Once there was a saint who lived in the Himalayan forests. He lived in an
ashram deep in a beautiful jungle where he spent his time in meditation
and looking after the ashram.
Once a traveler came upon the saint and the ashram while trekking through
the Himalayas. The young man started talking to the saint about the
spiritual life. The young tourist asked him, “What did you do before you
became enlightened?”
The saint replied, “I used to chop wood and carry water from the well.”
The man then asked, “What do you do now that you have become enlightened?”
The answer was simple. The saint replied, “I chop wood and carry
water from the well.”
The young man was puzzled. He said, “There seems to be no difference
then. What was the point in going through all those years of sadhana in
order to attain enlightenment if you still spend your days doing chores
and menial tasks?”
The Master replied, “The difference is in me. The difference is not in my
acts, it is in me. Because I have changed, all my acts have changed. Their
significance has changed. The prose has become poetry, the stones have
become sermons, and matter has completely disappeared. Now there is
only God and nothing else. Life now is liberation to me, it is nirvana.”
So many people complain, “My job is not spiritual,” or, “How can
I live a spiritual life while I have to care for children and a family?”
The answer to a spiritual life is not in what you’re doing, but in how you’re doing it.
How attached are you to the details of what you’re
doing or how focused is your mind on God? Have stones become
sermons?
A spiritual life is not about renouncing work or renouncing
chores or renouncing tasks that we may see as “beneath us.”
Rather, a spiritual life is about turning these tasks into tapasya, turning
jobs into joy, turning stress into sadhana. This is a spiritual life.
People tend to think: first I’ll complete my householder years (the
years, typically from the age of twenty-five to fifty, which in traditional
society are dedicated to having a career and family) and then
I’ll turn myself to God.
Yes, in our culture, one dedicates one’s life
after retirement to God, to simplicity, to seva, to spirituality. But,
you don’t have to wait until you have retired in order to attain that
glorious state. You can attain it while living in the world. It’s all
a matter of the mind. Are you counting cars in front of you before
you reach the tollbooth on the highway, or are you counting the
names of the Lord in your mind? Are you reciting lists of things
to be done when you get home from the office, or are you reciting
God’s holy name? Is your tongue speaking angry remarks at your
family, your co-workers and your neighbors, or are you speaking
only pure, calm, peaceful words?
Attaining enlightenment does not mean being out of the world or
away from tasks. It means being in the world, but not of the world.
It means doing tasks, but not being the tasks.
Let us try, today as we complete our daily routine, to ask ourselves,
“How would this routine be different if I were enlightened? How
would my attitude change? How would my actions change?”
Let us pray to Krishna for the strength to act accordingly. Then we’ll know
that we’re really living a spiritual life, not merely relegating it to a
few moments alone in His remembrance at the end of the day.
Hare Krishna!
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