Pujya Bhaishri inaugurates Chinmaya Movement’s 50-year celebrations in Mumbai
An excited, expectant and most enthusiastic crowd waited outside the Birla Matushri Hall, Mumbai on the 6th of May 2001. Chinmaya Movement was celebrating its completion of 50 years and for their 3-day celebrations invited Pujya Bhaishri to inaugurate this 3-day festival with a discourse.
The Chinmaya Movement, founded by Pujya Swami Chinmayanandaji in 1951, completes 50 years in 2001. What started, as a one-man crusade then, is today a massive global organisation comprising a wide range of spiritual, cultural, educational and social activities. Over 250 centres world over, with around 300 Swamis and Brahmacharis are striving to fulfil the vision of Swamiji.
The year 2001 is a milestone signifying 50 years of invaluable service to humanity. A number of programmes have been chalked out for the whole year and the Swarna Mahotsav Year (Golden Jubilee Year) will culminate in the Chinmaya Vishwa Sammelan in Mumbai in December 2001.
As part of these programmes, Mumbai organised the Chinmaya Memorial Series conducted every year in May to celebrate Swamiji’s Jayanti in a grand manner. The speakers for this occasion are renowned spiritual masters of the highest calibre, Pujya Bhaishri, Dada Vaswani, Prema Pandurangji and Swamini Vimalananda.
Shri Pratapbhai Patel, President of Chinmaya Mission, Mumbai greeted Pujya Bhaishri with a garland and a short introduction presenting Bhaishri to the audience. The speaker enlightened the audience about Bhaishri’s spiritual journey right since childhood till the present juncture. They needn’t say more as everybody was aware of His divine grace, Pujya Ramesh bhai Oza known to all as Bhaiji or Bhaishri.
Pujya Bhaishri began his discourse with naam sankirtan and went on to first talk about Swami Chinamaynandji. He expressed his great pleasure to be present there to participate in the celebrations of the Chinmaya movement. He said he had always known Swamiji as one of the greatest and most learned scholars and saints of our country whose commentaries and expositions on the Bhagwad Geeta have enlightened millions all over the world. It had been his great fortune to meet Swamiji on a few occasions on stage during special functions. Pujya Bhaishri called Swamiji the lion of the jungle of ‘adhyatma’.
Bhaishri enlightened the audience with his explanations on how to become a ‘yogi’. To become a Yogi, one has to first become ‘upayogi’ (useful) to all. To become useful we should imbibe three qualities. (1) Love (2) Renunciation and (3) Service. Love enables us to become useful to God, renunciation helps us to become useful to ourselves and service enables us to become helpful to humanity.
Pujya Bhaishri further said that if you want to get ‘prabhavit’ (affected and influenced) one should listen to kathas from scholars and if you want to get ‘prabhubhavit’ (develop love for God) then one should listen to kathas from saints.
A simply decorated stage, a life size picture of Swamiji, Bhaishri on the vyas-peeth and his voice ringing not only in our ears but in our hearts. It was truly an evening of pure bliss.