Below is a transcript of one of the talks Swami gave at a meditation program.

Life is filled with action. There is action in your plant. I call it vibration but it is action. It’s karma. Something that is coming from your heart, putting into strings and making a vibration. Everybody here has felt it – a vibration. When you are with your friends, you are being affected by these people, this vibration that they have, this karma that the carry with them. Each person is being affected by this vibration. Unless he is enlightened, and then he stands alone and yet one with everything at the same time. In India they have a story, it is about a farmer. He was raising cattle. And finally the time came that he takes the cattle and he brings them and he takes them into the city and he takes them into the slaughter house, where they will be slaughtered for meat. And he gets paid for this direction of taking these animals into this slaughter house for meat. And he takes this money and he goes out and there is a beggar on the street. He sees him and he gives him some of the money that he got. Now in India, the cow is very sacred, and to raise a cow to be slaughtered is very negative in India. In cattle country it is probably different, but in India, it is a vibration of life that is going on…. So he gets paid for this direction of slaughter, and the moment he gets paid, he goes and gives some of this money to the beggar. The beggar is getting a vibration from it too. He has asked for the money and he has received it. He has also received a little bit of that same karma that the man who gave him the money has, for slaughtering the cows.

We have to be very careful even in the direction of giving money to help people – what kind of people and what kind of vibration that you are giving into. So you take the money that you have earned very hard for, and are donating it to a cause, at the same time. The people that you are giving the money to, takes it and misuses it, for drugs and to make people sick, you are gaining a karma for it. There are reactions for everything we do, and you have to be very careful in your action, in your giving even. Be very cautious in who we hang around with, it makes a big difference.

What kind of books do we read? There is a vibration into every book we read from who wrote it, … books magazines…

Even the rooms that you go to, the houses you visit, there are vibrations in it. If you feel uncomfortable, then leave. There is a vibration there, why pick it up? Life is filled with this. If one is on the spiritual path, he should be more conscious of where he goes and what he is doing in life. It’s nobody’s fault but your own if you walk into a den of thieves and you pick up that vibration and all of them are talking about stealing and you get the idea of stealing yourself, wondering where it came from? No actually you created that yourself, just by hanging around with them. Is that right? Yes. We have to stop blaming people for what happens. When something bad happens, it is so easy to blame your neighbor. That action that has happened is coming from you. Don’t try to lay the blame on anyone else — all this action, all this vibration that is happening. Step out of it. Step out of it, into the direction of being a Pure Self.

Don’t get caught into it. The person who is meditating everyday is less likely to get caught into that web. He is meditating for a purpose of reaching a higher level of consciousness, to realize who his true Self is is, and he is learning to have compassion towards all. This is the type of vibration he is shooting off, this direction of compassion. Compassion is a big word in the Buddhist thought, but at the same time it is in the Indian thought, as in all religions, it means a lot. But how does one earn this quality of compassion? You don’t get it by just trying to be nice to people. Compassion also includes being in a state of being where you are not seeking any reward. You are in the mode of simply giving without looking for any reward. That is compassion. When you see another in trouble, or pain you want to help them. That’s compassion. To gain that, there is only one way. You have to grow into your own one self … and in that growth you start recognizing that we are all this One Self, we are not the many any more, but that one unit, even the animals and insects… we are all one, and you naturally have compassion towards it all.

By studying the scriptures, by looking at yourself and recognizing your faults and standing up them and tackling them head on like Arjuna did in the Bhagavad Gita, and doing the mediation everyday, and making it into a habit, it can change everything. Om Shanti shanti shanti!