Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

I thought I would tell you something today which calls for very keen listening and introspection. What is that? In my pre-sannyasa days, as you know, I was in Kolkata, in Kolkata alone. It was a career oriented trip that I was asked to make and I had some career also for a few years, very short time. Now this short life in Kolkata exposed me to the entire city, urban life in the whole world. Till then I was a person of the rural environments and I knew only the rural life. It was a great transition but I should say it was a very useful and relevant exposure. But the more important was my exposure to my Gurudev which finally took over everything else and made me come away from Kolkata as an ascetic resigning for a life long ascetic and austere life.  During the short time I was there along with the day's official occupation, I was reading the Vedantic books. Reading certainly helped to understand matters and also have a stock of knowledge which came very useful when the disseminational life took over me.

In Vedanta there are three fundamental tenets. What are they? Our mind is gripped by eshanaatrayam, threefold desire. What are they? Putra-eshana, vitha-eshana and loka-eshana. These three words I first of all encountered when I was reading Vedanta. The desire for children, progeny to immortalise oneself, the desire for wealth and the desire for fame. The first was easy to understand.  The second also to some extent and the third, I don’t know whether it was difficult for me to comprehend.  Normally the human mind is motivated by… Why is it that the married couple, they want to have children, have they thought about it? We have the desire, that is one thing. Why are we having it? Is it a need? We have not thought about it. I don’t think people think about it.  Now what is that fundamental need by virtue of which a person wants to be a parent? This is something to be thought about.

Number two – wealth and resources to live comfortably. That is understandable. Then is there any desire for fame in people, is it an ambition, is it an aspiration, I was wondering. Nonetheless the points were very clear.  The desire for progeny, the desire for living resources and the desire for being recognized by others, and have fame. Now these three are to be eschewed and avoided. There is no question of rejecting the tenets. They are tenets and they are to be accepted. But I always have an idea of something like doing good and being excellent in doing so.  If I had an idea of sannyasa, I wanted to be an excellent sannyasin.  I was wondering, is it a desire? Is not excellence the ideal of any pursuit whatsoever?

I don’t know whether you will understand me when I say, every proposition good and adorable, I always used to think very sensitively and deeply about it and arrive at a meaning. Do people have a desire to become famous? If so, can it be eschewed? If the desire for fame is characteristic of a human mind, can it be avoided? If it is avoided, will it not be a negation? If the birth of children and being a parent is a necessary corollary of human mind, how can one avoid it? What is meant by saying you eschew it? So are we abandoning a desire, aiming something else? What is this? If the desire is natural to human mind, where is the question of avoiding it? And what shall we avoid? How? Then living resources – everybody will need. The sanyasin also needs living resources. He is asked to go and beg from householders for living. So, what is meant by these three tenets? I was wondering, I was wondering.  I don’t know whether I shall be able to explain it to you.

I believe that a person wants to have a child because he wants to have something to follow him, some kind of a distinct.. See, we are all born as children. Invariably there will be more than one child to the parents in our home. So, my father is not merely the father of myself. My parents are the parents of, in my case, six other children. So I was only one of them. So I cannot say I have got exclusively my parents. And the parents actually gave birth to me. What have I given birth to? Nothing. If our parents have given birth to us, naturally psychologically we would also like to give birth to somebody. That giving birth to somebody is a psychological, either compulsion or persuasion or an aspiration or an ambition. It is characteristic of the mind. Now if the sastras say it should be avoided, what does it mean? Can anyone avoid what is natural? So what is the meaning? And if at all it is to be avoided, how can it be avoided? I can avoid something for something still greater. What is that greater psychological element in oneself by virtue of which a lower desire can be left to a higher desire? In this way I used to think.  I found that people want to have children because that alone is what they can think.  The children are born of the loins of the flesh but are we the body? Or is the body motivated by something else called the mind?  So, should we have bodily children or mental children, inner children or outer children? When I started thinking in this manner, you know, any parent, as he will have a joy looking at his children, I think I have much, much greater joy looking at my people.  If you search the whole of my psychology, you will never find a corner where there is an ambition or an aspiration to have a child born of the body. So, Vedanta does not tell you anything narrow. It tells you about something far greater.

I would like to have such children who will live after me and who will live after something that the whole world will eternally know. Think of Sankarabhashyam. He has written a commentary. Think of Bhagavad Gita which Krishna has said. It is not Krishna’s children Pradyumna and party who read Bhagavad Gita and who explain it, imbibe it and disseminate it. On the other hand Krishna has got a number of children even now through his Bhagavad Gita and Uddhavagita. So, the idea of children which people have is very, very limited. We must have heart born and mind born children who will have their mind born and heart born children and we will have children for countless generations. Is there any such a way of life? Then I found Vedantic wisdom and Vedantic life is a full answer to it. The normal blood and matrimonial and loin children, it does not answer fully the aspiration of a great and noble mind.

Similarly, what about wealth? What is meant by wealth? You get access to some kind of resources by which you can live comfortably. A sannyasin also has to live. Now in our ashram our monthly expenditure goes to lakhs of rupees, millions of rupees a year. All these resources have to come. We are not earning. We are resigning not to earn, leave lucrative profession. But nevertheless we must have resources. Wherefrom will these resources come? Whether you hold it in the name of the trust or in the name of oneself, resources are resources, but there is a great difference between the two.  Every corruption is reported around a householder. Suppose people are not house holders, I don’t think there will be so much of corruption. A sannyasin, for whom will he earn money and whom will he give it to? He has no earnings. He may have access to some measure of wealth and that wealth is meant to be spent in a certain manner, and the whole manner is for the benefit of the society. He doesn’t have a blood family, a matrimonial family. So, there is a way of acquiring wealth or making use of wealth.

Our country must have a lot of wealth but the wealth does not belong to the Prime Minister. It does not belong to the President nor the Cabinet. Every pie of the wealth that the country has, it should be spent for the benefit of the people.  The seats of power and position are only conduits for spending it.  Don’t you want your country to become prosperous and become economically very, very great?  I would like to. So wealth is not antagonistic to progress and expansion. The world also must have enough wealth so that some of the countries will be able to advance very freely for the others. Yesterday I was talking to ‘X’ and he said, “Japan is not coming up to help the Kochi metro. On the other hand, France has come forward.”  Unless they extend to us their wealth, how can we develop and grow? So, wealth is a requirement. So what does Vedanta mean by this eshana should be avoided?

And the last of it which I wanted to stress before you - fame. I was saying, there should be people who are famous in this world. Washington was famous, Mahatma Gandhi was famous, perhaps Jawaharlal Nehru also was, Vallabhai Patel. There were so many people who fought for the country’s freedom. All of them were famous. Now what we lack in India is we don’t have a famous and a really appreciable leader. Everywhere we hear leadership is not there. Who will become a leader? A man of fame.  So why does Vedanta say, don’t be having aspiration for fame? So I had to redefine these things in my own mind. So my definition of fame is that never aspire to become famous, to be applauded by the others but live in such a manner that you will be given to values which are going to be famous. What is that value which every human mind will aspire for, any time and everywhere in the world? Say goodness, it is something everybody will appreciate. Purity, which is something everybody aspires for. When a thief comes and thieves the property, he still knows that thieving is bad.  Suppose you are not given to thieving automatically it is a quality which the whole humanity aspires for. And practice qualities which are good, noble and great; automatically they will become famous. So I am not an aspirant of fame. At the same I am very particular that I should practice qualities and excellences which naturally any human mind and humanity as a whole will aspire for.  I don’t know whether I have made my point clear.

So, when Vedanta says have no desire for progeny, have no desire for wealth, have no desire for fame, it is actually a great statement by virtue of which the Vedantic practitioner is elevated from the normal pedestal of a householder or an ordinary professional to such a beautiful level that he is much greater a parent than most of the people are and he is much more resourceful than most of the other people are and he is also so famous that very few people can match with his fame and famousness.  This is what I understand. So I am not finding anything negative or a denial in Vedanta. I always want to feel that Vedantic or Spiritual Science takes away the constriction, ignorance and delusion from the human mind and it installs the mind, raises the mind to such a beautiful and a high pedestal when it becomes good, noble, great, beautiful and excellent. Such a level of excellence that it will always remain an ideal to be coveted by anyone in this world, anywhere, any time.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.