Teachings
Modes of Devotion (Part 5)
Smarana, or Remembrance of God (continued)
Weak-willed people often go back to their old undesirable ways. Sri Ramakrishna teaches that a seeker ought to exercise his will and steadfastly practice spiritual disciplines without giving in to weakening thoughts: "Suppose a man becomes pure by chanting the holy name of God, but immediately afterwards commits many sins. He has no strength of mind. He doesn't take a vow not to repeat his sins. A bath in the Ganges undoubtedly absolves one of all sins; but what does that avail? They say that the sins perch on the trees along the bank of the Ganges. No sooner does the man come back from the holy waters than the old sins jump on his shoulders from the trees. The same old sins take possession of him again. He is hardly out of the water before they fall upon him. Therefore I say, chant the name of God, and with it pray to Him that you may have love for Him. Pray to God that your attachment to such transitory things as wealth, name, and creature comforts may become less and less every day."
Padasevana, or Rendering Service to the Lord's Feet
This form of devotion finds expression as worship of God's feet in temples and in our personal shrines. There is however a wider implication of this practice of devotion. According to Vedanta, God does not create the universe and living beings out of something external to Him, but projects them out of Himself, enters into them, and pervades them. He is both the manifest and the unmanifest. (See Taittiriya Upanishad, 2.6.1) Hence service to living beings offered in a spirit of worship of God, who dwells in them, is also padasevana.
Swami Vivekananda taught this kind of worship as a potent form of spiritual practice for the present time. He called it Shiva-jnane jiva-seva (service to beings looking upon them as manifestations of God). He said, "You may invent an image through which to worship God, but a better image already exists, the living man. You may build a temple in which to worship God, and that may be good, but a better one, a much higher one, already exists, the human body."
Swami Vivekananda speaks of four kinds of service. 1. Service to the physical aspect of living beings, which assumes the form of the gift of food, clothing, and shelter. 2. Medical help, which consists in saving or prolonging a life. 3. The gift of ideas, or the gift of education, by which the recipient is able to think for himself, become self-reliant, and improve the quality of his life. 4. Spiritual help, which shows the recipient the way to God-realization, or discovery of his inner Self.
Swami Vivekananda cautions that physical help is not the only help possible: "In considering the question of helping others, we must always strive not to commit the mistake of thinking that physical help is the only help that can be given. It is not only the last but the least, because it cannot bring about permanent satisfaction. The misery that I feel when I am hungry is satisfied by eating, but hunger returns; my misery can cease only when I am satisfied beyond all want."
Saving or prolonging of life is a little higher than physical help. But a mere extension of life without a qualitative change in it does not help the recipient advance towards the goal of life. Next is the gift of knowledge or education. In Swami Vivekananda's words, "The gift of knowledge is a far higher gift than that of food and clothes; it is even higher than giving life to a man, because the real life of man consists of knowledge. Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery." "The gift of spirituality and spiritual knowledge is the highest, for it saves from many and many a birth."
(To be continued)