Whenever you say something is new, it gives an opportunity to reconnect with a vision and an aspiration of life. So once a year, there is this opportunity to reconnect with the vision and aspiration of life.
That should be our commitment and our aspiration which we need to reconnect with and renew whenever we celebrate a new year, whether we celebrate it in December, January, February, March, April or May. It is the newness of life we celebrate.
Today, you are receiving the new diary. So start writing in that new diary and close the old diary. Old diary means the mind, not the paper, for I am not giving you a paper diary. I am indicating to you your mental diary in which you write every day. The mental diary of 2016 is over and last night you wrote the last words, “Thank you.”
From today, you have to start a new diary in your mind, and to begin the new diary in the mind and in your life, you have to take a sankalpa: “Following the path of karma and dharma, endowed with the qualities of faith and belief, I shall walk the path of goodness and righteousness.” This should be the sankalpa which should guide the writing of the diary for 2017.
On a daily basis remember this sankalpa, this idea, and see whether you have lived your day as per this idea or not. If you are able to live this concept, this understanding for three-sixty-five, you would have become a true human being.
We tend to forget our responsibility and our commitment, and we become the flirtiest beings in life. It is all right for a time, but then there has to be commitment in life, for only through commitment can we advance in life, not when we are flirting.
I give an example. What is commitment? You dig one hole fifty feet deep. And what is flirting? You dig fifty holes one foot deep. So flirting is when you are digging fifty holes one foot deep hoping that you will find water some place, and commitment is digging one hole fifty feet deep and ensuring that you find water at that depth.
The sankalpa to renew your vision has to be your commitment. Just as you wake up every morning and open your eyes to the world, in the same manner every day you should open your eyes to the vision and aspiration of life by thinking this, and every night you check: “Today, did I walk the path of karma and dharma? Today did I cultivate the quality of faith and trust? Today did I walk the path of righteousness?
Just as you are critical about others in their approach, attitude, looks, behaviour, personality, nature, be critical about yourself too. There is a song: “Take a look at you and you can look at others differently.”
This is not a song, it is the reality of life and it should be our commitment – to reach out to light, to reach out to life, and to reach out to the beauty that life gives to us. It is this aspiration that will keep us going this coming year, so let us welcome it with an open heart and open hands.
Happy New Year.
1 January 2017, Ganga Darshan, Munger