May 29, 2007

Today, Swami Kaivalyananda discussed some important verses of the Gita. One of these is, ‘patram pushpam phalam toyam, yo me bhaktya prayacchati,
tadaham bhaktyupahrtam, ashnami prayatatmanah.’ Gita 9, 26.

Here, it says that whatever a devotee offers the Lord, whether a leaf, flower, fruits, or water, the Lord partakes of that offering of a pure mind. What people often think about this verse is that it means that a devotee should offer these articles in particular to the Lord, because He says that He is pleased by them. However, that is not how this is explained by the ancient acaryas, such as Sankaracarya.

There, they say that the Lord mentions these articles because they were available at no cost in those days. Because there was a lot of forest in that time, anybody could find these things and use to worship. Also, in those days, worship of the Lord was mostly confined to highly costly sacrifices, performed by kings and priests. These sacrifices involved a lot of expensive materials, and even caused kings to invade other countries in order to pay for the cost. In fact, that is why Arjuna is called ‘Dhananjaya‘ in the Gita. It means ‘one who wins the wealth of other countries.’

So, that was the situation at the time. Here, the Lord tells Arjuna, ‘you don’t need such costly things to worship Me. Instead, any available flower, leaf, water, or fruit is enough to satisfy Me, if offered with a pure heart.’ Othewise, we shouldn’t think that the Lord is pleased in particular if we place these items before Him, because of the shloka here. Instead, it is the pure heart of the devotee that the Lord partakes of. That is the word ‘prayatatmanah‘ – this means, ‘a pure mind.’ That is what the Lord receives.

Actually, in today’s time, these objects are even not necessary. The reason is, in today’s time, we have to pay money for these. We have to go to a shop for fruits, for flowers, etc. Even for water, we have to buy bottled water if we want it to be pure. So in truth, one can worship the Lord without these, with whatever is available at hand, or with just a pure heart.

Piyush