The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita : 15-12.

Chapter 15: The Rarest of Devotees-12.

There is a very touching scene described in the life of a great saint called Kannappam, whose devotion would stun you simply at the crudity in which it was expressed.

But the sincerity and the genuineness of it was such that it excelled any other form of conceivable devotion.

Usually it is not easy for ordinary human beings to imagine what sincere devotion to God is. We are accustomed to rituals, formalities and outward expressions standing in collaboration with human etiquette, etc.

But devotion goes above etiquette and even ordinary social morality, all which was defied completely by the great devotees, to the confounding horror and fear of the society in which they lived.

These devotees had to pass through various trials and tribulations. Many a time they were subjected to undeserved pains on account of the incompatibility of the state or stage in which they were in their divine devotion and the prosaic form of ethics which human society respected at those times.

Often the saint or the sage suffers on account of the kind of society in which he is placed.

The incompatibility is there; we can read about the lives of those great saints and sages who had to bear witness to the devotion that they had to the Supreme God and also to the ordeals of human society.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ....