Love is worship – Bhakti yoga 6

In the next shloka, the lord explains as follows:

ये तु सर्वाणि कर्माणि मयि संन्यस्य मत्परः |
अनन्येनैव योगेन मां ध्यायन्त उपासते ||

Ye tu sarvaaNi karmaaNi mayi sa.nyasya matparaaH
Ananyenaiya yogena maaM dhyaayanta upaasate.

Word meaning:
Ye – whoever : Sarvaaani karmaaNi – all actions : Mayi sa.nnyasya – abandoning in me : MatparaaH – taking refuge in me : Ananyena yogena eva – with single minded love for me : Me dhyaayantaah – meditating upon Me : Upaasate – worship

Whatever we do, we can. However we must get rid of certain qualities. In our lives, the worst enemy is laziness – aalasya and his sister (nidra) or sleep and their brother pramaadh.

“Aalasya” means laziness. There is no need to explain this as we are all well established in it. How does a person with aalsaya react.? He is one whose life has no enthusiasm- if you tell him “clean your house” he will ask “ Why” Everything is paramaatma. I am alone. Even if you clean it will become dirty again. If you tell him, Let us go to the seashore, he will ask why? You say to see the water and he replies the same water is here as well. Take water in glass and for this one does not need to go to sea. His motto Aaj Karae tho khal kar. Khal kare to parsaon. Parsaon bi kyun khare? Jeena hain barson!

After aalasya, the second problem is nidra. When Nidra was born, nobody wanted her..So she went to him and said, ’Daddy, nobody wants me. He replied,” Do not worry. You can go where my kingdom goes on.. i.e to the world. Nidra has started ruling people in the world! What do most of us do? We think we must become old to get into spirituality. When ears can’t hear, then only we go the Satsangh. When eyes can’t see then only we want to read. When the joints have pain, then only we think of doing yoga and meditation. We think that Adhyatmic life is for outdated people.

The third culprit is Pramaadha. Pramaadha means doing the same mistake again and again and being proud of it. Some people forget the glasses everywhere and then buy three per month. Is this anything to feel proud about? People say so proudly, “you know I am always late!” Even all the negative qualities becomes our ideal and motto.

So these are the three culprits aalasya, nidra and pramaadha. How do we remove these? In our religious books, we are told, “when we contemplate on the lord, then we will go to heaven and we will get eternal happiness. So when we become motivated then Aalasya is removed. So first we should have ambition for achieving something. This will cause desire to act and remove laziness. Now man is active. This activity should also be controlled or it will destroy. The second technique is while performing any action, we should see if it is dharmic or not. If it is not dharmic, we should not do it. The truth is if all our duties are done sincerely, there is no time for bad acts. All sorrow comes only when we have too much time. Small children are never bored because they are always busy. On the other hand we have nothing to do, so we wake up in the morning and wait for the evening just to sleep.

An old woman who was like this went to the doctor and said Doctor, I cannot sleep in the night. The doctor said, ‘ try taking this medicine”. She said, “ even if I take this medicine, I can’t sleep at night. The doctor thought , “ Let me take her history and asked, What do you all day ? The lady sleeps whole day. If she sleeps all day long, how can she sleep at night.

If we do all jobs perfectly, we have no free time for unnecessary things. Our scriptures prescribe rules. If we follow these, our life will be in the right path. For eg. A lady was very moody. She had no time for anything. She was 90 plus. The reason was she was involved in serving her Lord and automatically there was no time to complain. The busier we are, there is little time for doing anything bad.

So the first step is when we have an ambition, aalasya goes and we want to act. When we decide that our action must be dharmic, we do only the right action. There are many people who are here in Bahrain and their family is abroad. These work almost 15 hours a day, so that they can support their wife and children. Although they are constantly working, they get great pleasure because they are working for the sake of others.

Even when a person keeps on doing his duty after sometime the problem starts. How long must I act? Only that person who has doership notion feels that he is doing his duty and only then will the question arise how long I will act. As long as we have doership notions we get the feeling I did this for my family or that, I did a great sacrifice for my kids etc. Such a person becomes egoistic and even though he keeps working for others whatever he does, he will be sad.

Once a man who was inspired by Gandhiji went to North East India and served the tribes for 25 years. After many years when someone asked him, How long have you been here? He told his history and then said, These people are very bad and they deserve to die. When he said this person thought if we truly serve someone, how can we possibly dislike or hate them.

We serve our parents. Even if they become mad we will never abandon them. We will always respect them. If respect is invoked towards one, we will never hate or dislike them or be bitter about serving them. Even though that man has physically served for 25 years, he had not been sincere, otherwise such words would not have come from him.

So ego or doership notion also has a boundary, beyond which it becomes a bond. As long as we are duty oriented, we act with dynamism. But after time, due to doership notion, we become bound. So what should we do? We must give up doership notion and change our action to worship.

How do we do that ? the Lord explains “Ye tu sarvaaani karmaaNi, mayi sa.nnyasya” Do all your actions as an offering to me. On one hand, a pujari is given money to pray in the temple. On the other hand, we pray to the Lord at home. The main difference is our prayer is done with love and happiness. It is not for anything. As a result of the attitude, we are never tired, bored, upset and always happy. We don’t want to leave it or get ego that we are doing something great. We don’t feel that only I am doing something great and that other people’s worship is insignificant.

Bhakthi is the offering of ego. We often hear Yogabrashta Gyana or Karmabrashta but never Bhakthibrashta because a devotee never falls. He starts only from below and converts beauty orientation to devotion orientation. This is the secret of worshipping the “saguNa saakara” lord. Whatever we do is for the lord. This is explained in detail in Bhagavatham with reference to the gopis. The gopis used to rise in the morning, get ready and dressed up and wait for the Lord. They used to dress up beautifully not for themselves but because the Lord will see them. Every action is offered to God. If every action is offered to God we keep ourselves pure and life becomes beautiful. Suppose we are cooking and treat the food as an offering to God, the food becomes tasty. But if we keep complaining while cooking the eater will only get dysentery.

There was a great person called Vallabhdasji Maharaj who thought of even his wife and children as God. If we accept that no one other than God enters our life, we will never have hatred towards others. When we are like this, others also feel the same towards us. Even their dislike changes to like, by our attitude. Every action of ours must be offered to God “sarvaaNi karmaaNi”. From the time we rise in the morning, brush teeth , eat do various actions to the time we rest everything must be towards God. Our vision itself changes. If we want to serve God, our body should be healthy. So we will keep it such. By bring God in all our actions, our troubles disappear.This takes care of nitya krama.

What about our kartavya Karma – Even when we do our duties, often, we get doership notion and we want to take credit “I have done it”. As long as we have the feeling of doership notion, the
fruits of action will be ours. If the fruits if action are offered to God, What do we get?. We will get just what is required to take care of us.

Let us explain. For a Swamiji the first stage is vividisha sannyaasa, also called brahmacharya. The Brahmacharis are given yellow clothes. The Brahmacharis are like yellow cabs. Taxis in the US. Anyone can call, whether a devotee or a thief. The taxi can be taken anywhere. To the temple or to the bar. The taxi doesn’t get sin by going to the bar or merit by going to the temple. Only the meter reading. If all actions are offered to God, we will get whatever is required to sustain us. Yogashemam Vahamyaham.

“ye tu sarvaaNi karmaaNi mayi sannyasya Matparah” By offering all our actions to the Lord, duty gets beauty and becomes devotion. When we are working in a job – say a Govt. Job, although we serve the Government all our concentration is on our wife and children. In devotion, God will not settle for this – he says “maam dhyaayantam upaasate” – God says act for me and think of me only. Act for God and let him be the highest and only ambition. Ananyayena eva yogane

Once some knowledgeable saints went to Brindavan. There they saw the Gopis busy thinking about the lord and wanted to show their importance to the Gopis. They also introduced themselves.Sages told the Gopis, “Do you know who we are? We are ananyabhakt”. The Gopis did not even know the meaning of the word. So they also said, “Is it so, We are Pananyabhakt”.The sages asked, “What is pananyabhakt?”. The gopis said, “you first tell what is ananyabhakt?” The sage said proudly, “Ananyabhakt is one whose mind never goes anywhere other than God”. The humble Gopis said, “pananya bhakt means even the thought that something other than God can exist is not there”.

The goal, path and destination are the lord. “nirguNa niraakara” devotee’s meditation – first remove all sense perceptions shabda sparsha, roopa, rasa and gandha and in this process itself, they become tired. In saguNa saakaara, everything is offered to God. Every word uttered is God, everything touched and every experience is God. When the Gopis were in raasaleela, they became very proud, because the lord took so many forms and was simultaneously with each one of them. They thought, “How great we are”. So, sometimes, when we serve, we start feeling more important than the person being served. If we get happiness in service, we are proud. If the person served gets happiness, that is true service. So when the Gopis became proud, the importance shifted. God became secondary and they became primary. How lucky I am that God is playing. So he disappeared. They languished. They even hugged trees as God and every subject and thought was God. This is full saguNa saakaara.

For eg., B.R.Chopra made the serial “Sri Krishna”. One lady said, Swaamiji, I saw that and when I see Krishna’s leelas, I remember my grandson. Everything is upside down. The serial was done so that everybody can remember Sri Krishna. She should be able to see her grandson and remember Krishna, but in this ulta pulta world, people see Krishna and remember their grand son!!

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