Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

In all our scriptures, whether they are the Vedic Upanishads or the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, or even in purāṇās you will find critical conversations and dialogues are there. The dialogue can only be between at least two people. The subject of the dialogue will generally be an inquiry, a doubt or a distress or a difficulty or a problem faced by ‘X’. When he is unable to either face the problem or resolve it, then he gets into a distress. Whenever such a distress is there, it is always resolved by a person who comes nearby and starts discussing the problem in the way of an instruction and the problem finally gets resolved or the victim is able to face it. Whatever be the nature of the problem, this is the way. So, you will find our scriptures finally have something like dialogue to present.

If you take up one important Upanishad, say the Mundakopanishad, it says that a great householder Śaunaka by name, having lived in this world in the house, performing all the rituals and ceremonies the Vedas prescribe, after having spent decades in this manner, he feels his mind is not peaceful, contended and fulfilled in spite of the fact that he was a religious person given to all the ceremonies and rituals. This distress he discussed with co-householders and none of them was able to help him in redressing the distress. As a result he decided, “Let me go to someone different from the householders.” That is how he proceeded to see Angiras, a hermit or an ascetic living in the forest environments in a hermitage. He goes and presents before him the trouble of his heart, “By knowing which, will I be able to know everything and all?”

"By knowing which in particular shall I be able to know everything in full?" Angiras started answering him. The whole of Mundakopanishad is a dialogue between the enquiring Śaunaka and the instructing Angiras.

Let us go into the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna came to the battle field after thirteen years of solid preparation including austerity. He had got specially pāśupatāstra and Gāṇḍīva - the famous bow. When he actually went into the battlefield, right in the front, driven by Krishna as his charioteer, on spotting Bhishma and Drona, his grandfather and teacher, Arjuna suddenly crumbled physically, mentally, intellectually and ego wise also. There was nobody to speak to except his charioteer Krishna. The horses will not be able to communicate with him.

So, he presented his distress, not necessarily in the manner in which it should be. He said, “This is what I find, so I will not fight; I will get away from the battlefield.” Krishna was not in a mood to allow it and he began his instruction by first pointing out that whatever Arjuna was thinking about his distress, “I am moved by sympathy for my own kith and kin." He said, "It is not sympathy. It is a weakness of your heart. A fighter like you in the battlefield will not pick up sympathy at all! We have not come here to show sympathy to each other. We have come here to show our valorous superiority against each other. How dare you say that you are sympathetic! You are not suppose to be! So your attitude is wrong, move is wrong, your sentiments are wrong.” That shocked Arjuna and he was obliged to think and re-estimate matters.

Arjuna suddenly shifts from his emotional distress to a rational puzzle. What is that? “How can I fight my grandfather and teacher? You say I should fight. Okay I shall. But how? My sentiments do not allow it. My sense of rationality disapproves of it. So what do you say Krishna?” So, from a tearful distress, it became a very meaningful enquiry. My dear children, please understand, this is how one elevates himself from the emotional mental level turbulence to the rational level of enquiry, being prepared to have greater wisdom. This is what we must do in all situations. Mind is the first factor to interact with the world bringing its own emotions and emotional turbulence sometimes. We have to lift ourselves up from the mind level to the intelligence level.

Then Krishna picked up the very same proposition. “You are grieving over Bhishma and Drona who do not themselves grieve and who should not be grieved at. Bhishma and Drona are your grandfather and your teacher. They mean well of you, there is no enmity between you. Yet they have come to fight the war. So, their standing on the opposite camp should make you understand that there is a deeper meaning in their presence and they are not upset. If they are not upset about the war, why should you get upset? In the eye of your teacher and grandfather, this war is quite in order. How in the mind of a grandson and a disciple, it become disorderly? So, the trouble is in you, my dear Arjuna. You are not thinking in terms of propriety. You are not thinking in terms of ethics; the true welfare of the people. So, there is a constriction in your mind.” Arjuna got humble and said, ‘Please let me know where I am wrong and set me right’. Just see, all this happened in a matter of moments, moments, moments! So, from the tearful distress Arjuna rose himself to the level of a cogent, consistent, rational enquirer and seeker, and then it was a dialogue between the two.

Rāma was in distress when he was sixteen years old after undertaking a pilgrimage and seeing the plights and fate of the people in India, all around. His distress also was presented before Vasishthadev and Vasishthadev started discussing the subject in all comprehensiveness and then Rāma’s distress completely dissolved in his own mind which produced it. Every time it is a question of dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. If you are able to understand this relevance and message of the dialogue, I think all of you will be better.

Rāma was going to the forest as a very, very dutiful son. Nobody would generally do. Nobody in the palace agreed that he should go. Nevertheless he decided to go. It was a sorrowful situation but more sorrowful for Kausalya who bore him in her womb and who delivered him and reared him. Kausalya, after a little dialogue with Rama, she was also shedding tears on hearing the news that he was going. She was alright, appeased and said, "Go with my blessings and I will be here to greet you when you come back." See, the mother reconciled with it. The father could not and as soon as Rāma left, Daśaratha fell and he died. Just imagine what can emotional turbulence mean! What can an emotional victimization lead man to! If Daśaratha had submitted his doubt, his distress, to Vasishthadev who was there, I think Vasishthadev would have handled the situation and Daśaratha would have been alright.

So, I would like you to understand that in our life it is always a tussle between the emotional turbulence created by the mind and the higher sense of rationality, propriety, goodness and greatness conceived by the intelligence and presented by it. In all our scriptures you will find, it is a dialogue between the turbulent mind and the enlightened intelligence. The intelligence is represented by ‘X’ and the turbulence is represented by ‘Y’. The X and Y may be different but the subject is the same. I wish all of you know this. For every problem that we have in this world which is sensed by the mind, there is a solution right beneath the problem in the inner recess of the mind itself. If there is a problem, there is also a solution. If there is no solution, at least there is a dissolution of the problem. The whole stuff, the whole plight, it revolves around our own psycho-intellectual levels, the inner personality.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.