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Thoughts-Ramakrishna

Compassion and Attachment
A: To be kind and compassionate is very good, but there is a difference between compassion and attachment. Compassion is good while attachment is not. Compassion is equal love for all living creatures; while attachment is love for one or two (usually for his wife, son, brother, sister, father etc) over others.

Is compassion also a bondage? - This question is not for ordinary mortals. Compassion is the result of Sattwa quality. The Sattwa quality is protective; the Rajas quality is creative; and Tamas quality is destructive; but Brahm the Absolute is beyond these three qualities - Sattwa, Rajas or Tamas. He is also beyond Prakriti or Nature. Where there is Absolute Reality, no quality or Nature can reach there.

Why Devotion?
A:  With devotion one's mind can stand away from the world. If you want to extract butter from the milk, you will have curdle the milk and keep it aside for some time where nobody can disturb it, otherwise it will not become yogurt. Then churn it and the butter will come up. Similarly the neophyte should sit in solitude and not be disturbed by worldly-minded people. Then churn the mind by practice of meditation to extract the butter of Divine Love.

If you give your mind to God in solitude, you will obtain the spirit of true renunciation and absolute devotion. If you give the same mind to the world, it will grow worldly and think of woman and gold. The world is like water and the mind is like milk. Milk when once mixed with water cannot be separated from it, but if, first it has been turned into butter and then placed in water, it cannot mix with it.

So let your mind should be turned into butter of Divine Love first by means of religious practices in solitude; then the mind will never get mixed up with the water of worldliness, but will rise above it and remain unattached to the world.
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"Siddhi or psychic powers must be avoided like filth. These come to us themselves by virtue of Saadhanaa or religious practices, and Sanyam or control of sense. But he who sees his mind on Siddhi remains stuck therein, and cannot rise higher."

Faith
Rama Krishna Paramahans often used to describe a story to highlight the importance of faith.
A farmer's daughter duty was to carry fresh milk to customers in various villages, among the customers one was a priest. To reach his house, the milk-maid had to cross a good-sized stream. People crossed it by a sort of ferry raft, for a small fee.

One day the priest, who performed worship daily with the offering to God of fresh milk, finding it arrived very late, scolded the poor woman - "What can I do now of this milk? You are so late." The girl said, "I started out early from my house, but I had to wait for a long time for the boatman to come to bring me here." The priest said (pretending to be serious) - "What! People have even walked across the ocean by repeating the name of God, and you can't cross this little river?"

This milk-maid took him very seriously since he was a known priest. From then on she brought the priest's milk punctually every morning. He became curious about it and asked her how it was that she was never late anymore. The girl replied - "Just as you told me to do I cross the river repeating the name of the Lord without waiting for the ferry." The priest didn't believe her, and asked - "Can you show me this, how you crossed the river on foot?" So they went together to the water and the milkmaid began to walk over it. Looking back, the woman saw that the priest had started to follow her and was floundering in the water. She cried - "Sir, You are uttering the name of God, yet all the while you are holding up your clothes from getting wet. That is not trusting the God!"

If you lose faith you lose everything. Faith in our selves, faith in God this is the secret, greatness. If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty million gods... still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you.
 

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