Maatraasparshaah is the definition which Krishna gives for life in the second chapter of Geeta (Bhagavadgita). Krishna's words are quoted below:
I think all of you must study this verse and understand its implications fully. Then remembering it always, you should try to practice the instruction contained in it. If you do so the entire life and activity will turn easy and comfortable for you. You will be able to avoid a lot of undue strain and tension. This shloka contains enough material, by using which you can easily solve a number of troubles and problems which you meet in your daily life. I shall try to explain the teaching of this verse rather in detail.
A thing and its swabhaava
Everything of the world, every product of Nature, is found to have swabhaava. That is to say, it has got a nature of its own, which is distinct from those of others. Nothing can express itself without exhibiting its swabhaava. For anything to be ever devoid of the swa-bhaava will be to become verily non-existent. That is to say, a thing and its swa-bhaava are inseparable. Heat is swa-bhaava of fire, cold is swa-bhaava of ice and so on. Can you ever think of fire without giving out heat? Likewise can there ever be ice without emitting cold? As a matter of fact it is the swa-bhaava of each thing that distinguishes it (the thing) from the rest. As such, it is not right to think that a thing should ever change its swa-bhaava or lose it altogether (and continue to exist).
Now let us pass on to the question of what takes place when two things act upon each other. As is the case with a thing, the inter-action between two things (of distinct swa-bhaavas) must also have its own distinct feature or swa-bhaava. This swa-bhaava too is as much natural and changeless as is the case with the individual swa-bhaava of things. That is to say, whenever any two things come into union, a reaction, distinct in itself, is bound to take place. The nature of this reaction will depend upon the natures of the things concerned. The things, being products of Nature and therefore fixed, unalterable swa-bhaavas the reaction born out of their union will also be natural and unalterable.
I shall explain the point with an illustration. Suppose you take a ball of butter and keep it in your palm. After a few minutes it will start melting. The contact of butter with your hand cannot but bring about such a reaction namely the melting of the butter. This reaction is necessitated by the swa-bhavas of the things concerned, viz. the butter and your hand. Butter can retain its solid state only when placed in a cold surface. The temperature of your body is more than that at which it can remain solid. That is why it melts when placed on your palm.
As is the case with the contact of butter with your hand, the contact between every other two things (provided of course that they are susceptible to reaction) is likely to produce a reaction distinct in itself and dependent upon the natures of the things concerned.
Life an Interaction
What we call life must also have its own specific nature – swa-bhaava. More so when we understand that life is not a product or a unit, but an interaction between two things viz. our body (senses) and the objects of the world. The senses (body) as well as the objects of the world, being evolved from out of Nature, it is natural that their contact or union will also be characterized by a certain swa-bhaava. And like melting of the butter consequent to its contact with our palm, this swa-bhaava is unalterable of course.
Bhagavadgeeta excels many other Vedantic texts and Spiritual treatises when it defines life in four letters maatraasparshaah. Maatra's means the senses and the sparshah means its contact. Maatraasparshaah would therefore mean the contact of the sense with its object. Krishna describes life as a series of maatraasparshaas. This is to say, one or the other of our senses incessantly comes in to contact with its object. Thus the sense-object contact is rather continuous. It is this continuous contact, or the chain of contacts, maatrasparshaas, that verily goes by the name 'life'.
Many people may read this definition of Geeta and perhaps find little or just something to understand from it. But to me this one definition, along with the rest of the things which the above verse contains, is truly invaluable. It is indeed great, lofty, unique and wonderful.
Life is therefore not just a process of action as many people are prone to think. It is in-fact an interaction, which goes on rather continuously. One of the factors, viz. the senses which bring about this inter-action, are situated in our own body, while the other viz. the objects, are situated in the world, outside and away from us. It is important that neither the senses, nor again the objects, can by themselves bring about life or produce any experience. Life and experience can result only from their contact with each other, from their inter-action. And this is a great saving factor for all of us. But of this, the objects of the world, very powerful as they are, would be constantly pressing themselves upon us tearing our personality into pieces and leading our life astray. But now, as things stand, they cannot do so. Because the objects require our senses' union with them, in order to affect life and experiences. This being so, we have got every chance to control, regulate and refine life.
The objects of the world are obviously innumerable. They lie scattered everywhere. Naturally, how can we ever control them? But the senses are only five in number, and all of them are centered in our own body. There will be no time when, during our life time, the body goes away from us. This means that senses will be with us always. And therefore it is easy to keep vigil on them. Nature has given us enough freedom and power to gain control over the senses. As long as the senses are under our control, our life too will remain so. We can easily ignore the nature and numerousness of the world objects. What can they do by themselves? Unless we let loose our senses, the objects cannot tickle us. Is this not a far too great advantage?
Maatrasparshaas
Let us come back to the discussion of maatrasparshas and their swa-bhaava. Krishna characterizes, maatrasparshas as sukha-duhkhada meaning productive (donors) of sukha and duhkhas. That is to say, whenever the senses and the objects come into union; there cannot but result the twin experiences of sukha and duhkha. I want you to understand this Truth very thoroughly. The point you have to note here is that you cannot at any time allow your senses to function without thereby subjecting yourself to sukha as well as duhkha. The occurance of sukha and duhkhas is therefore natural, spontaneous, in the process of life. Anyone who wants to live, who means to live in the world, cannot avoid experiencing sukha and duhkha. The natures of the senses and the world objects are such that a contact between them will force upon you both sukha and duhkha. This is a truth which every man and woman must necessarily know and knowledge of which will give them great strength and endurance.
The senses are of two kinds – those of knowledge (jnaanendriyas) and those of activity (karmendriyas). Krishna refers here to the jnaanendriyas, which are five in number. They are the eye, ear, nose, tongue and the skin. The eye detects color, the ear sound, the nose smell, the tongue taste, and the skin touch. The entire world objects are glimpsed and their features ascertained and categorized by us solely with the help of jnaanendriyas. If the senses were not at work, nothing of the world would be known to us at all. The reports which the senses make are alone the basis for all our knowledge and activity. In the absence of the work of the senses, life and activity cannot be conceived of at all. The senses alone act as the first and foremost guide for us at every step.
sukha-duhkhas – a subject for deep study:
Whenever any sense alights on its object, a favourable or unfavourable reaction is bound to surge up in our mind. As is the work of senses important and unavoidable, so too are the consequent mental reactions. The mental reactions are named sukha and duhkha. The favourable or the pleasant reaction is described as sukha, and the unfavourable as duhkha. Sukha-duhkhas being invisible experiences taking place in the mental level, require detailed study.
All people without exception talk repeatedly about sukha and duhkha. But no one generally bothers to know what they are or how they arise. Of course, the trouble with most of us is that we lack the habit of reasoning, of introspection, of trying to know what the things which we see and talk glibly about are in reality.
You will agree that the human personality and life are, truly speaking, mental and intellectual. That is to say man is more a manah-satwa and buddhi-satwa than an indriya-satwa (meaning a mere sensory being). As many perhaps think, the senses do not exhaust the range of life and activity. What they in fact do is to merely lay the foundation upon which mind and intellect, the superior faculties, have to build their own edifice. So we should not remain satisfied with mere sensations, with what our senses perceive and report. On the other hand, we must go on exerting our mind and intellect to classify, evaluate and sift out the sensory readings and the experiences. Unless this is done, the human part of our personality will remain a thing meaningless and unjustified, and our life degenerate to the level of animals and birds. Needless to say, it is vichara, reasoning, and the habit of being guided by it,that distinguish the humans from rest of the living beings. Therefore, if we are to live and work divorcing the practice of vichara , what is the fun in calling ourselves as humans – the superlative creatures?
As long as our life remains an incessant chain of maatraasparsaas the sense-object contacts, its swabhava of bringing about sukha and duhkha in the mental plane is bound to prevail. No kind of effort on our part to avoid or resist the current of sukha-duhkhas will be successful. To insist that one should not undergo sukha and duhkha while living is to insist that he should not get burnt even when he plays freely with the blazing fire. It is this basic knowledge about the indispensability of both sukha and duhkha that everyone must constantly keep in mind.
Besides their indispensability, there is something more to be known about sukha and duhkha. Only when you know a thing and its nature fully well, you can hope to adjust yourself with it efficiently. So the efficient adjustment with sukha and duhkha depends upon gaining a full knowledge about their nature.
Krishna stresses that sukha and duhkha are aagamaapaayins. Aagama means arrival and apaaya means departure. An aagamaapaayin is that which arrives and then departs, which appears and then subsequently disappears. So the disappearance of sukha-duhkhas is as important as their appearance. We must take note of both the features, appearance and disappearance, alike, as they have a close relation, and as such they always go together.
During the rainy season we can see clouds rising up fast in the sky and then immediately passing off, in the same way as they rise up. Both their rising and passing off are rather very quick and spontaneous. Similarly, in rivers as well as in deep lakes, bubbles and whirlpools surge up frequently to become invisible in the next few seconds. The case with sukha and duhkha is one similar to that of the clouds and whirlpools. The rainy season causes the emergence of clouds, and the flow and warmth of water the whirlpools. Sukha and duhkha too, similarly, are occasioned by the season of the earthly life, or the flow and warmth of the matraasparsaas. Can you control or condition the clouds or whirlpools? You cannot control or condition the sukha-duhkhas either. The clouds emerge in the sky, and the bubbles and whirlpools on water, whereas sukha and duhkha emerge in the mind. The former are an outside phenomenon, while the latter is an inside one. This is the difference. Nevertheless both are alike natural, caused by their respective causes. As long as the causes exist and are at work, can these effects be removed? As long as our life remains a series of sense-object contacts, it is bound to involve the sukha-duhkha alternates. It is better to know that this is so, and then try to live in tune with it, to adjust ourselves with it.
To live in tune with sukha and duhkha is not so difficult. The habit of tuning, of adjustment, is in fact already in us. For instance, day and night together constitute the day. The day ends and then alone the night sets in. The night too ends, enabling the day to break in again. Do we bother about or regret over the occurrence or the passing away of either the day or the night? No. Why? Because we know very clearly that both are inevitable. The laws which bring about the day-light cannot but bring about darkness too. Knowing as such the truth about day and night, we live in tune with them, in adjustment with them. If what helps us in this matter is knowledge, the same knowledge must help us successfully for adjusting with sukha and duhkha as well. Day and night pass off outside of us, while sukha and duhkha pass off within us. The former are objects for the eye, and the latter are subjects of the mind. But this difference need not affect the principle of adjustment, or the force of knowledge.
In fact, we are cultivating the habit of adjustment in so many other matters as well. Let us take one for instance. Suppose a relative of yours employed in a far distant city, comes home on leave. At the end of the leave, he proceeds back to the city to resume office there. His parting will no doubt bring sorrow for you. But do you go on sorrowing or do you instead console yourself by dwelling upon the inevitability of his return to the office, as also the prospect of his next arrival home on leave? It is a similar habit of consolation and adjustment that you should cultivate in relation to the frequent emergence of sukha and duhkha in your mind.
Whenever duhkha surges up, console yourself by reflecting upon its inevitable nature. Reflect also upon the fact that it will submerge imminently thereby allowing sukha to emerge. So whenever duhkha arrives, it also brings a clear notice of the impending sukha. Take account of this notice, rather than get bothered about the other factor, the arrival of duhkha. This much about duhkha.
What about sukha then? Can we consider it as pleasant in toto? Once you know that sukha is quite flickering, and that every note of sukha is attended with the warning of its own imminent disappearance as also the impending duhkha, how can you be joyous about it? Any rich diet, once you know that it is defiled by poison, can it be accepted as delicious at all? So too, sukha carrying in its womb the progeny of duhkha cannot be pleasing. Once you know this truth, you can develop an attitude of indifference towards sukha. You can safeguard yourself from getting over-joyous about it. As for duhkha, it is painfulness that you have to safeguard against. You can be free of painfulness by dwelling upon the flickering nature of duhkha and the impending appearance of sukha. Thus you can cleverly put up with both, adjust with both, by merely taking your position as their witness.