Posted on: 29 Sep 2019
Shri Durgaprasad asked: Padanamaskaram Swami! You have said that one should keep the Lord in place of one’s child so that one’s love towards the Lord becomes natural. The Gopikās showed exactly this type of love and served the Lord like a family member. On other hand, Lakṣmaṇa and Hanumān served the Lord like slaves, considering Him to be their Master. It means, they were always in the alert mode. These two types of love appear to be quite opposite. How can we understand this difference? Your servant, Durgaprasad
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Parents too are slaves to their children as they serve their children. In fact, their service is greater than the service done by a slave. The mother washes the child’s bottom after excretion, whereas a servant would generally hesitate to do it. The master pays a limited salary to his servants as per the quality and quantity of their service. On the other hand, children pay nothing to their parents. Instead, parents transfer their entire property to their children, in addition to serving them, even if the grown-up children do not serve them in their old age! I do not find much difference between the two types of devotion. What matters is how much and how pure is the devotion of the devotee. Perhaps it could be argued that parents serve their children and transfer their wealth to them because of their blood relationship. On the other hand, slaves have no blood relationship with their masters. So, it is better to take the example of the love of parents for an adopted child, where there is no blood relationship. Yet, the parents serve the adopted child and give all their earnings to the child. Whether the service and sacrifice are real (unselfish) or not, is determined by whether the child is an adopted child or one’s own born child.
So, the love for an adopted child is the highest and should be kept as the goal. God should be treated as one’s adopted son, which is the actual meaning of the word Datta. Datta means an adopted son. God wants to become Datta, your adopted Son. If you consider Him to be your adopted Son, you will do at least some real service and sacrifice for Him and as a fruit of the same, He will uplift you. But, due to their terrific knowledge of economics and commerce, devotees are extremely alert in noticing the real sacrifice and service that exists in the relationship between parents and an adopted child. Cleverly, they reverse the parent-child bond, making Datta as their adopting Parent, instead of their adopted Son, so that God will serve them and give wealth to them, even if their behaviour is wrong! However, the word Datta only means an adopted child and not adopting parents. There are ten types of sons or children mentioned in the scriptures including aurasa, kṛtrima, kṣetraja, gūḍhotpanna, datta and so on. People usually have practical and aspiration-free devotion only towards their issues (children). This issue-devotion (apatya bhakti) is the highest type of devotion. The devotee should always try to proceed on the path of developing such devotion, especially while serving God and sacrificing one’s wealth to Him. It does not matter which type of relation you may choose to have with Him. Whether you love Him as your Son, Master, Brother or any other relation, the value of the devotion depends on how much practical and aspiration-free devotion you have for Him. In other words, whatever relation you choose to have with God, you should only have issue-devotion for Him. The amount of issue-devotion in any relation that a devotee has for God, decides its value. Sugar can be molded into various shapes and forms like that of a parrot, swan or a donkey. But finally, it is only the amount of sugar in any of those molded forms that decides its price; not the form. One kilogram of the sugar-swans costs the same as one kilogram of sugar-donkeys!
Aurasa Krutrima Kshetraja Guudhotpanna