One aspect of devotional service that can be a hard pill to swallow
One of the most basic points in Vaiṣnava philosophy is the idea of service to the Lord. At the same time, however, it is said He is not in need of our service.
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One of the most basic points in Vaiṣnava philosophy is the idea of service to the Lord. The idea that we are eternal souls leads to the idea that we are connected to the Supreme Lord, who is the maintainer and the object of love for all. Krsna is not just a distant God that observes our activities and punishes when we do something wrong, but a dear friend who is anxious to cultivate a loving relationship with us. On his part, He is following us as Paramātmā, organizing the conditions for us obtaining knowledge about Him and empowering us to surpass all obstacles of conditioned life. On our part, we try to serve Him, making many different types of presentations.
At the same time, however, it is said that the Lord does not need our offerings. See SB 5.3.8, for example:
“All of life’s goals and opulences are directly, self-sufficiently, unceasingly and unlimitedly increasing in You at every moment. Indeed, You are unlimited enjoyment and blissful existence itself. As far as we are concerned, O Lord, we are always after material enjoyment. You do not need all these sacrificial arrangements, but they are meant for us so that we may be benedicted by Your Lordship. All these sacrifices are performed for our fruitive results, and they are not actually needed by You.”
The Lord is not a hungry man who is dependent on our offerings, or a beggar who needs us to build a house for His residence. As Prabhupāda elaborates, “We may construct a gorgeous temple and spend thousands of dollars, but such a temple is not required by the Lord. The Lord has many millions of temples for His residence, and He does not need our attempt. He does not require opulent activity at all.”
If the Lord does not need our offerings, why do we endeavor to cook nice dishes and construct opulent temples for Him? This is precisely one of the challenges of devotional service. In material welfare, we work to satisfy the needs of people who have less than us, like the hungry and homeless. This gives us a sense of superiority, seeing ourselves as the providers and maintainers. This is part of the reason we are in this material world: we want to be the maintainers of others, the object of love and gratitude, which are positions that belong to the Lord.
When we come to devotional service, we are confronted with the idea of serving someone who has everything and is not in need of our offerings. The Lord is already served by millions of gopis and goddesses of fortune, and has no need for our offerings. He has already His abode in the spiritual world, full of kalpa-vṛkṣa trees and cintāmaṇi stones, and has no need for a temple made out of bricks. Instead of offering something as a favor, to satisfy one’s need, we offer something to the Lord as a way to try to attract His attention for our own benefit. We have to get rid of our false ego and situate ourselves in a position of humility.
In this spirit, we cook our offerings the best we can, and put all our attention and resources into building a house where we can invite the Lord to reside in the form of the deity. Not because He needs it, but because we are anxious for the opportunity to offer some service to Him. This is how devotional love is expressed.
Our knowledge is limited, and our offerings are full of faults. Yet, because the Lord is infinitely merciful, we can still be sure of His mercy. Devotional service is so powerful that it allows us to obtain a perfect result out of an imperfect offering. It is so because it involves the personal participation of the Lord, who is so powerful.
The Lord is so merciful that even though in our deep ignorance we are not able to see anything beyond stone, wood, and other material objects, He appears in a form made of these material elements, so we can see Him, and personally serve Him in the form of the deity. This is all just to save us from material entanglement and bring us back to our original, healthy position of service.
This also helps us to accept our own personal imperfections. Sometimes, under the influence of the false ego, we think ourselves perfect, and others, under the pressure of the mind, we feel the worst. We thus oscillate between pride and depression. In reality, we are neither one nor the other. We are not perfect, but we have some capacity to serve the Lord. When we focus on what we can do for Him, little as it may be, without envying others who do more, we become again situated in our eternal position. The secret is humility. Even though the inhabitants of the spiritual world are eternally perfect, they see themselves as the humble servants of the Lord. This humility keeps them attentive and fixed in their service. This is the same spirit we should strive to develop.
As Prabhupāda concludes in his purport to the same verse, “If we engage our money in constructing a gorgeous temple, we are freed from the reactions of our endeavors. This is for our benefit. In addition, if we attempt to do something nice for the Supreme Lord, He is pleased with us and gives us His benediction. In conclusion, the gorgeous arrangements are not for the Lord’s sake but for our own. If we somehow or other receive blessings and benedictions from the Lord, our consciousness can be purified and we can become eligible to return home, back to Godhead.”
The soul is eternally connected to the Lord in a bond of love. The key, however, is purification. To relate to the Lord, we need to become purified from material contamination, including the tendency to control. The process for becoming purified of these contaminations is serving the Lord in a humble spirit. In the platform of pure love, everything is possible. Sometimes the Lord becomes dependent on His devotee, and sometimes He is controlled by His devotee, but this is completely different from the contaminated material platform permeated by lust.
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