To jaisanatanimaa about attachments

[Guest guest]

Dear jaisanatanimaa ~ thank you for your thoughtful words on this most important of topics. This morning, I had just read something similar, and it was also about selfless service. When I got my dog, Pepper's breakfast ready, the only thought in my mind was I am doing this for Pepper with no thought of any result or reward. It was the first time that I looked at an ordinary task as selfless service, yet with my illnesses, what I do here in my home with my companion, Pepper, and my husband, David, are my opportunities for selfless service.

 

When I was making the coffee, I realized that I was focusing very strongly on the separate actions of making the coffee ... not exactly selfless service, but more like being in the present. Then thoughts of my unresolved issues with my departed mother welled up and I came out of my reverie. I was getting snowed with grief and upset about how so many sad things happened with her and me in the last years of her life, that were unresolved when she died, and then I began to feel angry at my mother. Then I remembered a prayer I had seen today, and said it fervently: Please forgive us. We are sorry for our past mistakes. Please guide us with your Loving Presence." That brought me back to the present moment.

 

Thank you for bringing up this topic and for all your thoughtful musings ~ Linda

Jai Maa Jai Swamiji

 

 

 

jaisanatanimaa wrote:

....Here, I feel, is where Swamiji's advice, to use our discrimination when this action is appropriate, proves to be the light which removes darkness. Because I find that as soon as I stop and think about what my motivation for this action would be, I become aware of both selfish attachments AND the desire to move beyond selfishness. And as soon as I become aware of the desire to move beyond selfishness, the selfish desires lose their power of control and I can make a choice.Then I realize that, in order to move beyond selfishness, I must follow in the Guru's footsteps, because I cannot possibly find my own way out of this forest of attachments in which I am lost. Thinking thus, the drinking of the water from the Guru's feet becomes appropriate, I feel, because then it is an expression of my love and trust, of my willingness to be guided and the recognition that I don't know all the answers. 'If you don't know the answer, surrender', is the teaching. It is our faculty of discrimination that makes us aware that we don't know, but She does, 'whose lotusfeet destroy the great forest conflagration of all the sea of objects and relationships'...