Spoken By The Supreme Master Ching Hai, Hsihu Center, Formosa January 5, 1995 (Originally In English)
This is a story about mental worship. Mental worship means a devotee, a follower doesn't use any external object such as flowers, incense, drums, gongs, statues or food offering, etc. to worship.
You remember Arjuna? The devotee of Lord Krishna recounted in the Bhagavadgita. Arjuna was very fond of doing long and ostentatious external worship of God. He had a spacious worship room lit up with countless lights. He used gold and silver vessels. He spent several hours in ceremony and worship of Lord Shiva. He would sit for many hours and throw cart loads of flowers at the image of Lord Shiva. You know Lord Shiva, one of the Gods in Hindu - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Shiva is supposed to be the Lord of destruction. Actually he destroys evil, he doesn't destroy good persons.
There is a brother of Arjuna called Bhima. He never sat to do any worship. He never went to the temple. He always went to Miaoli. (Laughter, applause.) He used to close his eyes for a few minutes just before dinner, just a few minutes before dinner, and do mental worship of the Lord. Perhaps he made an offering or recited the Five Names or something like that.
Arjuna thought that he was a great devotee of the Lord and that he was highly pious and devoted. He thought that his brother Bhima had no devotion. Therefore, he looked down upon him with contempt. (Laughter)
Lord Krishna found out the attitude of Arjuna and wanted to teach him a good lesson and bring him to his senses. He proposed to Arjuna to take a trip to Mount Kailash, the abode of Lord Shiva.
When they were on their way, they met a man dragging a cart loaded with flowers of diverse kinds. Arjuna asked the man where he was taking the flowers to, but the man kept silent, as he was very much absorbed in his work, very concentrated. So Lord Krishna said to Arjuna, "Let us follow the man and find out the things for ourselves." Arjuna agreed and they both followed the man. They saw him empty the cart by the side of a huge heap of flowers, which was as big as the hill in Hsihu Center. They further saw several hundreds of carts, all loaded with flowers, approaching the same spot and their contents being emptied there. There was a huge mountain of flowers, fresh flowers there.
Arjuna became more and more curious. He could not control his curiosity anymore, so he asked the men, "Please tell me where these carts of flowers came from." None of them bothered to reply. But one man said after repeated questioning from Arjuna, "Venerable sir, kindly do not disturb us. We are too busy with our work. We have no time to talk to anyone. We have brought only seven hundred and fifty carts of flowers and more than seven hundred and fifty are still in the temple. They are all the flowers with which one Bhima, a son of Pandu, worshipped our Lord yesterday." Understand?
That means these mountains of flowers are only half of what they have to carry out, still half lay somewhere in the temple; and all these flowers came from Bhima, the brother of Arjuna, the lazy one, the one who never went to the temple, never worshipped the Lord, apparently, and never did anything, never gave a flower or incense to the Lord, the one that Arjuna always looked down upon as useless, as atheist, as not devoted to God.
"Now, it's hardly four more hours before his worship today and we must remove all the flowers within that time. Everyday he worships, the mountain of flowers come." So everyday they have to remove so many flowers from him, from his worship.
Arjuna was struck with wonder. He asked, "Is it Bhima or Arjuna that you speak of? Are you sure you have not made a mistake? You mean Arjuna, right? Arjuna, not Bhima!? My friends think, think about it. You're mistaken. The name is Arjuna, Arjuna, A-R-J-U-N-A. Must be!" So the man replied, "Poo! Don't talk about Arjuna. No, no, no, no, no! Not at all, not that one. It is Bhima who does such glorious worship with intense devotion, and not his brother Arjuna, who merely makes an outward show of his worship."
Just then another man came with a basket of flowers. Lord Krishna asked that man, on purpose, not that he didn't know, "Ah, my friend, who's offering are these flowers?" Of course you know the answer. The man said, "They were offered yesterday by an ostentatious man who lives on the earth; his name is Arjuna, (laughter) and he makes a display of his worship without any real love and devotion." Therefore one basket of flowers and talks so much about it.
Arjuna lowered his head in shame and said to the Lord, "Oh, Krishna, Ching Hai Wu Shang Shih, (laughter) why did You have to bring me here? Let us leave this place at once. You could have pointed it out, my defects, my self conceit, hypocrisy and ostentatiousness at home, and saved all this trouble and exertion. I do admit that I thought very highly of my worship and devotion. I treated Bhima with contempt. Just now I realized that Bhima's short meditation with sincere devotion is more valuable than all my showy worship all day long." Lord Krishna smiled and kept silent.
So you know in our place, in our non-temple temple, we don't bother
with flowers and incense, or drums and gongs, or anything. We just bother
with sincerity and inner devotion. That's why I tell you concentrate and
meditate, no need for outer performance so much, no need to even bow to me
or bow to any Buddha. If you see them inside, see the Buddhas inside, you
may bow to the Buddhas if you want to. But the Buddhas do not expect these
things. They expect that you are devoted to yourself, so that you can find
your inner nature and become Buddha or become one with God. Find your own
glorious nature and be of help to yourself and many other beings. That is
what the Buddha expects from us.