Articles for Saadhana

We are still on the qualities of a seeker. First day I spoke about the viveka, particularly nitya anitya vastu vivekah, the art and process of discriminating between the real and unreal. This was said to bethe first qualification. Then I went to the fourth and explained what is meant by a burning aspiration for liberation.

Today, I thought of discussing the second one called vairagya. vairagya literally means dispassion. The word dispassion nowadays is being used in management science also. Generally what we say, “He made a passionate appeal”, “I am very passionate about achieving”, etc. These are all alright. But the principle of moderation and sublimation is the one that is going to make the inner personality of any one qualitative, deep, lofty and really sustaining and achieving. Any kind of an extreme in whatever we think, do and act is not at all good.

Suppose you swing a cradle or a pendulum. It remains so only when it is able to go to one extreme and come back and have an offsetting extreme this side. Ultimately what does it do? Both the swings become lesser and lesser, lesser and lesser, until at last it comes to a stop. So stability is very important. So we have some words like stability, poise, harmony, integrity, etc. So I think dispassion is a quality that comes to a person, when he starts applying his viveka to the entire life, to his own personality on the one hand and also the things around him with which he interacts.

When you start applying your viveka, you will understand that everything in this world including your body is perishable. And what should be your attitude towards the perishables? Our life is interactional. And as a result of the interaction, what do we propose to get? Either we propose to get some joy for the mind, or may be some knowledge for the intelligence. Even when you have knowledge, the resultant emotion is one of joy. You wanted to know something. If you succeed in knowing it, that success in knowing it and the possession of knowledge, both of them give you emotionally a sense of elation.

So everything is for joy, delight and contentment. That is the purpose of all the variety of interactions. Agreed. Let us go into the very joy process. Though interactions precede our joy, actually the joy is an evolute of the human mind, of our mind. If the joy is an evolute or a creation of the mind, are interactions necessary for that? Once the joy becomes mental, the mind is the source of joy. Keeping the mind within you, can you not get joy directly from the mind? This is a very important question which people don’t take up. They should take up if they are rational. Then we get an answer, that we are the Self, which is joyful by nature. Like fire is brilliant and hot. Ice is cold and white. The Self is existence, knowledge and bliss. All the three together. Just like brilliance and heat are present in fire; and there is no fire if you take away the brilliance and heat, here also, we speak of something called the soul. But it is really existence on the one hand, consciousness or knowledge on the other and also blissfulness on the other. So why not turn our mind towards this Self and then derive the joy of the Self, which is constant and inherent in itself. When this question is raised, you will find – on the one hand things are perishable, including your body, mind, intelligence and ego. On the other, you also have the imperishable substratum for all these, namely your Self, which is existence, knowledge and bliss.

sat chit and ananda – sat means existence, chit means consciousness,ananda means bliss.

So instead of encouraging the mind to interact with the world through the senses, encourage the mind to take up introspection through the intelligence and reach the Self, where what the mind needs, namely joy and contentment, are available as a characteristic of the very Self. And what is this Self? This is no other than what you refer to as the ‘I’. The definition of the Self is this – aham-pratyaya-gocharah, a word I would like you to remember and learn. aham-pratyaya-gocharah neans what? Thatwhich you denote by the term, by the concept ‘I’. Whatever we denote by the ‘I’ is not external, it is internal. And because the ‘I’ reference remains constant, the subject referred to also is something constant. And that subject is sat-chitta-ananda, i.e., existence knowledge and bliss.

So ask the intelligence to introspect, to retreat from everything and to lodge itself in the Self, whereby it will be able to derive all the things that it wants. So one is an inward effort-free bliss, another is an outward effortful transitory joy. When the two are compared, the option will naturally be towards the inner, inmost, lasting and unfluctuating bliss. On this basis, if you are able to develop dispassion, no passion at all towards the things of this world and the other world. Which is the other world? The other world is the one, which the vedas and the shastras say will follow your death here. So the things in this world are clearly transitory. And the other world also are transitory. But, but we cannot see the things of the other world. So there is an important judgment. What is that? Our shastras and the vedas provide two sets of things. One is experiential - available within the life span. Another is non-experiential - things like rebirth, heaven, vaikuntha, kailasha etc. Comparing the experiential and inexperiential what do you find?

anubhava anārūṛha viṣaye svargādau syāt śaṁkā asti vā na vā iti

In all the inexperiential things, for e.g., svarga and the like, there will always be a lingering doubt as to whether they are or they are not. Because it is something about which no direct experience can ever be had. Nobody knows directly that he was born. And nobody will know directly that he has died or he is dying. So both birth and death are beyond our experiences. So whatever will follow death is also beyond our experiences. When vedas speak about things, which can be experienced and not experienced, now there will always be a doubt about the inexperiential things. So leave them with discrimination and take to only the experiential.

In the experiential sphere, what do we find? Including our body, mind, intelligence and ego, everything in this world – the earth, water and the like, all are perishable. So take your mind away from them. Go inside. Body is perishable, mind is perishable, intelligence is perishable, ego is also perishable. But there is a substratum which you refer to as the ‘I’, which by its very nature is imperishable. So turn your attention to that. With this viveka, with this discrimination, whatever attitude naturally grows in you is called dispassion. So dispassion is not dejection; it is not disappointment; it is not dismay or cheerlessness. It is on the other hand the refined outcome that follows when your intelligence starts understanding that everything in this world is perishable. And there is only one imperishable substratum denoted by the term ‘I’.

So instead of seeking whatever I want from the external world, let me seek it from my own within. Let me seek it from my own inmost level of existence.” So this kind of turning point, that is characterized by dispassion. This dispassion alone will be able to make you live in this world, with strength, composure, stability, and what not. If you want to rear a family, you must have dispassion. If you want to rule a country, you must have dispassion. If you want to posses anything and enjoy properly, you must be ready to leave it and see it lost.

In Bombay¹, one person sneezed. The sneezing was so powerful that his body bent. Ultimately the nose hit his knees. The result was that the person died. Just imagine, sneezing causing death.

Our V. who had come from Malaysia, he said that he did an operation very successfully and left the patient in the post operation care and he went away. He received a telephone call, there is some trouble. By the time all of them arrived, what has happened? The heart-and-lung machine which was hooked to the patient, it was pumping but there was some malfunction in the whole machine. As a result of which the pumping into the heart took place and the lungs burst. Because the regulation, that repeated valve function was not there. So everywhere you will find there is a chance for all these developments. We must be prepared. We cannot decry medicine or be away from it. So everywhere there is a possibility of any danger taking over. Bhagavad Geeta would put it:

अनिष्टमिष्टं मिश्रं च त्रिविधं कर्मणः फलम् ।

aniṣṭamiṣṭaṁ miśraṁ ca trividhaṁ karmaṇaḥ phalam | 

(Bhagavad Geeta 18.12)

अधिष्ठानं तथा कर्ता करणं च पृथक्विधम् ।

विविधाश्च पृथक्चेष्टा दैवं चैवात्र पञ्चमम् ।।

adhiṣṭhānaṁ tathā kartā karaṇaṁ ca pṛthagvidham |

vividhāśca pṛthakceṣṭā daivaṁ caivātra pañcamam ||

(Bhagavad Geeta 18.14)