Nishkulanand Swami says that a true saint will have a clear vision for his life. He is very clear about “Where I should go?” and “Where I should not go?”
If there is no clear goal, then there is no saintliness.
In the past, many farmers used to have dogs as their pets.
In the morning, when the farmer starts to go to the farm, his dog will accompany him and, in the evening, when he comes back home, the dog will accompany him back home.
In monsoon, when the crop is ready to harvest, the farmer harvests the crop and transfers the harvested crop to the home through a bullock cart. When the farmer goes home with the bullock cart, the dog would follow him along with the cart.
As the bulls carry a heavy load, they would walk much slower than the dog. As a result, the dog gets bored of following the slow bulls and decides to roam around in the streets close by and come back to the cart.
As the dog enters the new street, the dogs of those streets see this new dog in their own street and welcome the dog for a fight. The dog narrowly escapes with a few bites and quickly returns to the cart.
After walking a while with the cart, the dog gets bored again and decides to go onto another street. Once again, the dogs residing in that street honor the dog with fights and bites, making it run back to the cart.
This happens multiple times and every time the result would be the same.
Thus, while the bulls take the cart straight from the farm to the home, the dog roams around in local streets to pass time and in return is chased by other street dogs. By the time the dog reaches home, it would have gone through multiple rounds of bites and scratches by so many street dogs.
Thus, the dog would reach home way later than the bullock cart with its tired body, pale face, and with its tongue out with thirst. On the other hand, the bulls, even after working hard the whole day, are not tired like the dog. The bulls would be fresh, taking rest under a shade.
The dog after honors, welcomes, bites, and scratches by different dogs would be very tired and lie down in some corner to take necessary rest and would lay asleep until late at night.
Why did it get tired while the bulls are not tired?
Because the dog has not made a decision to walk straight from the farm to the home, and it never made a decision to not enter those local streets. On the other hand, the bulls have a decided destination and walk straight from farm to home.
If a person doesn’t have a fixed destination, he would feel tired without doing any fruitful work.
What did the dog do while it walked from the farm to home? It did nothing useful.
If we don’t decide our goal in life, we go in all directions, roaming fruitlessly. There wouldn’t be any fruitful work without a finite goal.
A saint has a definite goal of reaching Maharaj in this very life
Many of us don’t have any specific goal or target to achieve. We go with the flow; we go wherever the flow takes us. We haven’t decided “Where should I go?” and “Where should I not go?”
We should decide that “I should go there, and I should go there within this timeframe.”
A.P.J Abdul Kalam has said that “Small aim is a crime. Have a great aim.”
In Vachanamrut 22 of Gadhada Madhya Chapter, Shreeji Maharaj has said that a devotee of Bhagwan should have a definite goal in his life.
Nishkulanand Swami has said that a devotee should not have a random goal but should have a specific goal of reaching Maharaj.
Once we decide that “I should go to my Bhagwan within this very life. I should go to my Bhagwan while I am in this body,” fifty percent of saintliness comes along with that decision; saintliness will automatically be developed with that decision. That decision itself would straighten up many paths for us.
Once we decide that “I should reach there in this time,” then we will not have any time to waste.
Most individuals, even if they are saints or devotees, spend their whole life behind the goals of achieving name, fame, and greatness. If we take the goals we are not supposed to take, if we walk the path that we aren’t supposed to walk, then Bhagwan would definitely not be pleased with us.
Sometimes we take up a worldly goal. Nishkulanand Swami says that it is foolish on our part to have a worldly goal because running behind false objects is the work of a fool.
The goal of a saint or a devotee should be to love Maharaj and to reach Maharaj in this very life.
References:
- Chosathpadi Katha Part 18 (Pad 19, 20).