કીર્તન મુક્તાવલી
History
(1) Sant lakṣhaṇ kahe Hari hetsu
One day, Shriji Maharaj was seated in an assembly of sadhus and devotees. At that time, Kapileshwaranand Swami returned with some sadhus from a preaching tour of some small villages in the countryside. Maharaj asked them about the progress of satsang in the villages and if there was any development in the livelihood of the people. Kapileshwaranand Swami replied, “Maharaj, we face a lot of resentment from bogus ascetics. They have preached their false doctrines and misled the innocent, gullible people from village to village. We preach the satsang as established by you so they are naturally exposed as false sadhus; hence they oppress us. Many of our sadhus have also been physically beaten by them. However, we are not disturbed by that; what is more painful is that the gullible people cannot understand the true qualities of sadhus. We are agonized by that. If we go to the king to complain about this situation, he shuns our request saying that he is not interested in giving justice when cows are fighting.”
Hearing these details of the plight of his sadhus and the situation of the satsang, Maharaj turned to Muktanand Swami and other senior sadhus and lamented, “Swami, my true and dedicated sadhus do not even think of harming the smallest of jivas. How can we portray these merciful ambassadors of our satsang to these naive people? If the people have sight of such sadhus, all of their sins are destroyed. Sadhus have virtues like calmness, forgiveness, contentment; how will the people understand them correctly?”
Nishkulanand Swami was also seated in the assembly. In reply to Maharaj’s question, he composed a kirtan: ‘Sant lakshan kahe Hari het shu re...’ Swami mentioned all the qualities of true sadhus in these verses. In this first verse, Swami has written the 30 qualities of the Sant, as told by Krishna to Uddhavji in the 11th canto of the Bhagwat, in prose form.
