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by
Sri Bimal Mohanty
VOL
No. 69
November 2006
THE
CONCEPT OF SEEKING GOD’S FAVOURS
Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty
The first man on earth surely must have wondered in his contemplative mood, who created all this around me? Who put that fruit on that tree that I ate? Who sent the water from above that I quenched my thirst? Who gave the strength to my arms? Who has all this power to give?
When the concept of God (or whatever rudimentary concept it might have been) as the great giver, the DatA, entered into his mind, we the cunning human beings have never stopped in our demands on Him? Pushed by the self seeking ego and influenced by the desires of sense organs, to most of us in our ignorance, the concept of God is predominantly of an entity from whom everything can be demanded. This desire to seek and demand is so strong with us that many of us seem to understand that to satisfy man’s needs is the greatest attribute of God. ‘God gives’. Everything else seems secondary.
The amazing thing is that God also never hesitates to give. Whatever is one’s intense desire, sooner or later, and in some form or other, the desire gets fulfilled. The content may change, the shape of things may vary, but the apparent benefit always falls on our begging bowl.
The sanAtan philosophy which probes everything with a questioning mind so as to discover the divine purpose in every little act that we live by, pondered over this. It analysed every aspect of our act of asking, God’s dispensation of our desire and the ultimate result all these bring to us.
It was not long, before our ancient seers concluded that our desires and their fulfillment is in no way giving us any permanent satisfaction or satiation. Rather, we seem to be riding a never-ending spiral. So this very concept of seeking God’s favours is to be looked at intelligently in the context of our sAdhanA and its contribution to our final goal.
What kind of things do we ask from God? Practically all our desires arise due to the interaction of our sense oegans with the objects around us in the physical world. These are then strengthened because of the ignorance of our ego self, which is swayed by its impatience and demands immediate relief. The ego seldom pauses to think whether our need is for mere preyas (immediately pleasurable even if harmful in the long run) or for shreyas (not so pleasant now but beneficial eventually). All weak minded people run after preyas.
Our ignorance about things and the ultimate fruits of our actions, become the reason why we can not visualize ahead the future.
It is the ignorance, which therefore has to be overcome and there is only one antidote against ignorance. It is knowledge and wisdom. If man had within him all the wisdom, obviously he would clearly see what is only good for him and what is not. He would commit no mistakes and would not fall victim to misery and suffering.
But that is not to be because of the limitations of all our faculties. As we all in times of need, when short of anything, approach to some one who has more than us, it is logical that man in need should seek out God’s help- God being the omniscient and omnipotent.
And God never denies and always gives.
Then the seers further contemplated. Why does God always give? Often some things that we wished and received fail to satiate us, later turning out to be harmful and damaging for us in some way. Then why did God who is always our well-wisher, granted these wishes of ours? They searched for a deeper answer to this.
We then see clearly the many aspects of desire, suffering, as well as the divine law of cause and effect governing them.
Firstly God has no logical reason to thrust on us anything that is harmful or detrimental to us. The single purpose behind God’s creation is to assist all its constituents including all ‘beings’ to develop and evolve into a higher state and ultimately end with satchidananda. For this purpose what ever the jiva or the individual soul may need in course of his progress, the nature provides this.
We have discussed this before, that this progress of the jiva is accomplished by active participation of the jiva using its antahkarana (mind, intellect and ego) and strictly following the divine principle of cause and effect. All choices are open. The selection by the jiva is his prerogative. He can take a particular step, refrain from taking a step, or take a step in another direction of his choice. Kartum akartum anyatha kartum is his free will.
The jiva often makes mistakes, borne out of his inadequate knowledge. Since every cause (or action) produces a corresponding effect, a mistake produces misery (dukhah) immediately or later.
Wise men conclusively recognize any misery as the outcome of the jiva’s own doings.
Agate visamandashah daivam arhayate narah
Atmanam Karmadosanca na socatyapanditah
When misfortune strikes man immediately blames the fate, but the fact that it is the result of one’s own wrongdoing eludes the unwise.
The moment we are face to face with misery, our ego is unable to accept it and looses its composure. We want cessation of misery immediately.
Where do we go? We seek divine help and ask God to remove the misery.
Then comes the pertinent question. If God is concerned about us and is all-powerful, could He not have stopped us before we face the crisis? Could He not have denied firmly if He knows that what we are asking will eventually bring no good to us?
The truth of the matter is that any worldly desire and the fruit thereof is incapable of producing happiness and eventually becomes cause of misery. This canon of truth has been arrived through divine knowledge and proven by thousands of years of human experience. Yet we fail to accept this truth often when the power of our sensual craving becomes beyond our resistance level. But this truth has to be known, not only known but has to be a part of our way of living if we have to avoid misery.
God’s endevour is to make us learn this truth through experiences after experiences until the lesson becomes firmly established in our character. He makes us go through this jungle of worldly pleasures again and again until the lesson is learnt. Once the lesson is learnt, that particular kind of desire dries up within us and we go a step ahead in our journey to perfection.
One may further ask, why do the worldly enticements at all exist to trap us?
The objective is not to trap us, but to help us learn the lesson and keep us away from their clutches. That is all there to it regarding the senses, sense objects and the desire for them.
Are all desires bad? Not really- say our scriptures. Some what difficult to practice, but the profound truth in sanatan philosophy is that any desire to reach out to our ultimate destination – the mumuksha for satchidananda is not only welcome but is the very driving force for our sadhana. But any desire that aims for short lived, pleasurable fruit of gross physical nature and thereby temporarily distracts us from our goal is bad- very bad indeed.
Those who run after these fruits are short of wisdom. KripanAh phalahetavah – the Lord says in The Bhagavad Gita. Wretched are the fruit seekers.
The golden rule for spiritual approach to life therefore is – under no circumstances seek from God any thing for personal worldly benefit. That is the sure path to the dungeon of suffering.
It requires a matured mind to believe that God as we understand Him and who is behind the creation and management of this grand cosmic design, is not naive enough not to know what is good for the created beings and would need our nudging to give us something which he might have overlooked. Yet when we still persist with God for something which he has not provided for, it betrays a lack of confidence in God Himself.
The obvious question that comes to mind after this is “ But we have from our scriptures so many prayers meant to be sung, so many rituals prescribed all with the expectation of receiving some thing or the other from the all mighty God. What should we understand from that?” That question is pertinent. We indeed pray to God to fulfill our desires. We perform rituals in the hope of receiving boons. All these are duly sanctioned by the religion.
But to understand the purpose behind all this we have to go back again to the very goal and purpose of our existence within the creation. The truth realization and resulting bliss in a state of absolute perfection is our divinely ordained goal. The purpose of our efforts – which is the real meaning of yoga, is to achieve that goal and nothing else. This is achieved by the jiva’s efforts but not without the grace and assistance from the Lord. Therefore to seek God’s assistance with only this purpose in mind is an intelligent approach for seeking help. We pray for good health- but the purpose of good health should be to enable us to practice this yoga. We seek material resources- but the resources in our possession should be exclusively for supporting our spiritual progress. We seek power, progeny, stature, protection from decay and destruction, peace of mind, conducive environment all with the single purpose that our spiritual progress may continue without interruption. The rituals that we perform have to have this underlying purpose . Seeking anything from God with any other ulterior motive is to invite misery now or later. And when the fruits of our prayer when received, are not utilised for this purpose and go on to satiate our sense and ego driven desire, we sink into the pit of untold misfortune. The cycle goes on until this foolishness is understood and we see the light. The scriptures warn us again and again not to get carried away by the dictates of personal sensual pleasure. Never forget your goal. Never deviate from the path.
No wrongdoing is ever forgotten. Why? Because it is a blemish on the soul and the soul has to be cleansed. How does the Lord help us in this? By granting our wish again and again, making us go through the experiences again and again in different ways and content He keeps us teaching the lesson.
It is the same principle even when we are wronged by some one else or some other force. It is God’s warning through someone else. It is for us to recognise this and atone the misdeed through a good enough deed. Hence even if someone is doing wrong to us, we may resist his actions but it would be foolish to retaliate by doing wrong to him. Because whatever we might do will eventually return back to our lot. As no one is deprived of the fruits of one’s good deeds, so also no one can escape without paying for one’s misdeeds. Once the lesson is learnt, everything is atoned and condoned.
It is again the wisdom of a matured mind that lives by the faith that God with his infallible logic of cause and effect and with his constant concern for the jiva’s development knows precisely all his needs. He does not expect us to ask for it. He only expects trust and actions from us conforming to the overall principles of Divine management.
This conformity with the Divine principles and not to seek anything that does not conform to them has significant importance in the Sanatan philosophy. Please refer to the articles ‘Principles of Divine Management’ in the January/February issues of AHWAN. Even when we seek favours from God, our prayers invariably end with the submission ‘Om shantih, shantih, shantih. This is as if to say ‘give me what I wish if you may, but not at the cost of the over all good to which I submit’. True peace is simply a state of conformity with the divine principles and acceptance of the outcome that results from the interplay of the divine principles. That only brings peace because the divine principles make everything happen for the good of all- always and every time.
