Learning from Hanuman

When the cloud is there I serve Ram, when the cloud is lifted I am Ram.

Hanuman from the Ramayana, as quoted by Ram Dass

Another translation:

 When I do not know who I am , I serve you. The day I realize who I am, You and I will be the same.

In Hindu (and Jain) tradition the story of Ram's most faithful servant: the Monkey God Hanuman is told in the the Ramayana. Hanuman risks his life facing demons  to find the captured wife of Ram...Sita. He does this,  and according to Ram Dass in the podcast linked below, is told by Ram he can have whatever he wants as reward. Hanuman answers "Save me, save me from the tenacles of egotism!"

What are you going on about, crazy lady?  What have monkey gods  got to do about anything that relates to me?

As I have written many times before in many different ways, if we truly want peace and happiness, fulfillment and the experience of true love in this life time, we need to serve something much deeper than ego. Hanuman represents this type of selfless service. As the true warrior of karma yoga, he serves Ram ( God) and in doing  so he serves himself.  What he is seeking more than anything else is enlightenment...to be free of the tenacles of egotism....to have the cloud removed and the duality of "You and I", "God and I" removed.  He realizes that once he is free of ego he will not only serve God, he will be merged in God. Ego is the thing that holds us back from realizing who we are. 

In Karma yoga, we serve all beings. By serving all beings we serve God, and by serving God we serve Self. Whatever we do for others, we do for God. (Whatever your concept of God entails is irrelevant, we are pointing to that which is beyond the concept. ) 

And the King will reply, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25: 40 NIV

Everyone we approach in life, should be viewed as a piece of God. We should seek the light in them beneath their bodies and their melodramas. As we look out at the world's population of beings we can train ourselves to see:

...life in a series of cloudy veils.  Ram Dass

Every individual has the light of God in them that might be  hidden beneath the cloudy veil of ego and who they think they are.  Serve that light until your veil is lifted and you can see yourself for who you really are...when we do that we will see others for who they really are beyond the veil...extensions of pure light. 

All I have to offer another human being is my own purity...my own being, and I realize the less ego there is the more I have to offer. Ram Dass

 All is well in my world. 

Ram Dass/ Be Here Now Network ( Sept, 2016) Episode 22- How May I Serve You. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr3zjLhSvT8&t=2635s