May 2k5.pmd - Sri Sathya Sai Books & Publication Trust

AVATAR VANIEmbodiments of Love!Love is your only true and eternal wealth.But you are misdirecting it towards mean andworldly pursuits. It should be treasured inyour heart and utilised for sacred purposes.You may share it with any number of people,it will never diminish. But man today isunable to understand and experience thetrue spirit of love. Love is the life-breath ofevery being. In order to understand love, youhave to dive deep into the ocean of love.Love cannot be understood from asuperficial level; you have to immerseyourself completely in it. Worldly love is suchthat you can just taste it and give it up. Butdivine love is not like that; once you taste it,you will never leave it. Love is God’s property.Safeguard and protect this property withutmost care. Love is God, God is love.Hence, you cannot separate love from God.Live in love. That is the only way you canunderstand love and experience God.Ramayana Expounds the Principle ofthe AtmaEmbodiments of Love!It may be easy to give lectures on love,but it is difficult to understand it. Make everyeffort to comprehend it. If you understandthe nature of your love, you will understandthe love of others. Love is in you, with youand around you. Once you understandlove, you will become the very embodimentof love. If you just talk about love withoutunderstanding it, then you cannot becomethe embodiment of love. The more youunderstand the principle of love, thenobler you become. Once youunderstand the principle of love andput it into practice, others will also tryto emulate you. In the Ramayana, the fourbrothers Rama, Lakshmana, Bharata andSatrughna set an ideal to the world how loveshould be put into practice in life. Their wivesalso demonstrated this great ideal to theworld. Many people extol only the virtues ofRama and ignore the model conduct of othercharacters of the Ramayana. In fact, eachof them was as great as Rama.Take, for example, Sumitra, the motherof Lakshmana and Satrughna. People donot attach much importance to her role inthe Ramayana. In fact, her name does notfigure prominently in the epic. But the fact isthat she was a paragon of virtues. Her name‘Su-mitra’ itself signifies that she was a goodfriend to one and all. She shared herhappiness with others. Kausalya and Kaikeyihad one son each, whereas Sumitra had twosons. When we enquire into the reason, wecan understand the mystery behind it. Afterthe performance of the Putrakameshti Yajna,Dasaratha distributed the sacred puddingequally between his three wives. Kausalyaand Kaikeyi took their share of the puddingto their respective Puja rooms. Each of themwas happy thinking that her son would bethe future king of Ayodhya. But Sumitra hadno such thoughts. She carried her bowl ofpudding to the terrace and placed it on theparapet wall while drying her hair in the sun.Suddenly, an eagle swooped down andcarried away the bowl of sacred pudding.She immediately ran down and informedKausalya and Kaikeyi about what hadhappened. Kausalya and Kaikeyi came tothe rescue of Sumitra and shared theirpudding with her. Kaikeyi gave half ofher share to Sumitra. Kausalya didMay 2005 128