dattaswami Posted September 1, 2006 Report Share Posted September 1, 2006 Let Me answer your question straight with a simple example You have caught a hot iron rod with your hand and you are weeping You are asking Me to remove the heat from the rod and give you happiness For this you are constantly praying the Lord to use His special power. I have to laugh at this situation because the easiest solution is to remove Your hand from the rod to be happy, which you are not doing at all You cannot get rid of your attachment to the rod, but you pray the Lord To cool the rod using His Maya, is this prayer justified in any way? Why don’t you get detached from your family bonds and be happy? The hand with which you have caught your family members is your mind You detach your mind from the bonds of your family members And be peaceful always and there is no need of praying the Lord for this When the solution is in your hand why do you ask the Lord for it? When the solution is out of your hands there may be justice in asking the Lord In the first stage you detach your mind from them and be worry less In course of time when your detachment by mind becomes complete You will spontaneously leave your duties also and attain bliss The detachment from the family comes by your attachment with the Lord As the bond with the Lord becomes more and more strong, your family bonds Become weaker and weaker and finally all the bonds disappear In this state you are left over only with the bond with the Lord This state is called “Eka Bhakthih” in Gita or the single pointed devotion Devotion means love and this is related to the plane of mind As the faculty of intelligence becomes more and more sharp By the knowledge preached by the Lord, the devotion to Lord Becomes more and more strong, thus knowledge is acting as Both fertilizer as well as pesticide on both the sides simultaneously It acts as a fertilizer for the bond with the Lord, which is like a plant The plant grows slowly and becomes a huge tree by this fertilizer The family bonds are like the insects that attack this devotion plant For those insects this divine knowledge acts as a pesticide also The knowledge is also the generating factor like the water for the seed Only by the knowledge of the Lord, the devotion is generated Devotion is the love or attraction towards the Lord to attain Him It ends in agony or Vedana as told by Ramanuja, thus knowledge is The generating factor, the fertilizer and the pesticide simultaneously When Rukmini heard all the details of Lord Krishna from sage Narada She developed intensive attraction for the Lord and that is devotion Sankara emphasized on the knowledge and Ramanuja on devotion Knowledge is the generator of devotion and devotion is the cause For the achievement of the Lord, by the devotion of Rukmini only The Lord came and married her, thus devotion ends in the achievement of the Lord Gita says the same “Bhaktya tvananyaya”, now when the devotion is full The family bonds are completely broken; Rukmini did not care for her Brother and parents and even the tradition, therefore, as the devotion grows The family bonds are cut simultaneously, without the attachment to Lord The detachment from family is impossible because only after tasting The divine nectar, one can leave all the worldly drinks spontaneously Attachment of one thing should lead to the detachment of other thing Simple detachment from the family without the attachment to the Lord Becomes impossible, even if achieved does not stand permanently Without tasting the divine nectar, if you leave the worldly drinks It is meaningless and one day or other you will run to the worldly drinks Finally, the real devotion is proved only by the selfless service Rukmini served the Lord after attaining Him, she constantly pressed His divine feet and her aim was not to become the queen of Dwaraka Madhva shows this service as the real proof of the true love In the beginning you should try for the detachment from the family By withdrawing your attraction or mind slowly from these worldly bonds This can be achieved once you start binding yourself with the Lord The attachment to the Lord is directly proportional to the detachment From the worldly bonds, but don’t think that you have been detached fully The full detachment by mind from the worldly bonds can be tested by you As the mind gets detached, the concentration in the duties is diluted Don’t fear that this may spoil your duties. No! Never! Be sure! Because your detachment from the duty is due to your attachment to the Lord The Lord will take care of your duties, in fact that is far below to His level His servants like Hanuman will take care of the success in your duties If your duty is diluted due to your laziness or diversion to some other Worldly affair, then your duty will be definitely spoiled, but if you become His devotee, will the Lord keep silent if your duties are failing? This is the real point of the faith on the Lord, practical field is real Devotees say that they have full faith in the Lord, but they fail in practice Their faith is only theoretical, when practical comes they slip tremendously Some people say that their mind is fully dedicated to the Lord and Just they are doing the duties externally, this is a complete hypocrisy Because the duty is always proportional to the attachment of the mind By the will of the mind only you can do anything, if the mind is not willing You can do nothing, therefore your action is a mirror of your mind When you are doing the worldly actions or duties, your mind is certainly Absorbed and concentrated on the worldly affairs only, don’t fool the Lord Can the omniscient Lord be fooled by your hypocrisy? Then whom you are fooling? Are you fooling the public? What is the use of it? Finally it means that You are fooling yourself, therefore be sincere and truthful in the spiritual path When your mind is fully absorbed in the Lord then your duties fully disappear That shows your full faith in the Lord and so your duties are done the best By the servants of the Lord and this stage is the final ripened stage Sankara left His duty of serving the old mother and went for the mission The mother of Sankara was permanently granted the divine abode of the Lord May be, she might have faced some temporary inconvenience in her last life But that is nothing compared to the divine fruit she got from the Lord See the faith of Sankara on the Lord who left His old mother and He was only One son to her, she was not helped by anybody since she was abandoned By her relatives and lives outside the village in a small hut. You cannot expect that final state to day itself, i.e., the final goal You must try to reach that goal everyday and try in every minute Slowly one day or other by the grace of the Lord you will surely reach the goal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts