QUALITIES OF SALT

What are the qualities of salt? When you put salt in a preparation, if there is too much it is unpalatable. If there is too little it can be tasteless. Salt has to be very carefully balanced. Similarly a true devotee is balanced. They do not take extremes. They are not superstitious, or sentimentalists. At the same time they are not dry philosophers, fundamentalists or lukewarm about their spiritual lives.  They are very well balanced. In the Bhagavad-Gita it is said, those that are on this path are regulated and balanced. They don’t eat too much or too little, sleep too much or too little. In their recreational activities they are very balanced. They have time for their spiritual lives, domestic lives and for their occupational responsibilities. All of their responsibilities are very carefully balanced and they do not neglect anything. It is important and a great secret, how to have balance and harmony in one’s life.

Now everything is categorized according to the three modes of goodness, passion and ignorance within this creation. But how we perform our work on a particular level? What really is important is what our intention is. Two people could be working just as hard doing the same thing. One could be in the mode of ignorance, one in the mode of passion and one in the mode of goodness and they are doing exactly the same thing exactly the same way.

If we are working with the desire to harm someone through our work, to inflict pain upon someone without care, that is work in the mode of ignorance. If we are doing the same work with fruitive mentality, with a craving for the results of our work, with selfish ambitions – that is work in the mode of passion. And if we are working with detachment, not in a selfish way but with a real concern for the welfare of other living beings, even if it is really hard, that work is in the mode of goodness. And when we work at the same thing and it is done in the mood of love and devotion to the supreme, that is work beyond the modes of nature. Bhagavad-Gita says it is divine. So, so much is dependent on our intention. So like salt a devotee is very much balanced in one’s life.

Another quality of salt is that it does so much for a particular food preparation but always remains in the background. Just like tonight, because I am saying this you might become more aware of it for the first time in your life. But how many times do you eat food and say to the cook, ‘this salt was fantastic! Such wonderful salt in this vegetable preparation’. No, people will say nice vegetable, nice fruit, wonderful grains and spices, the way it is cooked is so good. But the salt is giving it so much flavor and substance to the experience. But it gives credit to everything else.

Similarly, a devotee is willing to do everything good for the welfare of others, but never wants to take credit for him or herself. Rather, a devotee wants to give credit to others –  to God and to all those who have helped her or him. In other words, a quality of one who is close to God is humility – like the salt. 

- His Holiness Radhanath Swami