Living Vedanta: 7
In contrast to Ravan, you have the benign ego of Suteekshan. He prayed to the Lord that his ego should never go away. The ego that “I am your servant.” This is also an identity, but it is not “Doership”, it is “Instrumentship”.
In the Sunderkand portion of the Ram Charit Manas, Hanumanji says to the great Ravan, “I am only the servant of that great Shri Ram”. The real boss is only Shri Ram. If you maintain this all the time this will free you from the chains of desire, because you are working only according to the Master’s will.
Even the Bible says, “Thy will be done, not mine not mine.” Even the Granth Sahab of the Sikhs says, “Hukam rajai chalana”, and “Hukumai under sab koi, hukumai bahar na koi”. This only means that all are under the great universal laws of the Lord, and one should willingly abide by those.
Miraculous results accrue with this attitude, and one is at complete peace. The best example is Hanumanji who says that “I have taken an avatar only to serve the Lord.”
When Vedanta says that you are not the body, you don’t become (shunya) zero. You become (poornam) complete. It is not an all excluding concept, but an all embracing one.
The word Complete can only describe the Parabrahma, which is only the Lord. So a Vedanta student had a divorce because he called himself God, which was blasphemous to his wife, who was from a different religious belief. She believed in dualism, that “I am different from my Lord”.
You are not the body, but we have to live with the body, and the body has to live with its upadhis (attributes). But then you are complete (poornam), and poornam has no sense of lacking. It is then all pervading bliss—Chidananda rupah Shivoham Shivoham.
Prarthna Saran, President Chinmaya Mission Delhi.
