Motiveless Tenderness of Heart

An Ayurvedic doctor and a true Vedantin, Krishna Murti one night on the way back to Mysore, India after visiting a few villages as a part of his regular selfless service, Dr. Murti was stopped by a couple of robbers who demanded he give up his money.

Without hesitation, Dr. Murti gave them the money he had collected from the villagers and then volunteered to give them his wedding ring that was worth 5,000 rupees, and even his clothes and his motorcycle. The two men looked at each other, not knowing what to do, and asked why he had offered them his belongs beyond their asking.

Dr. Murti replied, “You must have a very difficult financial situation and need them more than I do.”  The robbers were moved. They decided not to take any of his belongs and asked him to leave. Dr. Murti started to talk to them and inquired about why they were conducting such acts. The robbers said their wives were sick and there was no food on the table for their children.

Hearing this, Dr. Murti genuinely offered them jobs at his clinic. At first the robbers said they did not want to take the jobs because they were afraid Dr. Murti would report them to the police, but later on one of them took the job and worked for Dr. Murti for a couple of years.

A few days after hearing this story, one of his students who had heard this story encountered a situation himself. A rickshaw driver thought who thought he was a stranger in town took a few extra miles to get him back to my hotel in order to collect more money. He asked for 200 rupees. He was paid that amount and the student him an extra 300 rupees. The rickshaw driver asked, “Why?” The student sincerely replied, “You must be in need of money because you made an extra effort to get more mileage.” The rickshaw driver refused to take the extra money and left without looking at him. 

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We human beings are not much different deep inside. Even though our life situations require us to behave accordingly, acting as robbers, crooks, saints, or rishis, the true nature of the human race is pure, sincere, and loving in heart.

What is love for most of us? When we say we love someone, we often mean we possess that person. If we lose her or him our feelings of possession arise as jealousy, emptiness, and loss. Surely such possession is not love. Sentimental and emotional love is merely a form of self-expansion and consists of sensations derived from thoughts in the mind. Sentimental and emotional people can be stirred to manifest the opposite characteristics of love such as hatred, jealousy, and even murder. Sympathy and forgiveness, possessiveness, jealousy, and fear are not love. They are fantasies in the mind. The mind corrupts love and it can not give birth to love. When these fantasies have ceased, pure love can come into being.

A person with pure love has no enmity to all these characteristics; he is indifferent to them. Pure love is revealed only when there is no possession, no envy, and no greed and when there is respect, mercy, and compassion in the stillness of the mind.

Love, pure love, is love without attachment, expectation, and desire. It comes from within and is our true nature and who we are indeed. Love all despite the differences of our forms, names, beliefs, values, culture, race, and religion.

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Teaching

I will think only sweet and beneficial thoughts. I will do only sweet actions. I will select sweet things to offer in worship. I will always speak sweetly to both gods and human beings. May the gods protect me from any faults in what I say and make my speech graceful.

The Rudram is from the Tattiriya Samhita, one of the most revered books of Vedic literature. The Rudram is a sacred chant of the Saraswati Order of Monks, chanted every day in ashrams and monasteries reflecting the highest qualities of every human being. When we recognize this sweetness as our essential Self, then we know the Divine Love that we are.

• Cultivate pure love without motive through daily sadhana or spiritual practice including asana, meditation, pranayama, selfless service, devotion to the supreme power, and self inquiry of “Who am I?”
• Provide the motiveless tenderness of love to yourself, friends, family members, and even difficult people in your life. Love yourself because of who you are and love others because of who they are.
• Record the events and your inner experience in your journal when you provide pure loving thoughts and acts to others without attaching to the fruits of those thoughts and acts.
• Love all beings in the universe, trees, animals, earth, sky, rocks, rivers, mountains, fires, earth quakes, and even murders unconditionally. It is a very challenging task but yet a transcending experience from mortality to immortality.

What is Spiritual Healing?

Spiritual healing is not about dogmatic rituals that we have to perform or the specific ways that we have to live. It is about the connection to our inner teacher, a teacher who speaks the truth to us when our mind is quiet, and there is no interference of learned knowledge or philosophy. It is about our connection to the essences of our universe, water, air, fire, earth, and ether. These elements are who we are, where we came from not long ago, and where we will return in the very near future.

Spiritual healing is about our connection to our spiritual beings, beyond our physical temporary existence in this universe. It is about the connection to the cycle of the universe and the cycle of our human race. Those cycles are the same; the difference in time and space are only created in the human mind.