Shradha and Saburi
3August 29, 2010 by styagi68
I have recently become more acquainted with the teachings of Shirdi Sai Baba. Sai Baba lived from about 1830s to 1910. He dressed like a sufi fakir and lived in a mosque (which was named Dwarkamayi!) in Shirdi. The popularity of Sai Baba has been increasing in the last fifty years among Hindus. He is revered as a saint, if not a direct of avatar of God.
Nobody knows for sure about the religion of his birth but he lived a life of ascetic and taught a rustic moral code combining the teachings of Islam and Hinduism.
His favorite saying was “Sab ka Malik Ek”–there is only one God. He also emphasized Shradha(devotion or faith) and Saburi(patience). While no written record exists of what exactly Sai Baba meant but more recent interpretations from his devotees take “Shradha” to mean devotion to Baba himself and faith that he will make all problems go away and “Saburi” means that one should be patient in their expectation of such benevolence.
However, I would interpret these words differently.
Shradha refers to faith or devotion to the fact that right intentions, thoughts, words and actions will result in right outcome.
Saburi refers to the fact that sometimes it may not happen immediately which may shake our faith. In such times we need to be patient and wait for the right outcome while performing our duties with faith.
The following para is only for those mathematically inclined. You will relate this to Law of Large Numbers. This states that the sample mean of a distribution will converge to the true population mean as the size of the sample N limits to infinity. Lets say we are flipping a coin and have got 10 “heads” in a row. Does it mean that on the 11th flip the chances of getting a tail is more now? The answer is no. The chance of getting a tail is still 50% but if we have “saburi” (patience) we know that eventually the number of heads and tails will converge to 50% each.
Similarly, we should work with the faith that right intentions, thoughts, words and actions will lead to the right outcome. Sometimes this may not happen immediately but the “Saburi” teaches us that eventually it will happen.
Analytical Faith 
The shraddha factor works in spiritual. You should have devotion but saburi may never work in this life at all since it may be probable during the next lifetime or never at all,only Godknows.
I am delighted to see your blog on Shraddha and Saburi. Perhaps, you are not aware of the meaning of Shraddha as it appears in scriptures. Shraddha is defined as the capacity to hold on to Truth. Such unshakability implies patience. Thus, Saburi is an integral part of Shraddha. By separately stating it, the point gets emphasised.
For a word to have different meaning in scriptures than in literature in not uncommon. An example is Mamta, which is eulogised in literature as love (of a mother) while scriptures define it as the (wrong) perception of owning.
yeah thats true saburi works if it does not the expectation is not right thing for you there is something better