much as a mustard seed and you tell a mountain to move - it will move.
  6. The meek and humble inherit the kingdom of God.
  7. Love God with all your heart and soul
  8. Love your neighbors as yourself.
  9. Those among you who is sinless can cast the first stone.
When Srila Prabhupada went to the West, one reporter asked him if he had come to America to convert Christians into Hindus. Prabhupada answered "No, I have come to make them better Christians". Whatever our religion may be, the true purpose of every religion is to help us develop our love for God.

So, on this joyous occasion of Christmas let us follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and try to mould our lives in such a way that we can deepen our connection with God, develop genuine integrity and be an instrument of God's compassion and love in this world.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas.

- Achyut Gopal Das

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HAPPINESS WITHOUT REASONS

Everyday there is a different reason for not being happy. Someday, it is because someone hurt us and we keep thinking about it, someday our health is not good. Someday it's simply because we are not in a mood. Someday, it's because a plan of ours didn't work out....and the list goes on and on. Very rarely are we happy. All these reasons are valid and true. But the question is 'when will there be a day when the mind will offer no reasons to be happy?' Material world is a place of continuous drama and happenings, and the mind knows how to perfectly en-cash on it. Even if all our problems went away, will we be happy? A new set of problems will come or even if there are no further problems, the mind will make one. After all it's expert at it - creating problems where none exists.  Happiness, joy, peace or love are unconditional, which means that they are not dependent on any conditions. Waiting for the perfect condition to be happy or peaceful is a gre...

Thought on Thoughts

The problem with many of us is that we have given way too much importance to our thoughts. Just think about it. How many thoughts we have in a day? Hundreds or thousands. How many thoughts we have had in our life up until now? Millions or quadrillions. The irony is that the mind makes us believe that every thought is important and we foolishly subscribe to our mind.  Just like in an ocean so many waves come and go, similarly we get so many thoughts. The problem is not the thought per se, but our attachment to our thoughts.  Interesting thing is that thoughts are harmless - they come in awareness and pass away. Just like clouds pass through the clear sky. Our thoughts can harm us only if we give importance to them and hold on to them. That's why in the Bhagavad-Gita when Lord Krishna is explaining the flowchart of how a living entity suffers. The first step, He explains is contemplation of sense objects. Contemplation is nothing but holding on...

CHANGE OF HEART

In today's world, we are blessed to be surrounded by so much knowledge. In fact we are almost swimming in an ocean of knowledge. We have the best of spiritual books, best of the speakers who share deep wisdom still we feel there has been 'no' or 'very minimal' tangible transformation in our lives. Why? This could be one reason...We somehow inadvertently believe that just having access to knowledge will guarantee us success in spiritual life. But one may argue, Is knowledge not sufficient! True, knowledge is the first step to success. But it's not the only step. People say knowledge is power, but it is only potential power, latent power. Applied knowledge is power. Only when knowledge is applied in our lives can true transformation begin.  That means we need to put some internal effort to realise the knowledge. It's not an automatic process. There's a difference between theoretical realisation and actual, true realisation. Theoretical ...