Pages

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Detachment via Loving Krishna

Some time ago, someone shared a brief YouTube video of a Buddhist monk in front of students creating a very large, very intricate mandala sand painting. It must have taken days to make (as indicated below)..., and then he wiped it all away!

Then today my sister was texting me about Buddhist art and I mentioned what I'd seen. So again I was on YouTube and found several videos to find out about Buddhist mandala sand paintings.

After watching all of them with the same detached wiping-it-all-away ending, I was sweeping a floor over here and remembered that we, as devotees of Krishna, already practice a type of mandala detachment whenever we (repeatedly!), for example, clean house, such as sweeping a floor or fixing a bed or wiping a table and then see how it’s all messed up again not long afterwards! Even cooking is done and then devoured over and over and over again! 🙂

And that reminded me of a book called “Vanity Karma “ by Jayadvaita Swami. It's a critique of the Ecclesiastes book of the Holy Bible. Even though it compared Judaism and Krishna consciousness, it could easily apply to the major difference between action as a Buddhist and action as a devotee of Krishna. The Buddhist painstakingly makes that huge, gorgeous,  colorful mandala...apparently for nothing, except perhaps lessons in detachment from the temporal world. Well, as devotees we can similarly painstakingly perform our duties, but it's never in vain, and we can do it with great love because we know Krsna is there, witnessing that our aim is His transcendental pleasure. Otherwise, our existence in this material world is absurd, meaningless. Unless we do for Krishna; Krishna gives everything value and makes everything worthwhile.

Just a thought that made housekeeping today a lot more thorough! 🙂