Gita 09.26 – Krishna is hungry for the reciprocation of affection

Bhagavad Gita 9.26 So here Krishna has been contrasting the process of Devi-God worship with his devotion service.

That contrast started from 9.20. 9.21 talked about the temporary destination and 9.22 talked about the eternal destination of worshipping him. Then 23, 24, 25 talk about why the variation in destination. It is because there are different positions.

Krishna says that he is the ultimate enjoyer of all fruits. That's why it is he who needs to be worshipped. Now, the wonderful thing Krishna states over here is, normally if we have to worship, if we have to connect with a big person, we also need to have some big contacts.

An ordinary person might be able to meet some clerk or some junior level officer, but if a person is himself wealthy and that person exhibits the wealth, then they may allow that person to meet, say if they were going to government office, they can meet the senior manager or the director or the president, whatever. In a country, an ordinary citizen may be able to meet some local government officers, maybe local politicians, but for ordinary citizen, to be able to meet the prime minister is going to be very difficult. So, the bigger the person, the more difficult it is to meet that person.

But paradoxically, Krishna will say here that whereas for the Devatas, we have to do big, big forms of rituals to worship them, but for Krishna, actually connecting with him is very simple. Although Krishna is far greater than Devatas, but for approaching him, what is required is, Krishna gives four items over here, patram, pushpam, phalam, taoyam. This is a leaf, a flower, a fruit or even just a little water.

So, Krishna's eminent accessibility is emphasized in this verse that no matter what happens, he does not require elaborate rituals for worshipping him. So, what does Krishna require? For Krishna, devotion is his appetizer. Devotion, you know, is what makes the offering tasty for Krishna.

Normally, sometimes some people suffer from poor appetite. So, they don't feel hungry. Although their body is not getting enough nourishment, still, because they don't feel hungry, so they don't eat.

So, for such people, appetizers are required to create hunger or to increase whatever hunger is there. Then, they eat adequately and then they get the necessary nutrition. So, Krishna is purnaam, he is complete.

He doesn't need anything from us. Lord Maharaj also said the same thing. What was said in the Ishopanishad? He is complete in himself.

He doesn't need anything. So, if Krishna doesn't need anything, then why do we need to offer him anything? That is for our benefit. That when people offer him praise, Krishna accepts it for their benefit.

So, because Krishna doesn't need anything material, so he doesn't care what is the quality materially of the thing that we are offering to him. And that's how we say that even something as simple as something as easily readily available as a flower, a fruit, a leaf or water, he is ready to accept it. It needs to be offered with devotion.

What Krishna wants is the reciprocation of affection and when that is there, nothing else matters. Even in this world, we see that even people who are very big, it's difficult to meet them and often they don't make themselves easily available because they are afraid that people will want something from them, people will exploit them and do this for me, do that for me, do that for me. So, that's why they keep themselves relatively inaccessible, but if they find that there is someone who is interested in them for their own sake, that the person has come out to them out of affection, that they will also open themselves and reciprocate, even that person will be a very simple person.

And that's what applies to Krishna over here, that if he sees we are coming with a devotional intent, even if what we are offering is not materially impressive, Krishna is satisfied with our devotional intent. And there are many examples in scripture of this. Shabari Datta Phalashana Rama Rama, Rama, Jaya Raja, Rama, Rama, Rama, Jaya Sita, Rama In the Naam Ramayana it is said that Shabari Datta Phalashana Rama Shabari Datta That which is given by Shabari Phalashana is accepted.

So Rama accepted those simple berries that were offered by Shabari because she offered them in devotion. And he consumed, he accepted them. He consumed them, he ate them right there.

And Shabari according to later writings of Ramayana in order to make sure that she was offering good berries to Rama she would taste them in the corner and then she would offer. That was considered not unclean, that was not considered scandalously impure by Lord Rama. Lord Rama saw it as her as an expression of sincere desire to serve.

She was a simple lady in a forest she did not have any machine to do quality control checkup. So the only quality control she could do for the berries was using her own tongue and that's what she did. Because it was offered with devotion Krishna accepted, Lord Rama accepted that.

Now what if we feel that okay this is nice but I don't have any devotion. No, we also have some little devotion, whatever devotion we have we try to concentrate that in offering to Krishna that itself will give good reciprocation from him and we will be able to move onwards in our journey to him.