(By the late) Baba P.L.Bedi
The Guru left Lahore and went to Talwandi, On his way he stood outside a village temple watching worshippers offering flowers and tinkling temple bells.
One of the worshippers seeking the Guru standing thoughtful, as an interested spectator asked him: “what you are looking at, he said, “go in and worship the God inside.”
The Guru smiled and said, “Are you not aware of the God within you! Learn”
“Repeat the name of Rama
And thus perform inner worship Meditate over the word of the True Teacher
He is all-pervading.
How can I worship in temples of other gods?
When I see, the only one and none other!” “Do you come every day to work ship,” enquired the Guru.
“No,” he said, “but this is the 12th day of January month and, therefore, after fasting on the 11th day, Ekadshi, I worship God to acquire special merit.”
“My dear friend,” said the Guru, “under what delusions are you laboring! You think because you visit the temple and offer a few flowers; you have done a religious duty.
The 12th day would be blessed if you were to give in charity, inspired by a true feeling of compassion; if you were to control the outgoing mind and restrain it within. Fasting from food is a mere penance we fast truly when we renounce: the fruit of our action. We pray truly when we repeat the names of God and hear it repeated from within us and thus realize that the One pervades the three worlds. True worship is rendered by knowing the real from the unreal.”
The worshipper fell at the feet of the Guru and asked for further instruction.
“My friend, know this truth that God is in every heart and every heart is His temple. It is through His blessings that we can approach Him, then the heart loses its hardness and it is filled with His love. By meditation the sense of duality is lost and Jiva Atman, the individual soul becomes one with the Supreme Atman. By the grace of the Guru, this way is found. The heart is linked with God. Time no more rings down the curtain that we call death.”
(Courtesy of Sikh Review).
Article extracted from this publication >> March 26, 1993
