III: 10

[Krishna Jaya]

Chapter 3, Verse 10

 

“The Lord of creation formed worship

Together with humanity, and said,

‘By worship you will always be fruitful.

Duty well done fulfills desire,

Like Kamadhenu, the wish-fulfiller.’”

 

Swami Chidbhavananda:

 

“Kamadhenu is a mythological figure with a woman’s head, cow’s body, and bird’s wings.  The usefulness of the human, the beast of burden, and the bird are all combined in the image.  Allegorically, Kamadhenu is nothing other than Yajna, the spirit of worship.  Worshipers of God are never in want.  Whatever they offer to others comes back to them many-fold in many ways.  Their bounteous minds and hearts are the real Kamadhenu.  Because of this frame of mind and heart, they are ever in prosperity.”

 

Swami Satchidananda:

 

“Let your life be worship, Yajna, from sunup to sundown and from sundown to sunup.  Worship is the law of life.  This is said only to humankind because all of the other species unconsciously do it naturally.  Everything in this creation exists to be used by others.  Only self-absorbed humans live for themselves; all the rest live to be used by others, under the direct guidance of nature’s law.  The entire world is an altar of worship.  Make the whole life an offering.  That’s Yajna.” 

 

[As we worship, we remember our true relation to our fellows, to the world, and to God; and we rest in our essential, immanent oneness; yes, it’s paradoxical.  How can one be “in relation” and “one” at the same time?  I think of the confusion as being based in the blurriness surrounding time and space’s relative plane of existence and absolute reality beyond time and space.  Because the latter is not only beyond time and space but also beyond intellectual conception, words always necessarily fall short of building a bridge between the two realms, and we’re left with paradox, not “either/or,” but “both/and.”]