Speech of HH Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji – Sri Chakra Puja – Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple, Frisco, TX, USA – July 7, 2025
Harihi Om Namaha Shivaya
Veera Hanuman ki Jai!
Veera Hanuman ki Jai!
Jai Guru Datta
Sri Guru Datta
Yesterday, you all heard the advertisement for Bhagavatam. That was only a sample. Bhagavatam and Mahabharatam are very renowned and are often done as Parayana in Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, in Northern India, etc. What’s even more surprising is that in the small islands in Guyana, Surinam, Trinidad, etc., too, Bhagavatam is studied in every household. They were forcibly converted to Christianity. Now, since they are free, they are coming back to Hinduism. Unable to tolerate the violence then, they have half Christian and half Hindu names.
For example, Jackson Sriram, Michael Krishnappa, etc. If they did not name themselves like that, they would not have received citizenship, or been able to get a house or a job. They could not stay there permanently; nor could they return to India to get proper citizenship. Very few received Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) after a long time. Under such circumstances, they had to adopt Christianity. But the government there passed an order that they did not have to go to church compulsorily. That was good.
They have more temples than in India, one for each street, in Guyana, Surinam, etc. They have people study Bhagavatam from the 13th day of demise. They do the same from the 40th day of birth and also for wedding anniversaries. Some of them learned some of our scriptures and did Parayana. When we see this, based on My research, we have lesser devotion in Telangana and Andhra.
When you go to Uttar Pradesh, or watch channels like Aastha TV, or channels run by Baba Ramdev (I refer to him as Rambabu. He likes Swamiji a lot and is deeply drawn to Swamiji’s music.), you see how active and devoted people are. That kind of visible involvement and reverence is more common there. Some of them even run Ayurvedic factories—which is a little regrettable. They must certainly practice Ayurveda, but they do not need to turn it into a business. Still, compared to us, they show more enthusiasm for dharma and spiritual matters.
But Telugu people have no time. We can also say that they have lesser faith and devotion. They talk about the contributions of their grandparents, but they themselves devote no time to this.
Sage Vyasa too divided the Vedas and simplified a lot of the scriptures so we can find our path forward easily and gain jnana and bhakti, and thereby vairagya.
We cannot get any of the above three immediately. Despite much tapas, we cannot get Liberation without jnana. In that manner, to get these three (they are all the same, just different names).
The north Indians are crazy about Bhagavatam. They will go wherever it is discoursed on. They will listen to it over and over. There is so much essence in Bhagavatam.
There is so much in Kannada, so much written. My eyes are exhausted from studying the Kannada Bhagavatam versions. I read a lot of books and almost couldn’t see with My eyes. We should download everything in the books into our head.
We should listen, witness, study, and put into practice. People talk about it, but do not practice with their body. We should practice with body, mind, and speech. Many lazy people claim they are worshiping mentally. You must give work to the indriyas, you must do pradakhsina, you must behold the divine form with your eyes, hear the glories with your ears, worship Him with your hands, do charity, etc. You must serve the Lord in the temple, not enough to just have Darshan. Find out what seva opportunities are available.
There are many computer professionals, My children, who serve in the parking lot. Why do they need to? There are volunteers to clean the place. Of course, we have robots to clean, but we are also robots for God.
We should all make use of the time we have. If you cannot fall asleep, get up and read. It will strain the eyes and the brain and we will fall asleep. We think of various things because we can’t sleep. We think of how we lost our job in the past, the past insults, etc. Do not keep recalling bitter experiences of the past. What we should keep calling is satsanga and good experiences.
Life is a dream, and within this dream, we have good dreams. We should recall those dreams. We watch horror movies before we go to bed. The TV shows these days are all about crime. What jnana can we get? We get affected by such crime. There used to be some spiritual content on TV before, but now we don’t see that. We should go to bed laughing. We can read content that is humorous and makes us laugh. We should have some humor at home, not always engage in fighting. If you go to bed laughing, you will have healthy lungs, good breath and fewer heart problems. But we don’t like to laugh. We think it is cheap to laugh. Who wants to see your rotten teeth?
We should laugh, it spreads joy. We should spread friendliness.
Many start their prayers with grief. Then life becomes full of grief.
When Krishna was born, Devaki and Vasudev did not grieve, they were happy. When we study about this, doubts enter our mind.
We wonder how Krishna is born with yellow robes, four hands, many divine ornaments, etc.
Are children born like this? Normally, the newborn has a lot of impurities that need to be washed off. How was Krishna born in this manner? He was not born in a womb, He emerged on His own.
Beholding His form, the mother was afraid, she wondered if it was a dream. The devatas all came to have His Darshan. This was described as “adbhutam” – wonderful, beyond words, amazing.
Then, they invoked Maya Devi and all the weapons on Krishna disappeared.
Krishna was never born. He has no birth and death like we do. But since He took on a body, He had to end it. Since He didn’t want anyone to grieve, He sent everyone, including Arjuna, away.
His birth and His passing were both mystical. We talked yesterday that the Lord did rasa kreeda with 60,000 gopis and each of them had 16 children. The Lord was barely 7 years old, how did He do this? Children were born due to mere touch. Now, even with injections we are unable to have children. That time, with mere gaze, they were born.
Did Anasuya Mata carry Datta in her womb? No. He came on His own. Sri Rama too was the same, He came from Agni Deva, with the aspect of Surya, in the lineage of Raghu. Kausalya did not bear Him in her womb. They pretended like He was in the womb.
Paramatma is in everyone’s womb, then why isn’t He taking birth through us? He is within and without. Bhagavatam teaches us this. So many greats have written commentaries on it. Sanaka, Sananda, Shuka, Sounaka, etc., came as Gurus again and again.
The Bhagavatam in Gujarathi, Marathi, Telugu (by Potana and other great saints) are so wonderful. They were not written by ordinary souls, it was God who came in the form of those saints in a human form and narrated His own stories, so that the ignorant ones can understand. No one is capable of describing the greatness of Paramatma. Only the Lord can do it. We are always filled with doubts because we are filled with ajnana, we doubt God and we doubt ourselves. Everything is a problem and a question. People say: How can we blindly believe, should we not question it?
Yes, you can find out, but if you question, that is not devotion. That is some kind of stubborn Bheema Bhakti. What did Bheema do? He flung his special mace given as a boon and said if he had devotion, the mace wouldn’t fall back on him. Krishna had to protect him.
Arjuna used to vow often that if his vows weren’t fulfilled, he would enter the fire. Krishna had to protect him so many times. All of this Ashrama is like a part of My body. I know of every small seva you do here. You must not blame management, you must find out what seva you can do and help out. Management is like your brother or sister or friend or relative. This temple belongs to everyone; we are all part of this temple.
You must find out what seva can be done and ask if you can help. Or, you can offer suggestions, and offer to help. So, the Lord saw Himself in everyone in Bhagavatam. There is no you and me, Both are one, but until you experience that, that duality will exist. You believe you and the food are different, but that is only until you eat it. But if you did believe you and the food are one, and do not eat, you will suffer. You have to eat. So too, we should experience Paramatma. Until then, Paramatma feels like a separate entity.
it is very hard to understand this truth. A pure mind, faith, and a lot of sadhana is necessary to understand this.
People sit on the bare floor for hours on end listening to Bhagavatam in northern India. Sometimes, there are just stones and pebbles on the ground. When you sit like that, you naturally gain asana siddhi. Sure your legs will fall asleep, but that is okay.
I also noticed in some villages in north India, that people practice sitting on the floor a week before they go to Bhagavatam saptaham.
How nice is this! They practice sitting in the heat. They do not have air-conditioning like we do here. It is so hot there and they barely have a tent overhead. The speakers or gurus are far away and the audio system is not great. They might just serve some light snack or meal. People do not even go there for food.
When we witness all this, we Telugu people should be ashamed.
We want all comforts, check WhatsApp intermittently, keep drinking juice or other beverages of choice. You want to go out occasionally and do homa (Smoke). You also create rings with the smoke and claim it’s like Sri Chakra. We worship God with incense, lamps, and naivedya. The intent is that our life becomes aromatic, because our life right from the beginning smells foul. The entire body is filled with impurity. We don’t know why god has given us this body. We covered it with our clothing. There are all kinds of sounds like explosions in our body. God has covered our body so well. He knows, He was also in a human form.
He looked like us and taught us great wisdom while moving like one amongst us. He left His body to show us that death is imminent. So, we see Hanuman who is the form of Mukhya Prana. Hanuman is everywhere in our body.
I am reminding you again, no one should miss Bhagavatam discourse. It was to start from Monday, but we will start a day earlier, from Sunday instead, because there is a lot of content. I shrunk it down a lot, but it’s still quite expansive.
We start at 6pm, make note. Schools have holidays now. Discourse will begin on Sunday evening, and conclude on Saturday. 7 days.
We will start with the Gayatri mantra. On those 7 days, Swamiji will chant the mantra all 7 days. Each of the 7 days, the letters will be broken down and explained. When we combine Om, it becomes a very big mantra. But if we start with Janmaadyasya, we can do it in the time we have.
We have short mantras for every scripture. Ramayana has one verse that summarizes the entire Ramayana. We are given these short verses because we are so lazy. So too, there is one shloka for Bhagavatam too. To worship Devi too, there is a single shloka. Sage Vyasa gave us this knowing our indolence, so we atleast chant the mantra, but we do not even do that.
We have no attention; all our attention is on the internet. You google everything. You google who Krishna is. Tomorrow, you will even google what your parents’ names are. Finally, everything will be like that. We become very dependent. You ask Siri for the rasam’s recipe or a curry’s recipe. You may not even be aware of the roaches falling into your food while you are looking at the recipe.
We have become so dependent. Google Maps takes us some wrong place and then we learn our lesson. We should use our own discernment too, otherwise, our intellect becomes useless. God had given us so much in our head, we should make use of it.
We should keep our memories. In the past, IAS exams were open book format. There were many books given to each candidate. Only if you study the books will you be able to refer to the right page for the answer. The moment you read the question, you should know which book to refer to. When you study books fully, you will have good memory. You will know which books have the answer you need. When you work hard, you will do well. Otherwise, none of the books can make your life easy even with open book exams.
So all of us, with great devotion and faith, should study books. Of course, Google helps, but up to a certain extent. If we get too dependent, we will become like robots. Otherwise, you can just ask Siri to drink coffee on your behalf, or sleep on your behalf. We are using those devices for everything. We should only use it as a friend when needed, but not rely on it whole and sole. That will make us like robots. We should practice using our thinking.
There is a story about Paramanandayya’s (PM’s) disciple. One day, all his stuff fell from the horse he was going. He asked his disciples if they saw the stuff fall, and they said they did, but they did not pick them up because the Guru did not order them too.
When the Guru asked them to pick up the items, they picked up everything including its dung. They had to cross a river, but the Guru suddenly fell into the river. They started picking up all the items as they did before per the list of times, but since the Guru wasn’t on that list, they did not pick him up. Like that, we have become very dependent. So, so far, you heard the advertisement for Bhagavatam. It is so delicious. If you visit high-end restaurants, they serve very small portions. It is all “etiquette”. You can do nothing about it.