Verse 5
जगतईशधीयुक्तसेवनम्
अष्टमूर्तिभृद्देवपूजनम्||
jagata īśadhīyuktasevanam
aṣṭamūrtibhṛddevapūjanam
Worship, united with the understanding that the
universe is the Lord, is worship of God bearing eight forms.
In the previous verse we only talked about
the idea of a relationship with God. Now we are ready to make a practical start
to develop such a relationship.
Pooja is that which establishes us in a
relationship with God. Pooja concretizes a natural human tendency of using
symbolism to express things or to represent ideas.
The devotee who starts in a small way in his
little Pooja room, grows and matures into the great devotee for whom the whole
world becomes his “Pooja Room”!
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a great patriot and
servant of India, and worked day and night for its freedom. His grandson one
day complained to him, “I don’t see you doing any Pooja, so I also will not do
it.”
The saintly grandfather told the boy, “Till you are able to do Pooja of all the
millions of people in this country, you have to continue to do your daily Pooja
in the prayer room.”
The Eight-Fold Forms of the Lord:
Ashta Moorti: the “eight-fold form”of the
Lord. It represents the entire manifested world, called Jagat. Here are two
derivations for the word ‘Jagat’.
The eight forms of the Lord are:
The five elements, namely, Space, Air, Fire, Water and Earth;
The two heavenly luminaries, namely, the moon and the sun; and
The eighth is the Jiva or the individual souls.
These eight factors constitute the entire
creation and the creation is the Lord.
Since the creation is not separate from the
Lord, the problem of searching for a form to worship the Lord is not there
anymore.
This idea is expressed in Isavasya Upanishad ,
“All this, whatever moves on the earth, and
the universe which itself is moving, is covered by the Lord”.
How to See God in All
There is the following story from the
Buddhist tradition. One cold night, a traveler knocked at the doors of a
monastery. After some time a junior monk opened it, and allowed the visitor to
spend one night. Feeling very cold, the visitor made a fire to keep himself
warm.
The next day, the junior monk noticed that
the wooden statue of the Buddha was missing from the shrine.
Thinking it to be a theft, he reported the
matter to the High Priest. The High Priest scolded the junior monk: “For you
the dead Buddha seems to be more important than the live Buddha!”
Love for God by seeing Him in all beings is
true worship of Him – and there are no exceptions!
Swami Vivekananda taught, “When I close my
eyes, I worship the Lord in a form, when I open my eyes, all the forms I see is
the Lord Himself”.
There is a Hospital run by Rama Krishna
mission in which, to live the above teachings of Vivekananda, on important
occasions in a year, the monks of the ashram visit the hospital and do the
Paada seva to all the patients there and the monks literally worship the
patients with flowers.
Thus, in this way, Karma itself becomes
worship.
Note:
Though one can and one must believe in the
truth that the entire creation is Lord and start serving all, as the author has
been sharing with few devotees of late, the true experience of seeing Lord in
all can actually happen only after experiencing the Lord within himself (AS LOVE)
There is another way in which a wise man
lives this verse (in the path of wisdom)
When the entire creation is nothing but Lord,
I, existing in this creation, is also God, as I cannot be left out from the
creation, which is Lord.
‘I am indeed the whole creation” is the
highest form of worship.
When I say, “I am everything”, then this I is
not my body, my mind, my intellect, my ego.
“I”is the consciousness which is me and
the consciousness which is everything in this creation.
When I say, the entire creation is the Lord,
then it is surrender in the path of Bhakti.
When I say I am the entire creation, then it
is surrender to the SELF that I am and this is surrender in the path of Jnana.
Love.
