Intention Matters

Sri Annamalai Swami

Santammal, the head cook, once asked me to take a message to Bhagavan (B). She had becomes very weak as a result of working long hours in the kitchen.

"You are always working with B. Please tell him that I have lot of pain in my body because of all this work that I have been doing. Please ask him what I should do."

When I conveyed this message to B, he was not very sympathetic.

"She is working for the sake of her ego. She has the feeling, 'I am doing all the work. I am responsible for everything in the kitchen.' She is trying to show people that she is doing all the work and trying to get a good name because of it. She is complaining so that people will become aware of how hard she is working. Tell her to work less. Tell her just to supervise the other ladies. There are enough people in the kitchen to do all the heavy work. It is not necessary for her to show off in this way. If she follows my instructions, the pains will go away."

Then, before I had a chance to deliver the message, B himself went to the kitchen and told her, "From now on, just supervise the other women. Let them do all the hard work."

There was a man called Natesa Iyer who was also working in the kitchen at that time. He was a very humble man with almost no will of his own. The women cooks took advantage of this by making him work very hard. Whatever work they gave him he did willingly, without any complaint, even though he was frequently very tired.

After some time when his health began to suffer, he came up to me and said, "The women are extracting a lot of work from me. Please tell B about this. Tell him that I am getting a lot of pain in the body from doing all this work. You often talk to him so you can easily mention this."

On this occasion B made no response. I don't know why he didn't overly interfere in this matter by lightening Natesan Iyer's work load or by speaking to him about it, but it was very typical of him that he treated two very similar cases in such different ways. B always responded to the devotees' state of mind rather than to the circumstances they found themselves in. If I had to make a guess in this particular case I would say that because B prized humility above all other virtues, he many have thought that it would be good for Iyer to continue to react in a humble way to the constant bullying of the women cooks.