The Vedas teaches us the practice of yajna or sacrifice. The vedic yajna is not merely the pouring of ghee on burning firewood. It has a deeper meaning, and is symbolic of life’s sacrifice.
Every successful life has a sacrifice-story behind it. The greater the success, the greater the sacrifice. A person successful in any field has performed a yajna. The ghee he has used is his own fat, sleep, rest, entertainment – all were given up. The fire where oblations were made was the fire of aspiration that burned in his heart.
Everything in nature is sacrifice. A plant’s sacrifice makes the flowers bloom. A mother’s sacrifice makes the child grow. This growth, however, is not without hazards, to grow successfully one need fitness. So life is competition also. To succeed in it, we need to have five important qualities.
The first quality necessary to succeed is inspiration. The positive thing that inspiration brings is goal- orientation. Lacking in inspiration, our lives become robotic. Why do people suffer from depression, frustration, meaningless etc. It’s all because of lack of higher goals in life. Whatever be the goal, big or small, without the inspiration to achieve it the goal remains far away. Inspiration isn’t mere desire, it is desire plus drive. When somebody interviewed numerous successful people from different fields about the secret of their success, they all replied in one voice: it was drive.
The second quality is aspiration. Aspiration is intense longing for the object we desire. And faith in the goal we have chosen that we shall attain it. Aspiration makes the mind concentrated on the goal, and concentrated effort is what yields success. Aspiration is also like the fence that protects us from going astray. The road to success is strewn with numerous temptations. But we should never look back, and that needs tremendous grit and maturity. It is here that aspiration works.
The third important thing needed for success is perspiration. No one ever truly succeeded in life without putting in sufficient effort. Life is a cosmic sacrifice, and we are part of it. We can never succeed stealthily. The correct amount of intelligent effort is indispensable for any success. You may ask, “Why don’t we succeed sometimes through we have inspiration, aspiration lacked fire or our effort was like rowing an anchored boat”.
The forth important quality necessary for success is examination. School conducts preparatory exams before final exams. We should study our progress, one-pointedness, sincerity. The correctness of our efforts etc. Self-examination or introspective brings out most of our drawbacks so that we can overcome them. However, egotism is one big hurdle for self-examination; it says we are always correct. But the person who examines himself carefully is ever sane and secure.
We need the fifth quality of resignation too. Work itself can’t bestow results. Do this and you will get this correct, but there’s someone giving what we get. There is supreme agent. Though we are struggling our utmost to reach the goal we should know that success is not just chemistry: effort +desire + goal.
Effort is jada or insensate. Everything is insensate. Self and God are alone senate or conscious. Again, we are not islands. There are so many factors and forces –Known and unknown – working behind the world phenomenon. So we need resignation. We might have been doing everything needed to reach the goal. Yet we should never become impatient. Our sacred books call for tyaga or renunciation, which means giving up ownership. We should resign to a higher wall.
Sacrifice is needed at every stage in life: to aspire after something, to struggle for it, to examine ourselves, overriding the ego, to surrender to a higher will. Swami Vivekananda stated, “Tell me how much you have suffered in life. I shall tell you how great you are”.
Tis then is the yajna of the Vedas. Yajna doesn’t simply means bearded sages performing homa. It means a scientific working on his lab, a film director working on the movie in his studio. Yajna is the definite well-ordered process from inspiration to illumination which leads us to the goal.
Every successful life has a sacrifice-story behind it. The greater the success, the greater the sacrifice. A person successful in any field has performed a yajna. The ghee he has used is his own fat, sleep, rest, entertainment – all were given up. The fire where oblations were made was the fire of aspiration that burned in his heart.
Everything in nature is sacrifice. A plant’s sacrifice makes the flowers bloom. A mother’s sacrifice makes the child grow. This growth, however, is not without hazards, to grow successfully one need fitness. So life is competition also. To succeed in it, we need to have five important qualities.
The first quality necessary to succeed is inspiration. The positive thing that inspiration brings is goal- orientation. Lacking in inspiration, our lives become robotic. Why do people suffer from depression, frustration, meaningless etc. It’s all because of lack of higher goals in life. Whatever be the goal, big or small, without the inspiration to achieve it the goal remains far away. Inspiration isn’t mere desire, it is desire plus drive. When somebody interviewed numerous successful people from different fields about the secret of their success, they all replied in one voice: it was drive.
The second quality is aspiration. Aspiration is intense longing for the object we desire. And faith in the goal we have chosen that we shall attain it. Aspiration makes the mind concentrated on the goal, and concentrated effort is what yields success. Aspiration is also like the fence that protects us from going astray. The road to success is strewn with numerous temptations. But we should never look back, and that needs tremendous grit and maturity. It is here that aspiration works.
The third important thing needed for success is perspiration. No one ever truly succeeded in life without putting in sufficient effort. Life is a cosmic sacrifice, and we are part of it. We can never succeed stealthily. The correct amount of intelligent effort is indispensable for any success. You may ask, “Why don’t we succeed sometimes through we have inspiration, aspiration lacked fire or our effort was like rowing an anchored boat”.
The forth important quality necessary for success is examination. School conducts preparatory exams before final exams. We should study our progress, one-pointedness, sincerity. The correctness of our efforts etc. Self-examination or introspective brings out most of our drawbacks so that we can overcome them. However, egotism is one big hurdle for self-examination; it says we are always correct. But the person who examines himself carefully is ever sane and secure.
We need the fifth quality of resignation too. Work itself can’t bestow results. Do this and you will get this correct, but there’s someone giving what we get. There is supreme agent. Though we are struggling our utmost to reach the goal we should know that success is not just chemistry: effort +desire + goal.
Effort is jada or insensate. Everything is insensate. Self and God are alone senate or conscious. Again, we are not islands. There are so many factors and forces –Known and unknown – working behind the world phenomenon. So we need resignation. We might have been doing everything needed to reach the goal. Yet we should never become impatient. Our sacred books call for tyaga or renunciation, which means giving up ownership. We should resign to a higher wall.
Sacrifice is needed at every stage in life: to aspire after something, to struggle for it, to examine ourselves, overriding the ego, to surrender to a higher will. Swami Vivekananda stated, “Tell me how much you have suffered in life. I shall tell you how great you are”.
Tis then is the yajna of the Vedas. Yajna doesn’t simply means bearded sages performing homa. It means a scientific working on his lab, a film director working on the movie in his studio. Yajna is the definite well-ordered process from inspiration to illumination which leads us to the goal.
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