The tradition is good provided its actual aim gets fulfilled

[dattaswami]

The tradition is good provided its actual aim gets fulfilled

 

 

Today is Vaikhunta Ekaadasi and devotees see Lord Narayana through North gate. This is our tradition. Tradition is always action or Karma. Karma generates Samskara or feeling. Devotion is feeling about God. Therefore, tradition is aiming at the development of devotion in devotees. Karma generates Samskara and this Samskara again generates Karma. The quality of stealing leads to the action of stealing. While doing stealing, the quality of stealing gets more and more developed. Both these are mutually contributing to each other. Therefore, the tradition set up by our ancient sages is always with good aim. Today, tradition says that you should take bath in the early hours of the day and visit the temple to see the Lord from North side. All this is practice or action only, which is expected to generate the devotion to God. Today people gather in very large crowd before the North gate and sometimes the crowd is so much that some children or old people are wounded and some times we hear their death also. People feel happy about such deaths praising that they have reached Vaikhunta, the city of Lord! I say again and again that the tradition is good provided its actual aim gets fulfilled. If you go into the full picture of this original aim of the sages, who have set this tradition, it is that you should develop the devotion, which should be one way traffic towards God without aspiring any fruit in return from God.

 

 

But today, if you investigate really, the devotion developed by this tradition is truly one way traffic but in reverse direction! Devotees expect that God will be pleased by this vision through North gate and He will sanction some benefits in this world and even after death one will reach the city of God and enjoy the divine bliss forever. Aspiration of this divine bliss after death is also polluted with selfishness and hence Shankara says in one prayer that He does not ask God even for salvation (Namokshasyaakaamkshaa). True, the devotion is developed but not in the right direction. It is developed in exactly the opposite direction. You are seeing the Lord through North gate but your devotion is running out in the opposite direction through South gate from your heart! The devotion should be on God without the aspiration for any fruit. Such devotion is the real love to God. The opposite path is that you love God for the sake of fruit, in which your real love is on the fruit but not on the God. In this type of devotion, your love to God is not your aim (Saadhya) but your love on God is instrumental (Saadhana). Here God is the instrument to arrive your desired fruit. It is called as instrumental devotion (Sadhana Bhakthi).

 

 

If you love God for the sake of God only without even a trace of aspiration for any fruit, such love is Goal-devotion (Saadhya Bhakthi). Therefore, the original aim of the tradition is not fulfilled at all. Of course, we agree that this instrumental devotion is better than atheism in which one puts own efforts to achieve the fruit since God does not exist in this line. In the instrumental devotion, at least there is recognition of existence of God even though there is no real love to God. This can be treated as the first step, which is far better than the ground atheism.