...It is the custom when you approach the Lord to take something with you; this is an act which people do when they go for the fulfilment of some desire, the grant of Grace for the realisation of some wish. They take pathram, pushpam, phalam, thoyam (leaf, flower, fruit, water), as the Geetha says. The attitude is' "I am jeeva; He is Deva". But, this is as bad a trick as some men do: they bring one cow when we ask them for milk, and milk another to give us the milk. They give the Lord the leaf, the flower and the fruit grown on some tree, and the reward of Grace goes to the tree, not to them.
Give the leaf, the flower, the fruit that has grown on the tree of your life; the fragrant leaves of your mental resolves and plans, the sweet juicy fruits of your own activities and thoughts. I know the relative value of these two; I require something that is your very own, not something bought in the bazaar or grown on some other tree or produced by some one else's intelligence ordevotion and steadiness. God has given you "the heart" to use in life; return it to Him as clean and as pure as when He gave it, after using it for storing prema, shaanthi, dharma, and sathya,and for distributing them to all who come in contact with you... - taken from Swami's Dasara Discourse on 3.10.1965... Sai Ram
