Transforming the mundane to the sacred

In India we have a tradition - that before starting day's work, we often bow down our head to the supreme spirit and ask for blessings. In fact for every mundane thing in life, like buying a new car, entering in to a new house, or putting the first morsels of solid food into an infant's mouth, we do Puja - thereby consecrating the moment into a sacred one. I find this approach to creating sacred moments a beautiful tradition and think it has a deeper meaning. By adding devotional intent to a mundane act like eating or moving into a house, we can transform whatever we do into a sacred act. In learning to surrender, we draw on the supreme energy and can transform a mundane activity into a sublime experience. This faith has been built up in our mind through the ages. There is a sloka in old Hindu scripture which says, "he who makes the mute a fluent speaker and helps the lame to cross the mountains... his name be praised and blessings to be sought." This faith is rooted in our cultural consciousness. Of the many great saints who came to this earth and taught us to do all mundane work in the name of the Lord, Shri Ramakrishna -the great Saint of Bengal once said, "do your work with one hand and touch the feet of the Lord with the other. When you have no work in the world to do, hold his feet fast to your breast with both your hands." These great souls did not have material comforts like us but they absorbed all the sufferings of this world with a smiling face, and blessed us to be forgiven for our cruelty. I wonder what is the touch of that magic stone that made their life so sublime and smile so divine. Today we are living in much comfort but have very little mental peace. The time has come to learn from the lives of those great souls. We should open up our hearts, be humble and should remember that each life has come to this earth for a short time, to do some thing good. Every act of life can be turned from the mundane to the sacred if only through our pure thoughts and intent. The divine spark is present in every soul. We just have to light it up through our right understanding and right action. We are all capable of turning our mundane existence into a joyful creative one through. The 18th century poet Muhammad Iqbal once described the unique ability of men to transform the mundane into the matter of joy through his poem in which he wrote, "you created the night, I lit the lamp. You created clay, I moulded the cup. You made the wilderness, I cultivated flower bed. And from Poison, I extracted a sweet beverage."