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First, I must attend to my main duty, which I forgot last night—giving the children their prasāda. They had all gone to sleep. So, can they come first so that I don't forget? Jan, is that everyone? Shankapurī Heidī. Thank you for the beautiful walk. From my perspective, where I come from, a forest like that you only ever see in pictures. I used to wonder if they were actually made in Photoshop, but now I can see that they are real. I would like to share something from when I was a young boy—a teenager, actually—because this walk reminded me of that time. My family's house was next to a national park. I used to spend most of my time in the forest. There was one river also flowing there, but not so strongly like this one; it only flowed when it was raining. There were lots of beautiful little waterfalls, making a sound like what we heard on the way. At that time, I hadn't heard of yoga, nor of meditation, really. So somehow my meditation became the waterfall. I used to sit there for a long, long time—half an hour, one hour at a time—and try to hear the individual sounds that are making up the sound of the waterfall. Not to hear the whole ocean, but to hear just one, one drop. As we were walking along there, I was again trying to hear that sound. It’s such a beautiful meditation, and it can bring you so far in. I wanted to actually sit there. We didn't do it when we were all at the end, but it was too late already; we had to come back. But perhaps when you are there sometime, then try it. You are so lucky to have such a treasure all around in nature. It’s such a beautiful place to live. But what’s even better is, it seems that all of you actually appreciate it. Because in the city in Sydney, where I come from, it’s also surrounded by the most beautiful nature, but people are too busy. There are rarely people who really take time to appreciate it. But this is all so close, and you’re so much a part of it here. It must be a very special place to live. As we were walking along and talking, everyone was telling about how old your community is and how everyone has been together for so long in such a big group. That must be something very special for you. But I imagine it also comes with certain complications. Because we also have a group that has been together for a very long time in Jhadan. Our experience there is one that perhaps you can share. What we experience there is that people change. It seems quite logical, of course everybody changes. If we didn’t change, we wouldn’t be doing yoga. It’s part of the process; we are transforming ourselves. There’s no problem in that, that’s great, of course. But the problem is that when people really change, the people around them are still remembering how they used to be. It was hard for them to look and see the actual person who was now in front of them. People were saying things that were really beautiful, really from their heart, and really special. And others of us were thinking, "Yeah, but hang on, you don’t live like that. Five years ago, you did exactly the opposite." But that was five years ago, it’s not now. The problem is to leave those things behind and accept that person who is now in front. Of course, in such a big community, people are going to make mistakes, or somebody is going to offend somebody else. Within that community, everybody’s duty, everybody’s responsibility, is to learn something from those mistakes which they make. But the rest of us, everybody else’s duty is to forgive them—to let it go and to let another chance happen. It may not always be the easiest of practices. Maybe someone has done something that has offended you or that you can’t forget. But there’s a choice that’s in front of us. We can either suffer from that which we didn’t like before, or we can enjoy seeing the positive change, that at least that person is not like they were before. Because if we don’t let go of those things, then we pull that person back toward those old habits. We can either pull each other down, or we can support each other to go up. When we were in Stjilka, I think I was telling the story about the ashram in Jaipur and how it stays up. Jaipur Ashram is built on top of a garage. It’s now four stories high, whereas Swamiji is flat. And as Premanājī tells me, the foundations are about this deep and that wide. How it stays up—I think probably all the buildings in Jaipur are the same. Because they’re so packed together, they’re all completely against each other. Our part of the building can’t fall down because the neighbors are holding it up. And their building can’t fall down because we’re holding them up. If someone would decide to do some renovations, better not, so they keep going up. But that’s also for when you have such a community as you have here—a tight community where everybody is close together and stays together and supports each other. When someone is having a hard time, when someone is going through what in English we call a process, that’s when your saṅgha, your company, holds you up. Then, at some other time, you’ll be strong, and somebody else will be having the process, and you’ll hold them up. That is the beauty of the satsaṅg and of having such a community that is so long together and so long developing together. That’s the benefit. The minus is that, what I was saying before, you can hang on to what people were before. I’m sure that every one of you knows that feeling when you have changed. Something in you has changed. At that moment, you would hope that other people will respect that and accept that, and at the same time, we have to do the same to others. Before you react on what you remember someone did before, just take a moment to look at them now with a new look. Look at them as they are at this moment. Just take them as a new person for a moment and see what is the reality of how they are right now. Then keep that in mind when you’re making your reaction to what they’re doing. The other thing we have in Jhadan, or from all the people who come through Jhadan, and from my experience, is it’s very, very dangerous to judge if somebody is further on the spiritual path than somebody else. Yoga is not a competition. It’s not a race. It’s not somewhere where there’s prizes for first or second. But there are good yogīs and not so good yogīs. But what is a good yogī? For me, it’s just somebody who’s trying to improve themselves. If you look at someone and think, "Oh, such a peaceful person," or, "Look, he can sit so nicely for meditation," and so on, that may be no big deal. He may have been like that since his childhood. So, really, there’s no improvement there. And somebody else, when they started with yoga, may have had so many tensions, or so many mental issues, or so many problems with other people. They may be the person you never wanted to see, with so much anger and always yelling at you and whatever. But if they’ve now come to the point where, instead of being angry every single minute they’re awake, they’re only angry once a week for five minutes, that’s good yoga practice. That’s really moving on the path. So, which one is the better yogī? For me, it’s the one who’s moving on the path. And just all we can ask of each other is that we practice, genuinely practice, genuinely try our best. There is one story from the Buddha about a disciple of his who was always complaining and always yelling at him, always questioning, always saying that what he was saying wasn’t acceptable, and giving problems to everybody who was around. He was one of those people that all of the disciples would think, "Oh no, he’s coming to me." And then, when they see him coming, they say to somebody, "You deal with him, you deal with him today." That disciple died. And everybody breathed a sigh of relief, that now we will have some peace. And the Buddha was crying because he was gone; he was weeping. They went to him and said, "What are you doing? Why are you so upset? He was anyhow such a trouble." And the Buddha said, "I just lost one of my best yoga teachers." Because every time he was giving us trouble, he was teaching us something—not consciously, but it was a chance to learn. What a great attitude. So you have that community, you have such a beautiful group. It’s so big, but everyone’s practicing so long with such experience. Everyone here in the room has experiences which other people don’t have, and has something which they could offer to everybody else, that experience which everyone could learn from. It’s important that we don’t get so stuck in our self and our own practice that we don’t hear all of that knowledge which is around us. And that, for everybody in our yoga family, we don’t close our eyes and remember them as we first met them, but we have our eyes open and see them as they are now. When they are in a phase where they are ready to offer something or have a special time, then be ready to take something from it. And when any of our brothers and sisters are struggling, then help them—not forcing help, but just offering it. If people take it, they’re welcome. It’s like leaving the chocolates at the front. If people want to take them, they’re welcome. If they don’t, they don’t need to. Because in reality, trying to explain to people what they’re doing wrong or what they should change is a waste of time. But by living our own yoga path and by letting our own qualities shine, people learn from that. And in such a group, because there are so many different types of people, you have no doubt all of the qualities which you would like to see in yourself showing in somebody who’s around. None of us may be complete, but we can take a little bit of the honey from one and from the other and from the other, like the bees and the flowers. Dattātreya was one of the original gurus in the Hindu tradition, an Ādiguru, Dattātreya. He is the guru of one of the akhāras, the Juna akhāra. He is what they call their Iṣṭadeva, their personal form of God. He had, I think it was, twenty-four gurus. He learned from everything where he was going. His gurus were things like a small bird, a river, a tree, and so on. From everything, he learned one quality. As he was walking and doing his sādhanā and walking through the forest, he was gradually learning the things from nature and from the things around. Each one, it’s described in the Purāṇa, what he saw, what it helped him with, and what it explained to him. In that small, some small way, everyone around us can be our guru. Satguru is something else. Satguru is the true guru, our real guru. But the word "guru" is also used for the teachers that you have along the way. For instance, in our school in Jhadan, the teachers—Swamiji insists that they be called Gurujī. Called Gurujī. Because when the child is learning, for that subject, that is their guru. They have a guru for maths, they have a guru for science, they have a guru for English, a guru for Hindi. For English, for Hindi, for mathematics, for science—for each one, there is a guru. Then they also call their parents their first guru, because they are teaching them how to grow up. And the satya guru is the one who shows you the way on the path further. That is our Swāmījī. But if you can look at everyone around you here in your yoga community as a small, small guru for you—at some point which they have that’s special, which you may not have. They may also be the guru of how not to do it. But still, you’re going to learn from it. If you can look at everyone around you in that way, it just opens so much your opportunity for learning. The parents here will know how much they learn from their children. Sometimes they can say things so simply and just make it so clear, because they see it with open eyes and without any complexes. Things which you would never have thought of to look from that angle, they allow you to look at it from that different perspective. So at the same time, the parent is teaching the child, and the child is teaching the parent. It’s so beautiful. Always, everything, in every moment, there’s a chance for learning. Śabda-saṅketam ārī-caturāṅga-halīhalī... Great. Is there any answers? No questions. And what time do you want to finish? Okay, they don’t need to. Śabda-sa-nehī Mārijā Tāra Māri Helī Oraṇāve Māri Dāye Dāye Māri Helī... Śab-da-sa-neh-ī-mah-rī-jā-tā-rā-mah-rī-hel-lī, Śab-ba-da-sa-ne-hī-ma-rī-jā-tā-rā-ma-rī-he-lī, Śab-ba-don-se-su-je-rā-ma, Śab-ba-don-se-bu-je-hem, Śab-ba-don-se-su-je-rā-ma, Śab-ba-don-se-bu-je-hem. Shabadon se chale māre sād, sād mārī helī. Śabdasā nahī̃ mārī jāda, Rāma mārī helī... O Rāṇāvi Mārī, Dāi Dāi Mārīheli, O Rāṇāvi Mārī, Dāi Dāi Mārīheli, Śabdāsā Nehi Mārī, Jātara Mārīheli, Śabdāsā Nehi Mārī, Jātara Mārīheli, Shabba danse pelarama, shabba danse melaha he, Shabba danse pelarama, shabba danse melaha he, Shabba danse panve sabba gyan gyan hari heli. Shabda danse panve sabba jñāna jñāna hari heli. Ora nāve mahari dāī dāī mahari heli. Shabdasa nehi mahari jat Rāma hari heli. Shabadon se yogī Rāma, shabadon se jugati he. Śabadon se se haj yudhar, yudhar māri heli. Śabadasa nahi māri jād, rām māri heli. O Rāṇā, Vimhari, Dayī, Dayimhari Heli... Śabadātsa Nehi, Mahārāja, Dharmahārī Heli... Shabadon se surguṇarāma, shabadon se nirguṇa he. Shabadon se sura guṇa rāma, shabadon se nirguṇa he. Shabadon se dīpā dī dār, dī dār māri heli. Shabadon se dīpā dī dār, dī dār māri heli. Shabadon sa nahī̃ māri jā. Dara maari heli, Śabdasa nahi maari. O Rana avi maari daai. Daai maari heli, Śabdasa nahi maari. Śabadonse Brahmā Rāmā, śabadonse māyā he... Śabadonse Śiva Nāñjīpār, Parmarī Heli... Śabadasā Nehi Mahārāja Dharma Harihelī, I think that Ganga might be a smiling guru. Always smiling. In sannyāsī tradition also, when you take sannyāsa, you have different gurus. For instance, you have one for the cloth; they call it Bhagavad Guru because of the color. One for the Rudrākṣa. Even one for the underwear which you are supposed to wear. And, of course, around all of those comes your Satguru, who is the one who gives you the Dīkṣā. But each of those gurus teaches you about that little aspect of sannyāsī life. There’s one word in English: understanding. Which, of course, when you have a yoga community, is because this you might need a lot of. Now, how do you get understanding for somebody? The secret of it is in the word itself. You have to stand under somebody. You have to let yourself be there below them a little bit so that they can teach you something. If you come already with your opinion about what they’re going to say, and you stand above them and start to tell them, you can’t understand what they’re saying. You already have formed your opinion, so then you don’t have room for their feelings and for their actual reality to come into you. So then you can’t understand what they’re feeling, or why they’re upset, or what is going on with them. Because without taking the time, you’ve already decided what is wrong. Even if it may be that they want to express to you a problem which they have, to be able to help them with the problem, you actually have to accept it partly as yours. In some small form, to let them give it to you. And then you can observe it, because now it’s also yours. You can observe it and then offer something back. So it’s a constant circle of someone giving and you standing underneath to be able to accept it. And then, if they’re going to understand your answer, then the position will have to change. You can’t understand properly without a certain type of humbleness—to at least accept that you don’t know what’s going on with that person, so that you can then become open, so that they can try to explain. And that’s such an important quality to have when you have such a group of people: to be able to understand everyone’s realizations, everyone’s great ideas, and also to understand their issues, their problems, the things that restrict them, and then to accept those things without judgment. Just in the same way that you would hope and you would wish that everyone else would understand and accept what you have to say, or to understand and accept the difficulties that you are going through, or to understand and accept the positive things. It’s just a constant flow of accepting and giving. And when you can remain open to that, that’s what makes a good community, a good yoga community, become great. I think you’ve probably all had the experience that one of the most amazing things about Swāmījī is how quickly he seems to understand what you want to express to him. Sometimes when you come to him with a problem, it’s almost as if the words aren’t necessary because he’s already understood, because he’s so open to feeling what is inside you. And sometimes you even realize that he’s better at understanding it than you are, because he is more open to you than you are to yourself. How can you understand yourself and what is your reality if you already have an idea of what you want yourself to be or what you should be? Sometimes it’s really important to take a step down from your own ego and look at yourself as you really are. No judgments; there’s no right or wrong, there’s no perfect. Just to see things as they are, just to be realistic with yourself—realistic to see your negative points, and just as realistic and just as open to see your own positive points. But just to see the beauty of where you are at this present moment, and by understanding that, knowing which way you want to move, where is your next step. In Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, the concept is not there of things being right or wrong. It’s only a question of whether they’re good for your yoga development, for your spiritual path, or whether they’re taking you backwards. So there’s not a judgment in there; it’s just a question of what would be better for me to do. I would prefer to do that. The same when you’re looking at yourself with understanding, it makes no sense to get angry that I’m constantly doing this same thing. I don’t like this part of myself. I don’t like the way I did that. If you get stuck in thinking like that, then you’re just pulling yourself backwards. But better: OK. Reality is that wasn’t what I would like to do; that wasn’t perfect. But it happened, OK, it happened, but let’s try next time that it’s better. Let’s move forward, but in the future I will try to make it better so that you can look further forward. And we really have to practice this kind of understanding. We have to look at ourselves with openness and with compassion. Again and again, you can’t really get angry with them; it’s just part of being a child. But you slowly try, and make it so that behavior will change. The same way, I’d say, you know, we all need to give ourselves loving correction—to not let things run in a negative direction, but to also not do things violently towards oneself, or angrily towards oneself, or with judgment towards oneself. But at the same time, very gently, to constantly push ourselves forward, to keep going on the path, to try and develop ourselves and those positive qualities within us. And with time, also to just settle our minds, calm ourselves down, look within with love, and see what’s inside. And just enjoy our real nature, which is so beautiful. One of my small gurus from last year—I went to Australia; Swāmījī makes this joke also—but it really was a kangaroo. I was on one farm, and there were a lot of kangaroos jumping around. They all have these little babies in their pouch at the front, and these kangaroos are jumping so high and going so fast, and the baby is just sitting there, going completely relaxed. And the mother, with her legs, is making such a suspension, like in the car, that’s why it’s not moving. We have to give the translator a challenge, you know. Thank you very much. But what I observed from that was, you know, when we sit also for meditation, and when we move also in the world, if we can keep one part of ourselves stable, one part, the center stable, it makes so much of a difference to how you move. For me, when I’m sitting for meditation, after watching that kangaroo, I started to concentrate so much on how still this part of my body was. Because in reality, everything sits on top of this when you meditate. Our lungs are sitting on top of it when we try to calm our breathing. If they’re sitting on something that’s going like this, it doesn’t make much sense. Our head is sitting on top of it also, on top of here, which is on top of here. So in reality, the start of our balance starts from here. As you know, when Swamiji is teaching a meditation, he always starts with relaxing the physical body, then calming the breathing and concentrating on your breathing, and then going to the meditation. And for me, you can try it sometime, but I started to concentrate at the start of the meditation on trying to have this part of my body as still as possible. Not my stomach—the stomach is anyhow moving as you breathe—but the inner balance inside you. And I became aware that a lot of the time, a lot of the time, I was going just a little bit like this and like this, or like this and this. And when I would concentrate on it and really try to make that center, that center of your gravity, still, it would make such a difference to how I would feel mentally. And it somehow brings, for me, it brings a fineness to the meditation. It already feels, oh, this is going to be nice. That, just for me, was an example of those things where you can learn from anything. The same with that kangaroo. It has a stable place in its middle. And if you think about yourself when you go outside into the world, and things are going on, of course you are doing things, your mind is on your work, or interacting with people, your hands are moving, your legs are moving. But if you have your inner peace there, and you can also maintain a small amount of your awareness on that, that peace becomes the foundation of all your actions. And that changes how you’re reacting to things that are around you. We can’t stop moving; we can’t stop being in the world. And that kangaroo also, it’s moving so fast, and it can move so quickly here and there. But with practice and with observing, we can keep still an inner stability there. Keep that foundation there and always have it with us. People can take away your outer peace. They can make noise around you. They can be throwing things; everything can be falling down. But those things, those outer things, in reality, if you’re aware of your inner peace, they can’t disturb it. You can disturb it, but you cannot see it. That’s another thing, but it will always be there. It will still always be inside you; you just may not be aware of it. And with practice, and again, understanding and patience, you can take that treasure with you everywhere that you go. And take that which you get inside the class, and which you get when you come here and meditate together. Take that with you everywhere that you go. And of course, then that affects us, and it affects how we deal with other people, and then it also spreads to those people that we deal with, that we interact with. Oṁ oṁ śrī dīp nārāyaṇa bhagavān kī another bhajan.