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Articles: Devotion | The First Temple
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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Christmas, the most special time of the year, is when we remind ourselves of the birth of Lord Jesus into the world. Christ brought with Him a new dispensation of Light and Truth to humanity through His Love and Teachings. Possibly His most profound, yet unheeded, divine teaching is ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.’ Jesus urged us to look within ourselves for the inherent divinity in us and experience the beauty of a heaven nestled within our hearts. We often spend time concentrating on a God as an entity separate from ourselves when in reality He can’t get any closer than where He always resides.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, God asked one of His chosen saints to find a suitable place where He could build the First Temple. God stipulated that the local people should be virtuous and good, and that they should be in contemplation of the divinity within themselves, thereby, keeping the temple sacrosanct.
The saint did not search for long when he found a village where all seemed peaceful. The place was immaculate, the well was clean, people were polite and civil to one another, and the beggars received enough to eat from kind strangers. It seemed the perfect place to build the first temple. The disciple went to the Lord to say that he found a place, after all.
Ofcourse, the Omniscient Lord knew what was missing in the seemingly perfect place, but He wanted to teach a lesson to His devotee. God lovingly told his disciple, “Look closely, child, can you not see that there is an absence of love in that small village? Though everything seems fine on the surface, I find no love within the hearts of those villagers.”
And sure enough, when the disciple returned and made a deeper inspection, he heard arguments from behind closed doors, saw that the cleanliness of the place was more due to fear of punishment than real care, and that beggars existed only because of broken families and an obvious lack of empathy.
God asked the saint to continue his search relentlessly for the ideal place. And so, the disciple wandered from pillar to post, trying to find that elusive sublime quality of love blossoming within the hearts of the people. His search took him to places far and wide, but it was all in vain. There wasn’t a single place in sight that exuded pure love, compassion, and generosity.
After several weeks of futile attempts, the disciple began to become quite despondent. He did come across people speaking nicely to one another and practicing charity where needed, yet there was no evidence of that spontaneous, absolutely magical presence of selfless love, no signs of joy, not a single trace of humility anywhere, no witness of hearts aflame with devotion.
He was about to give up, and then, one day he came upon a quiet farm nestled in a serene valley. The two farmers there looked like brothers and they seemed to move about with a sparkle in their eyes and a spring in their steps for no apparent reason at all. They wore the warmest of smiles, and seemed to revel in their chores. The disciple was certainly curious now, and needed to know the secret of the spectacle of bliss.
The devotee approached the brothers and asked them why they appeared so joyful. “Oh, he’s my good brother who looks after me so well. There is no need of mine that is uncared for, I have so much to be grateful for and happy about,” effusively replied the one who seemed to be the older brother. Almost immediately, the younger brother looking on gushed, “My brother takes wonderful care of me day in and day out. I couldn’t ask for more from life! Please do come in and share a meal with us, for you must have walked many a mile and must be weary by now.”
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