Speech of HH Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji – Sri Chackra Puja – Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple, Frisco, TX, USA – July 6, 2025
Music/Sangeetam is a Yoga. If you learn Sangeetam, you can sing bhajans well. Keertans were born from Divya Nama Sankeertana, not the other way around. The musical saints would set out into town at dawn around 5am and would wander the streets singing divine songs. They would stop in front of some houses. There is also a tradition for divine singing with a couple of bulls dressed as Nandi, in tow. This tradition was going away slowly, but it is now coming back in villages. When we wake up to these divine notes, we will carry that divinity the entire day.
We are sitting here for audio testing since we moved the placement of the bhajan group to the center of the hall.
The body moves only because mukhya prana is in it. The mic and other devices too work when electricity flows through it. The speakers, countless wires, and the organisms are all within. We cannot see the electricity, but we feel the electric shock when we touch the wire. So too Paramamta manifests in our actions – our walking, eating etc. The unmanifest Paramatma is manifested through these actions. Maharshis describe these in different ways. Some say this is to unite us into god, some say it is to uplift us. They are all the same idea. Only with a view to helping us understand, they are explained in different ways. This is just as we eat each dish separately and they all mix in our belly. Only mahatmas can eat their food mixing everything together.
We cannot say we are Paramatma because the body is not Paramatma. Due to Paramatma, there is sentience and movement in the body. To comprehend that, we need to follow some rules. When we enter the temple and it is clean and pure, we will feel divinity. But if the temple is shabby and dirty, we cannot expeeeince divinity, we end up only seeing the shabbiness and dirt because that is what we are filled with. Those who transcend all this see only Paramatma.
When Guru Drona asked, Arjuna said he only saw the eye of the bird on the tree. But everyone else could see the branches and leaves the sky. When we try to meditate, we see everything, we see food, dosa, idlis, past insults etc. even if we do not want to. We are so attached to those insults. We do not hear god’s names in our mind.
Who can insult you? All honor and dishonor is God’s. IF we realize this, we will be indifferent to praise and criticism. We should always be chanting the name of god at all times, sitting, standing etc. But if you get too attached to things of the world, that is what you will remember.
Bhajan ID 50
Everyone has the right to chant God’s names. There are no barriers of caste or status. Everyone has a right. It is very easy to chant God’s name. We cannot study Vedas and Upanishads, and even if we do, we cannot understand them. We cannot do Yagas and yajnas. Upanishads are also included in our bhajans. Someone asked if they can study Brahma Sutras. There is a lot of preparatory study before we do that.
Astronauts do not land on the moon on their first travel. They are trained for 3-4 years, their breath work must be good, their health must be good, their organs should be functioning well. Only then can they go through training. Not everyone is eligible for military training or to become a pilot. Many wish to become pilots, but do not have the health prerequisites. Many wish to become doctors, but do not have the intellectual horsepower to. Many wish to become IAS or IPS officers. Many wish get a PhD. But for all this, you need good preparation from a younger age. You cannot do PhD while fighting with mother at home, while being immersed in phone etc. You must do it like a penance, tapasya. Plus, we have a lot of worldly desires that come in the way.
The Garga Samhita talks about the story of Gajendra – Indra’s elephant. Gajendra would occasionally visit earth from Vaikuntha. He befriended a monkey on a plantain tree in a garden. The monkey used to work for its owner. In Uttar Pradesh, monkeys do small tasks for people, but in some parts of India, monkeys are pelted or given poison. But in Northern India, they have the monkey do small tasks such as cutting vegetables and even assistance with cooking. They become like children at home. They are even put in diapers so they do not soil the house.
An American (Indian ethnicity) boy went to India. He wished to see the zoo. He was taken there. At the end, he wanted to see the monkey section. He went out and bought peanuts, not realizing the management forbid feeding peanuts to the monkeys. His father told him not do, but he disregarded the advice. The monkey kept putting each peanut in its bum crack before eating. The boy was repulsed.
He asked why this happened. He was told: The monkey was given peanuts like this the previous week and it could not digest the peanuts, so they had to do surgery and remove the peanuts. This time the monkey wanted to makes sure the peanuts could be excreted, so it tried to see the peanut fit in its butt hole before eating.
So, Gajendra was friends with a monkey and the monkey wanted to see Indra’s world. Gajendra agreed, but said this should be kept a secret. The monkey’s owner was angry that the monkey came back home late that day. The monkey had got late because it was caught up in the conversation with Gajendra. The monkey confessed that Gajendra had agreed to take him to heaven. The owner too wished to go to heaven. The monkey said this was supposed to be a secret, but agreed to ask Gajendra. Gajendra reluctantly agreed to take the owner as well, out of affection for the monkey.
That day, the husband wife had an altercation as usual, and the husband warned it would be her last day yelling at home since he was going to heaven. He told her what their monkey revealed. The wife insisted she wanted to go too. Gajendra okayed the monkey’s request to take the wife along.
The wife announced this at the lake where all the womenfolk washed their clothes. All the women wanted to go goo.
That entire entourage arrived ready to visit heaven. The monkey held Gajendra’s tail and each person then held the other. The line got very long, it would have gone from here to Houston.
Even strangers began getting in line not even knowing what it was. One lady on earth wanted to make pumpkin sambar and wanted to know if pumpkins were available in heaven. Each person asked the one above and that question reached the monkey. The monkey said: Why not, you get everything in heaven. He used his arms to show – you’ll get from the smallest to the biggest pumpkins. Once he spread out his arms, he lost his grip and everyone including the monkey fell. By Gajendra’s grace, they were not hurt.
As long as we have infatuation for food and tastes, we cannot get heaven. As long as we have vyamoha – attachment – we cannot even get Darshan of Swamiji and even if we do, our mind is elsewhere mired in our attachments. We end eating more on Ekadasi days. We skip rice, but eat 20 chapatis, 50 fruits, 70 puris etc.
Ekadasi fasting is in place for our good health. If we fast once a month, the bad organisms in the stomach will die.
One man went to a doctor due to stomach ache. The doctor said he should put two fingers in this throat and pull out the excess food he ate. The man said if he had place in his throat, he would have eaten more.
That is why we should not eat to our fill. We get sleepy. Come to the Ashrama, you will see people from Telangana who sleep with eyes open. Their mind is asleep. Why not sleep with eyes closed, but they sleep like ghosts with eyes open, that too at night.
Bhajan ID 657
Bhajan ID 162
Bhajan ID 845