| Discourses On Gita By Acharya Vinoba Bhave |
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| Discourses On Gita |
| THE YOGA OF ACTION |
| In a way,
what I am telling you is the secret of image-worship itself. There is great beauty in the idea of worshipping an
image. Who can break this image? The image in the beginning, was merely a piece of
stone. I put life into it. I filled it with my bhavana, my feeling. How can
anyone destroy my feeling? Stones can be smashed, but not feeling. When I withdraw my feelings from
the image, then what remains will be mere stone, a thing which anyone can break to pieces.
4. In other words, then, action is a piece of stone, or a piece of paper. My mother scribbled three or four lines on a piece of paper and sent it off to me; another gentleman sent me a long discursive fifty-page letter. Now, which is more weighty? But the feeling in my mother's few lines is beyond measure; it is sacred. The other stuff cannot stand comparison with it. Action must be moistened with love, filled with feeling (bhavana). We set a price on laborer's work, and pay him his due wages. But a ritual gift (dakshina) is not given like that. One sprinkles water on the dakshina, before giving it away. Here, one does not ask how much is given. The important question is whether it was moistened or not, - whether there was love in it or not. There is an entertaining passage in the Manusmriti, Code of Manu, the law-giver. A student lived twelve years in his Master's house. He went there as animal, and came out a man. |
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