Cultivating Love Divine

Swami Chinmayananda

oi-Staff

By Staff

Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 10:16

All masters of the path of devotion indicate one common direction, and their grand theme is always the same:how to maintain and develop devotion for the Lord in the hearts of humankind.

In the following sutras, Narada declares the methods of cultivating and securing the spirit of devotion in the hearts of the seekers: Indeed, the sources of devotion are explored fully through(1) renuciation of sense-objects and also by (2) giving up wordly attachments (Sutra35)

The technique of self-perfection consists of : a) detachment, which leads to withdrawal from the pursuits of the senses and of pleasure in sense objects; and b)attachment to the supreme through a devoted, selfless surrender to Him.

This is like the technique of falling asleep. To reach sleep we must first move away from the waking state, invoke sleep, and then totally surrender ourselves to the enveloping dark silence of the state of sleep-consciousness. In this sutra, Narada explains how to achieve a sense of detachment, and in the next few sutras he explains how to develop attachment to the supreme.

We are generally attached to both inert things and sentient beings, which together constitute the dynamic world around us. Our worldly relationships are to be chastened by changing the attitude of our love towards them. Our love for an individual becomes an attachment when it is poisoned by the expection of gratification the we expect to gain through that individual. As long as that person remains, we become desperate for their continued existence! This suicidal reationship that compels our own love to stifle us is called attachment.

To be a slave to the world of sense objects, or to the world of beings, is to debase one's own personality. Such a person cannot offer himself to the Lord as a free, self- willed, energetic person, but a confused, dull, and miserable person caught in a web of worldly entanglements. To renounce the sense objects is thus essential, and this is achieved through right thinking and correct self-analysis. It is then that we come to understand the true meaning of renunciation(vairagya), giving up the sense of pain or pleasure in the sense objects is vairagya, not physically renouncing the sense objects.

To renounce something, we must first own it, we cannot give up something that we do not own, for nothing in this world belongs to us. The only thing we can give up is our own imposition of likes and dislikes, and pain and pleasure. Thus a person of true detachment becomes self-sufficient and entirely God centered.