The Offering - Part 1
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People often misunderstand the goals of ancient Eastern “pagan” cultures. Sanātana Dharma is a worldview that one adopts explicitly to empower oneself. It’s about self-control and fortifying the mind by celebrating the nature in the things you fear. It wasn’t created to force people to think dogmatically, nor as a means to control the masses. The premise of yogic sciences has always been for the sake of self-discovery through experience, not blind belief. It’s this school of thought that became a fertile ground for many viewpoints to sprout, such as Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Jainism, Samkhya, etc. The values definitive to these cultures weren’t made to please anyone outside the practitioner.
There’s a story about how the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, expressed this. A man distraught over his father’s death approached Siddhartha and begged the Buddha to use his deep wisdom to send his father’s soul to heaven. Seeing that the man was beyond any logical explanation, Siddhartha agreed to perform a ritual. The Buddha instructed the man to get a pot, fill it halfway with stones and the rest with butter, and meet him by the nearby river. When they got to the river, the Buddha asked the man to set the pot into the river and strike it with one blow. If the stones rose to the surface of the river and the butter sank, his father would go to heaven. Excited and eager, the man carefully struck the pot and was met with the reality he had been avoiding. The butter will always rise up, and the stones will always sink, no matter how you strike the pot. If his father was like the butter, even the Buddha couldn’t stop him from transcending the cycles of rebirth, and if his father was like the stones, there was nothing anybody could do to keep him from reincarnating, spinning with the wheel of Samsara.
Although this lesson has been echoed throughout time, so many still miss the point. Empowering yourself in the here and now is not about an incentive later.
But what makes us light like butter?
King Kubera thought he knew. It wasn’t until he almost lost everything that he realized how wrong he was. He had accumulated an enormous amount of wealth and was incredibly full of himself because of it. He was filled with so much ego that he believed himself qualified to host a banquet for the gods themselves. The king believed that by impressing them with his material luxury they will come to think more highly of him.
Surprisingly, Shiva accepted the invitation, but only to teach the ambitious king a lesson. Instead of his entire family going, he decides to send only his son, Lord Ganesha, in their place. Although Kubera was surprised to find only the young Ganesha arrive, they began the feast delighted nonetheless. Very quickly, things began to take a turn when Ganesha’s appetite started to grow exponentially. Everything that came into the dining room was eaten without a moment to spare. The once wealthy King began to feel a lot less powerful as Ganesha continued to eat without any satisfaction in sight. Disheveled and scared, the King ran to Shiva for help before Ganesha’s voracious appetite plunged his kingdom into famine. Shiva smiled and gave Kubera a small bowl of rice, telling the frightened king to offer this instead. When Kubera hurried back and offered Ganesh the bowl of rice, the young elephant-headed god immediately smiled and became completely satisfied.
Capitalism may afford individuals a better living tangibly, but the spiritual laws of the universe are indifferent to capital. An honest karmic contribution is one conveyed with sincerity and an absence of pride. Karma yoga is a path only for those who are willing to serve selflessly. A humble bowl of rice satisfied Ganesha because it was a true offering, which, if done correctly, is enough regardless of what is physically being offered.
The great master Bodhidharma, responsible for spreading the core principles of the Vedas to China and Japan in the forms of Zen Buddhism and Kung Fu, once had to explain the same concept to the mighty Emperor Wu.
The emperor was a devout Buddhist, knew the sutras by heart, and often donated his wealth to spread the ideology. One day, the Emperor approached Bodhidharma and asked what merits he would receive for creating so many temples. The great spiritual master, known for his bold and immediate replies, proclaimed that the emperor would receive absolutely nothing in return. A famous argument then ensued, where Bodhidharma explained the doctrine of Sunyata, the voidness that constitutes ultimate reality. When one realizes the emptiness of inherent existence, it fosters compassion for all beings, since they are not fundamentally separate from oneself. It’s from that compassion that we should act, not because of the selfish benefits that may come afterward. In fact, the spread of this philosophy explicitly aims to get its practitioners to detach themselves from the pain and suffering that comes with perceiving temporary conditions as permanent. Spiritual progress is an empowerment that comes from within, not a benefit we are blessed with by an outside force.
