accompany the procedure concerned.
Assuming that I have got my point across let me now discuss the example I
referred to earlier. In the Ramayana, there is a beautiful scene that occurs
when Rama and Lakshmana are wandering in search of Sita who had been abducted
earlier. During their wanderings in the forest, they meet an old tribal lady,
Sabari.
This woman had earlier been told by her sage and master that one day, the
Lord would come to the forest and that she should wait for Him. Sabari in full
faith, decided to wait for the Lord, although she had the faintest idea of how
the Lord would look, how He would come, etc.
In spite of lack of knowledge of these vital practical details, Sabari
just waited, having total faith in her master’s words. Not merely that; every
single day, she would collect fresh fruits such as were found in the forest,
holding them as an offering, should the Lord manifest.
One fine day Sabari saw Rama and Lakshmana come along. They were dressed
like hermits but they carried bows and arrows, which sages did not. Going by
these characteristics alone, there was no reason to suppose that Rama was
verily God in human form.
However, when Sabari saw Rama, she saw Him not only with her eyes, but
also with her Heart; and the Pure Love for the Lord in her Heart, instantly
recognised the Lord, coming to her in the form of Rama.
And what did Sabari do the moment she recognised that Rama was indeed the
Lord for whom she had been waiting for so long? She greeted Him and of course
Lakshmana too, with the broadest of smiles and Love gushing forth as a torrent
from her heart. She washed the feet of the Princes, prostrated before them, and
then offered the fruits she had lovingly gathered earlier in the day.
The Lord is concerned only about the extent to which our heart is
filled
with Pure Love for Him.
Now it is quite usual to make offerings to the Lord, both during formal
worship at home and also when the Lord comes in human form. The unique thing
about what Sabari did was, that being a simple tribal woman totally ignorant of
the rules of etiquette, she bit into every fruit first, tasted the bit she had
chewed off, made sure the fruit selected was sweet enough, and then offered it
to Rama and Lakshmana.
Just pause and think about it calmly for a minute. Would any one of us
ever dream of doing something like this, when say we offer a fruit to Swami,
who of course is Rama come again? Yet that is precisely what Sabari did! Now
how did Rama react to all this? Did He flinch, did He mutter, ‘Oh look at this
tribal woman, she does not know the a,b,c of proper behaviour!’ or anything
like that? Not at all; on the other hand, Rama not only received the offering
with much Love but ate every selected fruit, making it very evident how much He
relished the fruit offered.
In the Ramayana, the Sabari interlude is very brief but a very
significant one; that is why not only scholars attach much importance to it but
Saint Tyagaraja, who, I confess is a favourite musician of mine, composed a
beautiful song entirely in celebration of Sabari, wondering how he could
describe the amazing Grace that she received?
Getting back to the point I am trying to put across, at the end of the
day, the Lord is least bothered about the extent of our textual knowledge of
the scriptures, or about how many rituals we perform, how frequently we do
them, etc. The Lord is concerned only about the extent to which our heart is
filled with Pure Love for Him. That is what the story of Sabari highlights.
Source: h2h
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