Surviving_17

[Originally Written By Swami Budhananda
All Rights Reserved 
Adhyaksha, Advaita Ashrama
First Edition by Ramakrishna Mission]

Mirabai was one of those totally unself-conscious teachers of supreme love of God, whose manner of loving God became the manner of her teachings.

Mirabai was a sixteenth century saint born in Rajasthan, India. Her approach to God as Sri Krishna, was that of absolute love. For expressing her most powerful love of God she composed many moving songs, which became one of the tenderly cherished spiritual heritage of India. 

The Story of Mira's Love moves everyone who has love of God in heart. Even those who may not like to think of God at all, could be struck by the inspiring quality of God at all, could be struck by the inspiring quality of Mira's most dynamic pursuit of God the Beloved.

For writing this small monograph, in good part, the author(Swami Budhananda) depended on Swami Vamadevananda's Mirabai published by 'Udbodhan' Kolkata.

The theme of the seed-paper was given as a Sunday sermon at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Centre, New York, with the caption, 'Mira: The God-intoxicated Queen' in April 1960. Later on, the same was the subject of a Sunday talk early in 1965 at the Vedanta Society, Hollywood, given under the caption, 'The Story of Mira's Love.'

'The Story of Mira's Love' was first published in the July-August 1965 issue of the Vedanta and the West, a bi-monthly, which used to be published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California.

This is now being made available for wider circulation in the form of this small book, enlivened by the sketches of Sri Biswaranjan Chakraborty.

Artist Biswaranjan has, by grace, succeeded in good part in capturing with the delicacy of his brush the thores and the abandon of Mira's divine love.

It is hoped that the story of Mira's total love for God will energize and inspire lovers of God everywhere in the world.

16 March 1983
Sri Ramakrishna's Birthday
New Delhi

Swami Budhananda: The original Author of this book 'The Story of Mira's Love.

The Story Of Mira's Love

Swami Vivekananda writes in the section of 'Para-bhakti or Supreme Devotion' of his Bhakti-Yoga:


'We see love everywhere in nature. Whatever in society is good and great and sublime in the working out of that love; whatever in society is very bad, nay diabolical, is also the ill-directed working out of the same emotion of love. 


It is this same emotion that gives us the pure and holy conjugal love between husband and wife as well as the sort of love which goes to satisfy the lowest forms of animal passion. The emotion is the same, but its manifestation is different in different cases. It is the same feeling of love, well or ill-directed, that impels one man to do good and to give all he has to the poor, while it make another man cut the throats of his brethren and take away all their possessions. 


The former loves others as much as the latter loves himself. The direction of the love is bad in the case of the latter, but is right and proper in the other case. The same fire that cooks a meal for us may burn a child, and it is no fault of the fire if it does so; the difference lies in the way in which it is used.


 Therefore love, the intense longing for association, the strong desire on the part of two to become one- and it may be, after all, of all to become merged in one-is being manifested everywhere in higher or lower forms as the case may be.


'Bhakti-Yoga is the science of higher lover. It shows us how to direct it; it shows us how to control it, how to manage it, how to use it, how to give it a new aim, as it were, and from it obtain the highest and most glorious results, that is, how to make it lead us to spiritual blessedness. Bhakti-Yoga does not say,'Give up;' it only says, 'Love; love the Highest'- and everything low naturally falls off from him, the object of whose love is the Highest.'


INTRODUCTION