Love Spirituality

LOVE: THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF SPIRITUALITY
Has the spiritual scene, with its vastly diverse views on God and approaches to
spirituality, ever left you bewildered? Chances are that it has and if so, you are by no
means alone in your predicament.
No two individuals are alike when it comes to practicing spirituality. This is especially
true in a religion which allows considerable personal freedom of expression. Some find
joy in pilgrimage to various temples, some in singing in praise of the Lord in fellowship
with other devotees, while a few others prefer to worship in the privacy of their home.
Some sit quietly for hours in meditation or yoga, while others believe in fasting and
dietary restrictions. Then there are those who find fulfillment in chanting the scriptures
and in performing rituals laid down by those scriptures. Yet others believe in working in
the service of people, animals, and environment.
Surveying this varied scene, several questions may crowd your mind. What can be the
common spiritual goal pursued by practices which are apparently so dissimilar? Which
practice, if any, among the above is mandatory to achieve that goal? If nothing by itself
is indispensable, can one do away with all of them and still be considered a true spiritual
seeker?
Asked another way, is there anything which absolutely must be done by a seeker? Are
there basic truths in spirituality showing which way the goal lies, and providing criteria
by which to judge the worthiness of the various practices?
The answer is a definite “Yes”. The ultimate goal and the absolute imperative to achieve
that goal can be stated as what may be called “The Fundamental Law of Spirituality”:
“As a jeeva, through spiritual detachment, gains more and more in universal love and
understanding, it suffers less and less in this samsar.”
The goal implied is the lessening -and ultimately the total cessation- of the jeeva’s
suffering in this world; the means for achieving that goal is to expand the love and
understanding the jeeva has. The goal of spiritual practice can not be merely to improve
one’s chance for a promised good life after death in some unnamed heaven; instead it
must be to conquer all pain and suffering in this world here, now and forever. Such a total
victory is possible through, and only through, gaining universal, unconditional love and
understanding.
What exactly do these words mean? A mother sees in her infant child an extension of her
own self. As such, her love for the infant is total and unconditional, a love that is not
conditional on any outward reward from the child or the world. Nevertheless, the mere
expression of that love brings immense happiness to the mother. Happiness arises surely
and simultaneously with the expression of pure love and is complete without a hint of
suffering. In Vedanta, which forms the philosophical basis for Hinduism, the seeker is
repeatedly enjoined to “see one’s own self in all beings” and work in the world for the
good of all beings without expectation of any kind; in other words to exhibit towards all
beings the same love a mother shows to her child. This is what is meant by universal,
unconditional love and this is also the exalted nature of God’s love. Possession of such
immense untainted love by an ordinary human being surely appears unthinkable
considering how miserably petty we usually are. Therefore, not content with mere
advice, Vedanta also teaches us the practical means - including the karma, bhakti and
jnana yogas- by which a jeeva may slowly evolve. That this teaching is not mere theory,
but something that can be practiced with demonstrable results, is evident from the
extraordinary lives of our many great saints and seers.
Sustained pursuit of such a lofty goal requires great conviction and faith. Here too
Vedanta does not fail the seeker. Its teachings are based on a vision of Reality that has
won the admiration of many scientists and thinkers for its logically consistent analytical
approach to truth. The logical rigor found in Vedanta is in fact strong enough to permit
the earlier stated fundamental law of spirituality to be formulated in mathematical terms.
This is indeed a blessing to those seekers who expect the spiritual teachings to be at least
devoid of logical inconsistencies, even if they cannot be absolutely proved. Love in the
heart nourished by a firm understanding in the intellect- or bhakti aided by jnana – is the
happy state of the seeker who has absorbed the Vedantic teaching.
All religions acknowledge love as a virtue, but do not necessarily subscribe to the notion
of universal, unconditional love or give it the pivotal role it logically deserves. Harking
back to the questions raised earlier, we see that the real purpose behind any spiritual
practice has to be the development of jnana in the seeker by which the jeeva may see the
one Self in all beings, and work joyously out of this love for the welfare of the world.
When the jeeva has attained the highest echelon of evolution, it becomes a being of Pure
Love and Knowledge only, in which all sorrows are extinguished once and for all. This
is Liberation or God Realization.

Love Spirituality

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LOVE: THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF SPIRITUALITY

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