Articles for Saadhana

For the past few days in the morning, I have been discussing about the qualifications or the characteristics of a seeker of supreme truth.

The supreme truth is that which is ever-present in a uniform manner. That which is present now was equally present earlier will be present uniformly again in the future – this alone is real. Transformation implies disappearance or extinction of whatever is and emergence or appearance of something new. That means it is not a characteristic of reality. When you understand that the reality is uniformly present always, such a qualification nothing in this world has.

We are seeing the world using our own body and the senses, so in the perception and interactions with the world, there are two factors. One is the perceiving individual, another is the perceived world of variety. Because they are two different factors seemingly, we try to find out whether there is anything in this world which is everlasting and the individual who perceives the world whether he is everlasting. We are able to find that our body, mind, intelligence and ego, personality is constantly changing. The world objects also are changing. So they cannot be considered real. So is there not something real? Yes there is. That is what is denoted by the term ‘I’ which is a reference to something inside oneself, very close to him.

As the word ‘I’ we started saying, maybe when we were two or three years old and we continue to say in the same manner without any kind of a delusion. I think obviously it relates to something ever present. And uniformly present. That is how we get a clue to something that is real or everlasting. A man should be guided by this. This viveka should become a constant associate of yours and from the viveka what generally results is dispassion.

V. was murmuring to me, “Swamiji, you have not explained dispassion well.” In my own mind, I have always questioned. We are supposed to be dispassionate, is it possible for us to become dispassionate? Because we are living with a body surrounded by the world, and every sensory organ has some alluring information to provide. So living in the midst of so many sensory allurements and needs, is it possible to have dispassion? Then why is dispassion enjoined as a quality? This question, I think, every one of you should take up. Don’t take it as an injunction that you should become dispassionate. To be dispassionate is a natural outcome of viveka, discrimination. What is dispassion then? Dispassion is the emotional response to a rightful assessment about everything in this world as transitory.

In whatever way you may argue, transitoriness is a fact that cannot be refuted. There are things which become transitory in a very short while. A thought comes, soon it disappears. So the transitoriness is very, very, very, very fast. When we are looking at the sun, every second it is changing. We are not able to understand the changes in our own personality and a number of articles outside. You make a good new furniture, ever since the day it is made and you have brought it home, it starts aging. The aging was there even earlier.

Once you understand that very thing is subject to change, transitory everything is, what should be the response in you? It should be one of dispassion. So the dispassion is to be cultivated and this cultivation takes place when you use your viveka and dwell upon the plight and fate of everything in this world.

There are a number of statements which are revolving around dispassion. In fact our spiritual and philosophical culture abounds in dispassion. Here is a verse which I very much like and which all people who hear me also like. It is an assessment about our life which the great poet Bharatahari has made in the Vairagya Shatakam. He has written 100 verses on dispassion alone. What is that verse?

भोगा न भुक्ता वयमेव भुक्ता-

स्तपो न तप्तं वयमेव तप्ताः ।

कालो न यातो वयमेव याता-

स्तृण्णा न जीर्णा वयमेव जीर्णाः ।।

bhogā na bhuktāḥ, vayameva bhuktāḥ |

tapo na taptam, vayameva taptāḥ ||

kālo na yātaḥ, vayameva yātāḥ | 

tṛṣṇā na jīrṇā vayameva jīrṇāḥ ||

(Vairagya-shatakam verse 6) 

It’s a very important verse, short one. Eleven letters in each line. The first line says:

bhogā na bhuktāḥ- Every time we feel we are enjoying, enjoying, enjoying what? The objects of the world. Whether it is food and drink or dress or different pieces of furniture on which you sit or maybe an AC unit, a car, all these are enjoyed by us, experienced by us. He says, you are feeling that “I am enjoying” but the truth is reverse.

bhogā na bhuktāḥ-Suppose you enjoy, what does it mean? You put something into your mouth, chew it, masticate it. Many people do not chew and swallow like the dog. Actually digestion starts in the mouth and we should chew every morsel of food as many times as possible. If it is a hard food, about 20 to 30 times, if it is soft, it is lesser, but it is better to keep it in the mouth and allow it to mix with the saliva which is necessary for digestion, assimilation, absorption.

So actually, are we enjoying and exhausting the objects of the world or the objects of the world enjoy us? Everyone who is enjoying the world finally goes away and the world remains. So by the seeming enjoyment, what is happening is we are driven nearer and nearer to death and finally the enjoyer disappears but what he thought he was enjoying still survives. So is the world enjoying us or we are enjoying the world? So he says that bhogā na bhuktāḥ, the objects of the world have not been enjoyed. On the other hand vayameva bhuktāḥ - we have been enjoyed by the world. Everyone born in this world has died but the world which makes everyone born and which leads everyone to death still survives. So it appears, all of us are for the world to enjoy and the world is never enjoyed by us.

tapo na taptam, vayameva taptāḥ-Have you done really any austerity? Many people think something on the ekadasi day is an austerity. Going to the temple is an austerity, chanting something is an austerity. And what is austerity? Austerity should be either denial of whatever you are doing used to otherwise. Every day you are eating three or four times. One day you decide that the evening meal I will not have. So it is leaving whatever you are otherwise used to. So it is in the way of elimination.

Austerity can also be whatever you are not regularly doing, you do. Whatever you are regularly doing, what are they? Your routine, domestic and other habits. In addition to that one day you decide, “I will chant Vishnu Sahasranama or a chapter of Bhagvadgeeta,” then it becomes austerity. So, the austerity is incorporation or inclusion of something new or elimination of something what is otherwise there.

Now in that austerity, it is called tapas, so there is a certain employment of will. We can call it tapaḥ. So it generates something like a heat, an exertional heat. So he says no austerity has been done by you.

vayameva taptāḥ-In the name of austerity, we have been heated and we have been tired, we have been worn out. The austerity has not borne any fruit. Why? What is the right type of austerity? Where should you practice it? Ultimately what is that purity which results, it is actually jñānatapas that you have to do, very few people do it. In the name of austerity so many external and other practices are had, but not the real, real ego-extinctional practice.

kālo na yātaḥ, vayameva yātāḥ-Everybody refers to time. Oh! He is one year old, two years old, three years old, marriage, will be, after … like that. So, we are all referring to kāla. “Oh! So many years, he has big experience” and all that, but in reality, does the time go, or we go? We were born at a time. 70 or 80 years we have lived and after that? We say, 70, 80 years, where are they carved? Is there any indication anywhere in the space that so much time has passed? Time is actually a denominator to indicate the changes that take place periodically and otherwise in the world. There is nothing like time in reality. So the time has not gone, we have gone who reckon time.

tṛṣṇā na jīrṇā vayameva jīrṇāḥ- We have been having desires, desires, desires, desires! After sometime life should be outliving. So have you outlived your desires? No! Two desires fulfilled, and twenty desires crop up! So our mind is more hosting desires than enjoying the desire fulfillment. So he says, tṛṣṇā na jīrṇāḥ- no desire has become worn out or exhausted or eliminated.