HINDUISM: The power game

You have no control over your own body. Birth, growth, modifications, disease, hunger, thirst, excretions, aging or death! Look within, do you have control over your breath or the inner systems that run the body like digestion, circulation, heartbeat, pulse beat, excretory system, etc? You have no power over your own thoughts, your dreams, or your desires.

The five pranas work incessantly to enable you to chase your dreams till He allows you to. So, when you have no power over your own self, nor over the circumstances that you daily meet in life, how come you are chasing power to rule over others? The Ruler, dear friends, is someone else!

Tune in to the will of the real ruler, when the desire is to serve rather than rule others, then He provides you with the power to accomplish it. Service is a different network. It requires total, unquestionable surrender to His will. It demands complete love and identification with the beloved, the ones you serve! Joy in service is Love in action.

The moment you find it “inconvenient”, understand that there is a lack of love. When we desire power over others for our own materialistic ends and pleasure, then it is seeking Maya without Narayan. Like Ravan sought Sitaji.

Then Maya from “kleshaharini” becomes “vinaashkarini” and takes away not only what you sought to gain, but even destroys you. Service demands total identification with the beloved. Love is beyond “reason”.

It is transaction if it is “because of”. The mind and the body are the pillars of “ahankar”, they both have no life of their own, but if you think you are the mind and body, then you will become the “karta bhokta”, that is, you cannot escape from the thought of “I serve”, and “reward me”. Remember, always, you can never be the doer.
Prarthna Saran, President, Chinmaya Mission Delhi.