Upadesa Saram - Post 7

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.

Upadesa Saram - Post 6

कायवाङ्मनःकार्यमुत्तमम्|

पूजनंजपश्चिन्तनंक्रमात्||

kāyavāṅmanaḥkāryamuttamam |

pūjanaṁjapaścintanaṁkramāt ||

To be done with the body, speech, and mind, worship, japa, and contemplation are superior in that succession.

We have three means to express ourselves: the body to express our actions, the speech to express our words, and the mind to express our thoughts. These three can be used to worship the Lord in the following manner, as described in this verse: 

i) Pooja / Ritual worship: by means of the body, we perform sacred worship of the Lord using a form. 

ii) Japa / chanting of mantras / Namasmarana: by means of the speech, we perform the repetition of the Lord’s Name. 

iii) Dhyana: by means of the mind, we perform meditation or contemplation upon the mental form of the Lord or His qualities. 

Serially Superior: 

What this means is that the succeeding instrument is more subtle and therefore more effective or superior to the former. Superior to Pooja is Japa, and superior to Japa is meditation. 

Worship Method	BODY	SPEECH	MIND
Pooja	Involved	Involved	Involved
Japa	û	Involved	Involved
Dhyana	û	û	Involved

This is a gradation from a grosser form to a subtler form of worship. However, one has to practice the former to be prepared for the latter, in the sequence given above.

Pooja: Starting a Special Relationship with God 

Pooja is by no means to be considered an “inferior” practice to be rejected. In fact, it is the best preparation for Japa and meditation. 

Pooja starts our relationship with God. 

In life we have various relationships with different people. We ourselves are different to different people. It is the same network whether we are at work or in social circles. We take great pride in describing or designating what our role is to various people. But do we often hear someone say he is a devotee of God? Have we even considered that as a possible relationship? Can we not add God to our list of contacts?

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Those of you who attended the last month satsangh at sadan can recollect the “Bikshu Pada Prasarana Nyaya” shared with you at the end of the Satsangh.

The bikshu’s asking for a space to stretch his legs is “adding” God to the list of your contacts, may be the last in the list, to be attended to. 

Once you add Him to your list of contacts or list of TO Dos to be attended daily, then, as shared in the talk, like the Bikshu occupies the whole mansion for doing Seva to his Gopala Idol, Lord will Himself find His way to the mansion of our heart, gradually! 

Pooja or ritualistic worship can be as elaborate as possible or as simple as just lighting a camphor / offering a flower to the Lord.

Japa - chanting the name of Lord.

Japa does not / should not involve any physical action. Japa could be chanting of one chosen name of lord like “Om Namah Shivaya” or “Om Sri Sairam” etc. 

You are speaking while you are chanting and the mind is listening / taking in the impact of the chanting.

Thus, Speak-Hear-Speak-Hear- Speak...... forms a cycle. 

The more mind is involved in this cyclic process, the lesser your distractions are and more would be your focus on the Lord whose name is chanted.

Dhyana - meditating on the Lord

This is a more subtle mode of worship where, your body and speech are not active but your mind is actively meditating on your chosen Lord, your experience with the lord, the Glory of your Lord etc.

This is a very effective process of worship.

Imagine, Swami is in Puttaparthi till He existed in form or is no more in physical form even in Puttaparthi after He chose to end His physical existence in 2011.

But with the power of your mind and the focused meditation on Swami, you can bring that enchanting form, right into your thoughts, right in your pooja room, right in front of you and you can almost experience Swami speaking to you, right there!

Most of us would have experienced Swami seated on the throne in our centre during a bhajan session or a satsangh. 

It is all due to our channelizing the enormous power of our mind towards our God, withdrawing our mind from all other worldly thoughts.

While pooja and Japa is possible to be undertaken by mere will, meditation has to happen, it cannot be just willed and done.

You can create most conducive environment in your room, with dark ambiance, with dim blue lights, with a focused beam on Swami’s photograph or on Aum symbol painting, select a suitable asana for you to sit and meditate, even play a soothing meditation music / Aum chant etc. but still, it is not necessary that your mind is withdrawn by you from various thoughts, about the office pending work, about some bad experience that you had at home / at center etc. yesterday etc. 

But, practice must be on. Every time your mind betrays you and goes out, you have to take the support of Japa and bring the mind back to the shrine, to the Lord’s name and form and draw your mind towards Lord.

That is why regular satsangh is very important in our life. It is important to be in good company, to keep listening about God’s glory so that all these things have a positive, satvic impression/impact in your mind / heart and it becomes more and more easy with such heart / mind to meditate on our Lord!!

Jap Dhyan bina Samyog nahin

(Without Japa and Dhyana, as explained above, union with God is impossible)

and all our japa, our dhyana has to culminate in our conviction,

Bhagawan bina koi Apna Nahin!!!

Love.

Upadesa Saram - Post 5

Verse 3

ईश्वरार्पितंनेच्छयाकृतम्|

चित्तशोधकंमुक्तिसाधकम्|| ३||

īśvarārpitaṁ necchayā kṛtam |

cittaśodhakaṁ muktisādhakam || 3 ||

Offered to the Lord, done not with desire,

It is a purifier of the mind, useful for Liberation. (3)

Limited action resulting in limited results and binding one to Samsara is also seen to be the Angel that will pull us out of our entrapped state. According to the Maharshi, all that is required is for us to change our attitude towards our actions. 

Two things are required of us in this regard: 

i) Dedicating our actions to the Lord, whom we acknowledge to be the Supreme Controller of the results of our actions. 

ii) Accepting as His Prasad what He considers to be the just result of our action due to us, when the whole circumstance is taken into account. 

This in a nutshell is the Path of Karma Yoga that is taught by the Maharshi. It may be summarized neatly in this equation: 

In order to accomplish action in this manner, three points have to be borne in mind: 

i) To Identify Our Duty: We must first determine our role and then perform it to perfection. We need to note that no one is dispensable. Everyone has something to offer to this world. We must know that we belong to God. 

ii) To Act Without “I”-ness: We remove the ego notion, the Ahankara or “I”-ness. Whatever means we possess to perform action comes from Him. 

iii) To Act Without “Doer-ship”: What is left then that is ‘mine’? Nothing. So we cannot even be called the doer. Doership is the Lord’s. Everything that accomplishes the action comes from Him, and the result also is determined by Him. Actually, God alone is playing with Himself! We don’t come into the picture at all. This “I” becomes an instrument in His hands. This is Ishwara Arpana. This removes the “Mama”-kara or “mine”-ness. 

The Karma Yogi says, “God thinks this is good for me. Lord, I take it as your Prasad.” How terrible would it be to refuse His Prasad! Prasad has come from the Lord’s feet – how can we refuse it, or be dissatisfied with it? Therefore, never complain about Prasad. Such should be our attitude towards the results of our actions. 

Those of you who have been attending the monthly Sai Sadan talk may recall what was explained regarding a situation where, some property proposal has come to us and we have to decide whether to buy or not.

What was the answer explained during the talk??

It was explained that the following factors must be considered, rather. You must be living in a state of existence where the following factors get considered automatically and spontaneously when ever any decision on any act needs to be taken.

·      without selfish desire,

·      without fear,

·      invoking the Divine infinite energy around (God), 

·       filled with purity

·  looking at the options available, take a decision which seems appropriate, in the background of all the above and moving forward

·     performing sincerely towards the decision taken, to bring it to completion.

·     leaving the rest to Swami, getting back to Swami instantly and immersing in LOVE.

So, the last 2 points explained in this case is what has been explained as Easwara arpana earlier.

Also, the most important aspect explained, for taking up any act / any effort, is reproduced below. This was told by none other than Swami to a Student.

“IF YOUR HEART IS PURE AND SELF LESS, THE ENERGY OF THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSE WILL COME TO SERVE YOU. 

YOU DON’T HAVE TO ASK. 

FROM ALL THE  NAVA GRAHAS, ANUGRAHA WILL POUR IN. YOUR HEART HAS TO BE KEPT OPEN AND PURE TO RECEIVE IT”.

There is a verse from Srimad Bhagavatham which has to be read, contemplated and aligned with whatever we have learnt as Easwara prasada in this post.

कायेन वाचा मनसेन्द्रियैर्वा ।

बुद्ध्यात्मना वा प्रकृतिस्वभावात् ।

करोमि यद्यत्सकलं परस्मै ।

नारायणयेति समर्पयामि ॥

Kaayena Vaacaa Manase[a-I]ndriyairvaa

Buddhy[i]-Aatmanaa Vaa Prakrteh Svabhaavaat |

Karomi Yad-Yat-Sakalam Parasmai

Naaraayannayeti Samarpayaami ||

Meaning:

Whatever I do with the Body, Speech, Mind or the Sense Organs,

Either by discrimination of the Intellect, or by the deeper feelings of the Heart, or by the existing Tendencies of the Mind,

I Do them All (i.e. Whatever work is to be done) without Ownership,

And I Surrender them at the feet of Sri Narayana.

It is enough at this stage, in alignment with today's verse, to understand that a true absorption of the above verse will result / is bound to result in our offering all our possible actions arising out of any / all factor(s) to God, without any sense of DOER-SHIP.

We will contemplate more on this verse when we proceed further in this treatise to deal with the path of devotion.

An in-depth absorption of the above verse will result wonderfully in total detachment, total surrender and total annihilation of vasanas!!! It is a wonderful poetic verse. 

Love.