Friends and Enemies

True friends are those who help in uplifting your life by cleansing your ideals and emotions. Those who drag you into pomp, pedantry, paltry entertainment and petty pranks are enemies, not friends. True friends cannot be won by social status, external scintillation or verbal assertions. A friendship knit by monetary bonds is disrupted as soon as you ask the loan to be repaid. So, when you oblige your friend with a loan, the friendship too is broken at that very moment. How can friendship be cemented by words or by coins? The feeling of friendship must activate every nerve, permeate every blood-cell, and purify every emotional wave; it has no place for the slightest trace of egotism. The companionship which seeks to exploit or fleece for personal benefit cannot be elevated into the noble quality of friendship. Perhaps, the only friend who can pass this rigorous test, is God.

Bagavan Sri Sri Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Thought for the Day

Virtues must be cultivated in each home; each member sharing in the joy with the rest, each one seeking for opportunities for helping others. This attitude must be stuck to, so that it may stay as character. How can a vessel kept with a closed lid be filled with water? It must be open to receive good impulses! In all your efforts, trust in a Higher Power which is ever ready to help you. Then your work is made easy. This comes out of devotion, and reliance on the Lord who is the source of all Power. When you travel by train, you only have to purchase the ticket, board the proper train and take a seat, you can leave the rest to the engine. Do you carry your luggage on your head? So too, trust in the Lord and march to the best of your ability. Have faith and earn the Lord’s grace by using the intelligence and the conscience He has endowed you with.

Bagavan Sri Sri Sri Sathya Sai Baba

When animal feelings are washed out, Divine feelings begin to flow spontaneously. - Baba

Practical dharma, or rules of good behaviour (achara-dharma), relates to temporary matters concerning our problems and physical needs, to our passing relationships with the objective world. The very instrument of those rules, the human body, is not permanent, so how can then these rules be eternal? How can their nature be true? The Eternal cannot be expressed by the evanescent; light cannot be revealed from darkness. The Eternal emerges only from the Eternal; truth emanates only from truth. Therefore, follow the objective codes of dharma relating to worldly activities and daily life, with the full knowledge and consciousness of the inner basic Atma-dharma. Then only can the internal and external urges cooperate and yield the bliss of harmonious progress. If in your daily avocations, you translate the real values of eternaldharma into love-filled acts, then your duty to the inner reality, the Atma-dharma, is also fulfilled. Always build your living on the Atmic base; then, your spiritual progress is assured.

Bagavan Sri Sri Sri Sathya Sai Baba