Prayers must emanate from the Heart

Anecdotes

oi-Staff

By Super Admin

Thursday, June 2, 2011, 16:16

Listen to what happened to sage Ramadas of Bhadrachalam, the singer who was imprisoned by the Nawab of Golconda, for misappropriation of public funds (to renovate the Rama Temple at Bhadrachalam), whose liberation from jail was effected by Rama and Lakshmana themselves paying the Nawab the sum appropriated!

Ramadas had piled up a large mass of palmyra leaves, on each of which he had written with his stylo a song on Rama. When his eyes fell on the heap one day, a thought struck him: "Did I compose these songs for my pleasure? Or, for pleasing Rama?" He wanted to know those songs which had pleased Rama, and fling away those which did not.

He decided to throw the whole bundle into the Godavari River, and let Rama save those which He approved. Almost the whole lot sank in the depths; only 108 floated and were rescued. They alone had arisen from the heart; the rest smacked of cleverness, artificiality, punditry, pedantry. Prayers must emanate from the heart, where God resides and not from the head, where doctrines and doubts clash.