Meditation on Gurumayi’s Words
by Eesha Sardesai
Kali Yuga, the Time for Sadhana
I was fascinated by what Gurumayi said during the satsang about the yugas. According to the scriptures of India, we are currently living in Kali Yuga. Gurumayi mentioned how people tend to speak about Kali Yuga with fear and trepidation; they see it as synonymous with chaos and ruin.
The thing is, both goodness and destruction have occurred in all the yugas. Even a cursory read of the Indian scriptures and stories will reveal this much. Yet for some reason, wickedness in Kali Yuga is perceived to hold more weight than it did in earlier yugas.
I so appreciated when Gurumayi therefore spoke about how the Indian saints were undaunted by the prospect of Kali Yuga. They did not shrink in fear. Instead, they viewed this yuga as an opportunity. They urged everyone to do their sadhana, to chant God’s name, to understand that even a single repetition of God’s name can lead to enlightenment. If anything, they saw the real peril to be forgetting the Lord’s name. As the poet-saint Namdev said in one of his abhangas: “O Lord, your name is sweeter than nectar. But, O Keshava, why doesn’t my mind repeat it?”
Of course, sadhana can and should be done in the good times and the bad. It is apropos whether the light of the sun is visible or it’s eclipsed from view. But I’ve noticed—and maybe you have too—that we tend to feel an added impetus to do sadhana when things aren’t going so well. It’s easier to “coast” during the good times, to put off our practices until tomorrow and the next day and the next day, all while we wrap ourselves in a false (or at least temporary) sense of security that rests on what we can see and hear and feel outside ourselves.
But when those external foundations start to feel shaky, when the risk of collapse is suddenly conceivable in a way it might not have been a year or a decade before, then it’s natural to seek out that which is always stable. Where is it that we can unfailingly find refuge, no matter how the ocean of samsara roils and sputters around us? It is in a place within us, the abode to which the Guru guides us—and which we can reach only through our diligent sadhana.
Now let me ask you: isn’t that the truth?
Audio recording by Eesha Sardesai