Swami Shivapadananda on devotion to the Guru

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Taken from Mother Radha’s
notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.

Day 351

 

Find out who ‘I’ is – and then you will find out who you are.

 

Worship the Guru in your heart, with water, milk, flowers, fruit,
whatever you like, morning and evening. Then even if you cannot be with him all
the time clinging to his feet, you can cling to them in your heart. Then the
body becomes the living temple of God.

 

Devotion to the Ideal is devotion to the Guru, and devotion to the Guru
is devotion to the Ideal. If you sincerely devote yourself to practising the
yogic principles laid down in the scriptures, you must make spiritual progress.
Cling to the Ideal, become an ideal person. Practise all that the Ideal stands
for. The Ideal will be pleased. The Ideal is God, you chose it and so you
become God too. You must see God in the Ideal, otherwise it is useless.

 

The story of Ekalavya illustrates this. He was a poor man from the
forest but he asked Dronacharya, the great archery teacher, to be his guru. He
refused. So Ekalavya went to the forest and built a crude image of Dronacharya
in clay and worshipped him as his Guru. He then practised archery for a long
time in front of this home-made guru.

 

During this time Dronacharya had promised Arjuna, his student who
excelled at archery, that no one would be able to beat him.

 

Eventually Ekalavya came out of the forest and at a competition beat
Arjuna. Naturally Arjuna became angry. Dronacharya was in a fix so he went and
asked Ekalavya, ‘Who is your guru?’ The man said, ‘You are!’  Seeing a chance, Dronacharya demanded
gurudakshina [a gift given to the guru on initiation] from him. Ekalavya said,
‘You can have anything.’ The Guru demanded his two thumbs [so the man would be
unable to use a bow and arrow again] and immediately the man from the forest
cut off his thumbs and gave them to his Guru.

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