Sant Tulsidas is the author of the immortal Ramcharitmanas. This is a collection of quotes of Tulsidas.
What does it matter whether it is Sanskrit or the common dialect? True love is the one thing needed. If a rug serves better, what is the use of a shawl?
What does it matter whether it is Sanskrit or the common dialect? True love is the one thing needed. If a rug serves better, what is the use of a shawl?
The ornament of the night is the moon, that of the day is the sun. The ornament of the devotee is devotion, that of devotion knowledge. The ornament of knowledge is meditation, that of meditation is renunciation. The ornament of renunciation, says Tulsi, is pure, unalloyed peace.
Is true religion –
To serve thy brethren:
This is sin above all other sin,
To harm thy brethren:
To harm thy brethren:
In such a faith is happiness,
In lack of it is misery and pain:
In lack of it is misery and pain:
Blessed is he who swerveth not aside
From this strait path:
Blessed is he whose life is lived
Thus ceaselessly in serving God:
From this strait path:
Blessed is he whose life is lived
Thus ceaselessly in serving God:
By hearing others’ burdens,
And so alone,
Is life, true life, to be attained:
And so alone,
Is life, true life, to be attained:
Nothing is hard to him who, casting self aside,
Thinks only this –
How many I serve my fellow-men?
Thinks only this –
How many I serve my fellow-men?
Who is Lord Ram? Tulsidas Answers in Ramcharitmanas
‘The Supreme Self who is the embodiment of joy and ocean of Bliss, from which a small droplet fills the three worlds with happiness, He is ‘Rama’, the very home of bliss and the comforter of all the three worlds.’ (Tulsidas in Ramcharitmanas)
Sage Vasistha says ‘Ram is the Supreme Being who sports in the hearts of all and the Delighter of all.’
A poem by Tulsidas – Explaining the value of a lamp lit before Lord Ram
The flame offered to Ram
extinguishes the flame of pain;
It burns up sin and sorrow,
burns down to the root of lust.
In a lovely mist of incense,
in a row of splendid lamps
Its ritual rhythm – the hand claps –
scares the bird of sin away.
It dissipates the darkness, the dumbness
from the house, the heart, of devotees;
It casts wide the net of purest truth.
(Source: Song of the Saints of India
A Prayer to Lord Ram By Tulsidas
O Lord please encage my mind-swan
in the loving cage of your sacred feet’?Grant me, O Lord, by Your grace,
To follow all that is good and pure;
To be content with simple things;
To use my fellows not as means but ends;
To serve them stalwartly, in thought, word, deed;
Never to utter words of hatred or of shame;
To cast away all selfishness and pride;
To speak no ill of others;
To have a mind at peace,
Set free from care, and led astray from You
Neither by happiness nor by woe.
Set Thou my feet upon this path,
And keep me steadfast in it;