God expects only simple worship from us!
Saturday 1 May 2010
We wrongly assume that God expects us to resort to difficult modes of worship, when actually He is waiting to show us mercy, if we just fold our hands before Him.
In fact, if we undergo any difficulties in the course of our worship, Lord Narayana will shed tears for us. If we hurt, He will be hurt. And since our aim in seeking moksha is to serve Him and to delight in His happiness, we should not do anything that will make Him sad.
To do difficult things that hurt us in some way is to doubt His grace, said M. A. Venkatakrishnan in a lecture.
The word ‘namaha,' which we use to salute Him, means burden. When we use the word ‘namaha,' He sees the need to save us as an urgent obligation. And He becomes anxious to save us.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says that He will ensure that the good things we already have will continue to remain, and that He will also grant more good to us.
In other words, what we have, shall be made lasting. What we do not have shall be given to us by Him.
But instead of merely saying that He shall do these things for us, Krishna says in the Gita that He bears the burden of doing these things.
Thus once we surrender at His feet, He feels obligated to save us, and this feeling of being obliged to save becomes almost a burden to Him.
And yet, for Him to feel this way, we do not have to trouble ourselves in any way, or think of difficult penances.
Just a folding of our hands before Him will do. So, simple worship is enough, for Him to grant us His grace.
When He is so ready to give, need we torture ourselves, by resorting to difficult methods of worship? It is said that flowers of thorny plants should not be offered to the Lord.
That is because, should a thorn prick our fingers, while we pluck the flowers, He will be unhappy. He gets hurt when a devotee is hurt. This being the case, how would He expect us to suffer in any way, in the name of worship?
He is the embodiment of simplicity, and expects only simple worship from us.
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vEnkatEsa samO dEvO na bhUtO na bhavishyati"
which means...
"In this Universe there is no sacred place equivalent to Venkatadri(i.e.,There is no place in the whole Universe which is more auspicious than the hill Venkatachala). There is no God equivalent to Lord Venkateswara neither in the past nor in the future going to be(i.e.,There is no Archa murti (worshippable form) in all the three times (present,past and future) whose glories are comparable to the Lord of Venkatachala)"
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