Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.

Yesterday I told you something about meditation and how the meditation is fully focused on the mind. The intelligence alone is the factor to help the mind to get to the meditational mood and also meditational stillness.

I continue to say that imagine a flame of fire especially in the firewood. Depending upon the texture of the firewood, the oil content and other contents of the firewood, the flame will be colored. But right from the beginning it is flame, it is hot and brilliant. If at all there is a change in the sense that more heat and more brilliance are generated by the flame, that change comes only in that flame within itself. Depending upon what additional substances are there which cause impurity and when these impurities are removed, the same flame becomes better.

This happens in an oil lamp also. Depending upon the oil, the color of the lamp, the color of the flame will change. Actually there is nothing externally coming there. It is the flame itself becoming more brilliant and more hot. I think exactly the same is happening to the mind. Right from the beginning we have a mind and this mind will completely depend upon its own constitution for generating sentience, along with that various emotional traits. One of them is called delight, joy, cheerfulness. We want the cheerfulness more and more. This will take place when the mind becomes purer and purer and the disturbing and discoloring ingredients are eliminated.

Our meditation and sādhana are meant to reform and purify the mind just like any other metal is purified. This is a purificational process. So yesterday I was mentioning that by meditation what happens?

When the meditation grows in you and it starts reforming yourself, the mind itself gets more and more refined and the refined mind will itself generate the peace and joy you look for.

Upaiti śānta-rajasaṁ sukham-uttamam. Already we have some kind of sukha, comfort. That comfort also is generated by the mind but it has got so many disturbances. Qualitatively it is not very good. Somebody close to you, that person speaks then you are happy, sometimes he does not speak well, then you become unhappy. The trouble is arising only to the mind.

So the quality of the mind will have to increase. Why I am emphasizing this? Only when you understand this, your attention will be focused on your mind. We are all thinking our mind is looking to either the soul or God and when the mind gets God and gets soul I will be happy. So the entire process is begetting, gaining and achieving. These concepts will have to be replaced by the idea that “My mind is somehow ruffled now. It is laden with desires, greed, possessiveness. All these are adverse traits in the mind by virtue of which it is not able to blaze well, color is not good, some darkness and clouding are there.”

You drop your desires one after the other, you will find the mind becomes more and more brilliant. Drop your possessiveness, drop your ego, drop the sense of competition you have. All these are discoloring and tainting traits. So our focus should be on the mind. When the mind becomes pure, it becomes peaceful. When the mind becomes peaceful, you don’t look to anything else for any kind of an attainment.

So the shloka that I mentioned yesterday is of paramount importance. Praśānta-manasaṁ hy-enaṁ. The mind has to become calm and peaceful. This peacefulness of the mind arises when it has no tension, it has no stress even caused by desire, greed, possessiveness, even God you don’t have to look to and get hold of. It’s enough if the God-approaching mind becomes purer.

What is purity? Impurity is desire. So purity is desire-freeness. Ego and pride are impure. So purity means being free of these. Just imagine! When the mind becomes more and more peaceful, more and more peaceful, it becomes qualitatively more and more refined, enriched. Automatically it will start blazing peacefully, joyfully, cheerfully. You don’t have to get anything separate from the mind. There is no alien product we have to acquire. It is mind itself becoming changed.

I wish you spend some time thinking about it. Let the mind become peaceful means it should become pure. So the mind factor is the one you have to reform and refine. Find out what is this reformation, what is this refinement.

That is why Vedanta says putraishana, vittaishana and lokaishana. Eshana means desire, very strong. Desire for progeny, desire for money, wealth and desire for recognition from the world. These are the three strong influences which keep the mind dirty, colored, tense, dark. It is just like cleaning a vessel. You are not trying to add luster to the vessel. You only clean it. Whatever dirt is there, remove it. There is no alien product coming to give you what you want. I think you should start thinking about these matters very well, discuss also and try to know. Don’t think that it will be easily learnt. No, it takes time.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.