Saints and sadhus

Once I asked my father what is the difference between a sadhu and a saint? He smiled and said that a sadhu renounces the world and penances to attain moksha. A saint seeks wisdom, truth, and knowledge and need not necessarily renounce. He told me an old saying, which says if you meet a person with lean body and pure eyes you met a guru, and if with a broad waist and obese abdomen then you have yet to meet a guru. So, a saint or sadhu is a guru too.

When young your naivety privileges you with the ability to understand things sans complexities. But my understanding became more entangled while browsing a magazine that spoke about a conflict between the saints for the succession. What bewildered me was the conflict for power by the people who were ‘saints’, the illuminated ones. The most imperative fact was they were hugely obese, so were they not ‘guru’ while they were claiming to be the ‘jagatguru’?  The desire for power and rights was incomprehensible; as for me ‘saints’ do not need one.

Secondly my father never explained me saints and sadhus on the pretext of religion, he told me they were ‘sanatana’. We find numerous sadhus, saints, or prophets affiliated to a religion. Have they really renounced the world or ever penanced? Or have they fashioned it as an alternate way for their survival. It is bemusing that they can preach religion and rituals but not the truth, wisdom or compassion. They appear to be the custodians of the religion that is in an incessant threat and will succumb to if, not being their armor. Does religion a millennia-old tradition needs protection from the people or it can extend protection to the people?

The enchantment of being revered by the people as saints and sadhus have breeded new crop of entrepreneurs, the self-imposed ‘godman’. They appear in their publicity pamphlets meditating and they make water holy by dipping their great toe. They devour on the vulnerability of innocent in the name of penance. I believe in the tradition of saints and sadhus, but only when they alienate from asserting religion and contemplate for the liberation of the soul.