Source: Editorial, The Vedanta Kesari, May 2012
Author: Swami Atmashraddhananda

Right Goals and Wrong Means

‘Then It Doesn’t Matter’

Alice In Wonderland, a classic of fiction writing in English by Lewis Carroll, has the following conversation:

Asks Alice to Cheshire cat, ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the cat.

‘I don’t much care where . . .’ said Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the cat.

Indeed, ‘it does not matter which way you go’—if you do not have any goal. You only walk, and just walk—goalless, aimless, without any direction. Your life, then, has no destination, no ideal. It has no purpose or worth. You feel aghast at your life itself.

The first thing required to live a life worth calling a human life is that one should have a higher goal to pursue. Swami Vivekananda rightly observed,¹

Unfortunately in this life, the vast majority of persons are groping through this dark life without any ideal at all. If a man with an ideal makes a thousand mistakes, I am sure that the man without an ideal makes fifty thousand. Therefore, it is better to have an ideal.

Some people opine, ‘Live your life as it comes. Do not try to structure it or plan it too much.’ True, it is not good to plan too much, too meticulously, for ‘the more precisely you plan your life, the harder you are hit.’ Life has its own ways, upsetting all plans and watchful calculations. While this is true, it is also true that one should structure one’s time and activities and that requires a goal, an ideal. That ideal should integrate all our energies and aspirations; nothing should exist beyond that. This central goal of life should engulf and overpower all other issues in life. Only when we have an enduring, ultimate goal can we have lasting peace and joy in life. And only a spiritual goal or ideal can be such an ideal for spiritual reality is the underlying basis of all life.

Happiness is what one ultimately wants. One wants wealth, beauty, success, fame, power and all the covetable objects of life, only because one is convinced that they bring happiness. Without happiness as the end product of all our pursuits and endeavours, we will not make any effort in any direction. Confused and stupefied, we then will live a life without a meaning. This leads to the question, ‘What is happiness?’ and the Indian answer is that it is the nature of Self. A verse in Rigveda says that happiness comes to him from whom happiness goes to others. But, first of all, you should have happiness in order to give to others. And who has happiness? One who is in harmony with his higher Self, whose mind is calm, free from all distractions and restlessness. Happiness is the real nature of Self, or atman, the Infinite dimension of our being. It is this inherent source of happiness which we are really searching ‘outside’. Our goal is right but the direction of our search, wrong.

The Goal and the Way

To know our spiritual nature, which means realizing or experiencing the Ultimate Truth (called Atman, Brahman, Bhagavan, Pure Consciousness and so on), is true happiness. We should get convinced of it first and accept as it as the goal of life. And once the goal is accepted, we have to seriously think over the means, or the right method to reach it. It is here, in the world of right means, that one has much to learn and to be careful about.

About the importance of end or goal and the means to reach it, Swamiji said,²

One of the greatest lessons I have learnt in my life is to pay as much attention to the means of work as to its end. He was a great man from whom I learnt it, and his own life was a practical demonstration of this great principle. I have been always learning great lessons from that one principle, and it appears to be that all the secret of success is there; to pay as much attention to the means as to the end.

Our great defect in life is that we are so much drawn to the ideal, the goal is so much more enchanting, so much more alluring, so much bigger in our mental horizon, that we lose sight of the details altogether.

Indeed we pay too much attention to the goal, and are careless about the way to reach it. Very often it is not even the ideal that occupies the whole attention, but the imagination or expectation of what will happen when we will reach the ideal. That blinds us. We start calculating about the ‘results’ of the result and start doing a mental mathematics of ‘now that we have realized or reached the goal, what next?’ Such thoughts distract the mind from its real goal and sap away our energies. One should be as much careful about the means as about the goal.

The Importance of Right Means

A well-known Sanskrit verse observes:

People want the fruit of virtue but do not do virtuous actions; they do not want the fruit of sin and yet commit sin with great effort.

Clearly, there is confusion between right and wrong path. If one wants the fruits of virtue, one should do good actions or punya karmas. If one does papa karmas, the evil or sinful actions, one will get the fruits of sin only. The real problem comes when one mistakes bad as good. It is like one wishing to go to Kolkata, taking up the road to Chennai but thinking all the while that it will lead to Kolkata! How could the road to south lead to east? Of course, in one way, it may. An interesting story is told about it.

A motorist was driving at break-neck speed. He wanted to reach a certain place. He asked a school boy who had studied a little geography:

‘My son, if I go this way, shall I be able to reach the place?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy, ‘you will reach it.’

‘How far is it this way?’ asked the motorist.

‘Sir, you will have to go 25, 0000 miles’, replied the boy.

‘If I go the other way?’

‘Then only two miles,’ was the answer.³

That is the importance of means. If one takes the right means, one reaches the end quickly and without much hassle. But if one takes wrong path, one has to travel a long way, make many experiments to finally arrive at the end. Advises Swami Vivekananda,⁴

Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself. But it is better for us that we should know it from the very first. Why should we have all these bitter experiences in order to gain faith in ourselves?

If you want to leave ‘west’ behind, just keep walking towards the other direction. There is no need to glorify our efforts to give up something—what is needed is to walk towards the chosen goal.

‘Take Care of the Means’

Naturally the question arises, ‘Why do we fail to recognize the right means? Why do we mix up?’ There could be many reasons including lack of discernment or a confused thinking. In most cases, however, the culprit is our ambition to succeed at any cost, irrespective of the appropriateness of means. It is a battle between our desire to succeed versus appropriate means. Let us remember, one cannot reach Truth through untruth, or purity through impure living, eternal by clinging on to the ephemeral, equality by favouritism. As Swamiji says,5 ‘Would you try to wash dirt with dirt? Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness?’ In Swamiji’s words, we should have a clear understanding of the right means and take care of them:6

Proper attention to the finishing, strengthening, of the means is what we need. With the means all right, the end must come. We forget that it is the cause that produces the effect; the effect cannot come of itself; and unless the causes are exact, proper, and powerful, the effect will not be produced. Once the ideal is chosen and the means determined, we may almost let go the ideal, because we are sure it will be there, when the means are perfected. When the cause is there, there is no more difficulty about the effect, the effect is bound to come. If we take care of the cause, the effect will take care of itself. The realization of the ideal is the effect. The means are the cause: attention to the means, therefore, is the great secret of life.

In the case of spiritual growth, for instance, one has to pay attention to basics: practice of moral virtues (yama and niyama according to Yogasutra, shama and dama according to Vedantic texts and following the rules of gauni bhakti, according to Bhakti scriptures). The cultivation of moral and ethical rules in life provides solid foundation to the edifice of spiritual life. But the desire to ‘look’ spiritual (rather than becoming so) ruins all efforts. If one wants a mango tree, one cannot get it be sowing seeds of apple!

The means are as important as success. If this simple truth is not adhered to, dis-
honesty and degradation creep in, and both, the individual and the society, degenerate. Hypocrisy or double standards become a norm when the means and the end are not aligned. Says Sri Krishna in the Gita (3.6):

He who restrains the organs of action but continues to brood in his mind over the objects of sensual desire (enjoyed through them)—such a deluded person is called a hypocrite.

One takes to dubious means only because one wants to have a shortcut to success. But there are no shortcuts in spiritual life. One may make mistakes but that is a part of the game. Let us make mistakes! Mistakes will enrich our treasure of experiences and make us wiser, strong and more focused on the goal. Or as the Vedic prayer says, ‘May my speech be established in mind, and mind in the speech.’ And both, the mind and the speech, be established in our actions! Let the means and the goal be aligned!

References

1. CW, 2.152   2. CW, 2:1       3. Meditation and Spiritual Life, Swami Yatiswarananda, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata. p.291   4.  CW, 2.301  5. CW, 3.237   6.  CW, 2:1

Source: Editorial, The Vedanta Kesari, March 2012
Author: Swami Atmashraddhananda

First, Be A Gentleman

Spirituality Is. . .

Spirituality means the ‘quality’ of Spirit. Adhyatmikta, spirituality, means that which deals with ‘what is within man’—the atman. It deals with Spirit or Self or atman which is divine, holy and immortal. Spirituality, thus, is the process of manifestation of this inherent divinity and holiness. All practices and methods that help in this manifestation are spiritual practices.

Spirituality is the method through which one learns, and succeeds, in overcoming his lower nature which is characterised by attachment, greed, lust, egoism, jealousy and so on. A spiritually inclined person naturally reflects divinity in all his actions. With his mind transformed by spiritual practices such as prayer, worship, repetition of God’s Name, meditation reading of scriptures, chanting of hymns, singing of bhajans, service, selfless action, and so on, a spiritual aspirant succeeds in attenuating his lower nature. When one’s lower nature is overpowered, one’s higher nature starts manifesting. This manifestation is the essence of spirituality.

A Gentleman Is . . .

Sajjana, the Sanskrit term for a gentleman, means sat-jana or a noble and gentle person. Sat means existence or truth. A sajjana is person whose conduct reflects the inner truth called atman which is ever good and pure. Another word used for the word gentleman is shishta-jana which literally means a ‘disciplined or cultured person’. Only a person of self-culture can be truly noble and refined. A gentleman, thus, has to be noble and refined.

Generally the word ‘gentleman’ is used for any educated and respectful-looking person. The English term gentleman comes from Latin gentilis, belonging to a race or genus, and man, cognate with the French word gentilhomme. In its original meaning gentleman denotes a well-educated man of good family and distinction. In speech, it is used to refer to a good and courteous conduct. In addressing others or giving a public talk, it is used to indicate a sense of courtesy and cordiality.

Swami Vivekananda once observed:

In every country the respectability of a person is determined, to a certain extent, by the nature of the dress he wears. . . In Bengal, no gentleman can walk in the streets with only a loin-cloth on; while in other parts of India, no one goes out of doors but with a turban on his head. In the West, the French have all along taken the lead in everything—their food and their dress are imitated by others. Even now, though different parts of Europe have got different modes of clothes and dress of their own, yet when one earns a good deal of money and becomes a ‘gentleman’, he straightway rejects his former native dress and substitutes the French mode in its place.¹

Swamiji further remarked:

This custom of external cleanliness, like all other customs, sometimes turns out to be, in the long run, rather a tyranny or the very reverse of Achara (cleanliness). The European says that all bodily matters have to be attended to in private. Well and good. ‘It is vulgar to spit before other people. To rinse your mouth before others is disgraceful.’ So, for fear of censure, they do not wash their mouth after meals, and the result is that the teeth gradually decay. Here is non-observance of cleanliness for fear of society or civilisation. With us [Indians], it is the other extreme—to rinse and wash the mouth before all men, or sitting in the street, making a noise as if you were sick—this is rather tyranny. Those things should, no doubt, be done privately and silently, but not to do them for fear of society is also equally wrong.²

Again, he pointed out,

In cold countries, it is the rule that one should not appear before others without covering oneself from head to foot. In London, a gentleman or a lady cannot go out without conforming himself or herself exactly to what society demands. In the West, it is immodest for a woman to show her feet in society, but at a dance it is not improper to expose the face, shoulders, and upper part of the body to view. In our country, on the other hand, for a woman to show her face is a great shame, (hence that rigorous drawing of the veil), but not so the feet.³

Dress, personal habits and social etiquettes are some aspects of being a gentleman —externally speaking.

The Inner Gentleman

One cannot limit gentlemanliness to external polishing of a man, though it plays an important role in human civilization and culture. One needs to become a gentleman within. The man inside, invisible to physical eyes, should be first made into a gentleman.

Much before one dreams of being blessed with any spiritual experience, one must become a gentleman—in the sense of personal discipline in speech and thought. It is becoming a noble person. The path of spirituality is through the path of moral practices. He is a gentleman who is, essentially, a man of moral refinement and strength. He has deep conviction in the essential goodness of mankind and refuses to change his attitude. He is non-violent, forgiving and rancour-free.

The practice of higher values in one’s life is prerequisite for any spiritual aspiration. The Kathopanishad [I.ii.24] says,

One who has not desisted from bad conduct, whose senses are not under control, whose mind is not concentrated, whose mind is not free from anxiety (about the result of concentration), cannot attain this Self through knowledge.

In other words, one should equip oneself with the practice of good conduct, control the senses, calm one’s mind, and be free from all anxieties with regards the fruits of one’s action. He should, above all, desist from bad conduct (dush-charita).

Though proper dress and gracefulness in one’s etiquette is a part of being a gentle-
man, to be a gentleman is more than that. One needs to cultivate one’s heart, the seat of all virtues. If we fail in doing it, we become narrow in our views, and our sympathies become limited and we become so ungentlemanly and unkind that one wonders if dress itself can make one a gentleman. Swami Vivekananda recalls an incident in this regard:

The same ideals and activities do not prevail in all societies and countries; our ignorance of this is the main cause of much of the hatred of one nation towards another. An American thinks that whatever an American does in accordance with the custom of his country is the best thing to do, and that whoever does not follow his custom must be a very wicked man. A Hindu thinks that his customs are the only right ones and are the best in the world, and that whosoever does not obey them must be the most wicked man living. This is quite a natural mistake which all of us are apt to make. But it is very harmful; it is the cause of half the uncharitableness found in the world.

When I came to this country [USA] and was going through the Chicago Fair, a man from behind pulled at my turban. I looked back and saw that he was a very gentlemanly-looking man, neatly dressed. I spoke to him; and when he found that I knew English, he became very much abashed. On another occasion in the same Fair another man gave me a push. When I asked him the reason, he also was ashamed and stammered out an apology saying, ‘Why do you dress that way?’ The sympathies of these men were limited within the range of their own language and their own fashion of dress. Much of the oppression of powerful nations on weaker ones is caused by this prejudice. It dries up their fellow-feeling for fellow men. That very man who asked me why I did not dress as he did and wanted to ill-treat me because of my dress may have been a very good man, a good father, and a good citizen; but the kindliness of his nature died out as soon as he saw a man in a different dress.⁴

Obviously, a gentleman is not just a man who is well-dressed and who can speak well. It is not just an achara, or cleanliness appropriate to a way of living. Gentlemanliness is a quality of character. It is a quality of mind and like all other qualities of mind, it has to be cultivated and intensified. It is a matter of one’s moral and spiritual training. It is refinement of life with respect for others and unselfishness as its core values.

On Becoming a Gentleman

It is this inner culture which expresses itself as outside behaviour. Keeping the idea of mutual respect and trust, a gentleman does not exploit others nor humiliate them. He believes in being cordial with one and all, at all hours. He does not do so out of fear of social criticisms or a show to impress others. He is genuine, sincere and respects all.

Nor does a gentleman carry scandals or cheap gossip about others. For to do so, is to harm them—damage their social position, to hurt them emotionally and corrode their moral authority. If he has to condemn or criticize something in others, he has the courage to do it in presence of others. In other words, he is frank, straightforward and without malice.

A gentleman, who has ‘desisted from bad conduct’, is willing to help others— whenever and wherever it is possible. His willingness is reflected in his attitudes and actions. Self-effacement is the hall mark of a gentleman. His lack of interest in self-aggrandizement makes him sensitive to the needs of others. Given to the use of a tempered language, he is modest and humble. He is an aryan, the ‘noble one’ and a shishta jana, is a man of inner control and external regulation. He has a gentle disposition and polite manners, and is yet strong and brave.

A gentleman is truthful, keeps his words and shuns all slander and resentment. To be truthful, or to follow any virtue, it has to be done meaningfully or else it becomes comical. For instance: ‘How old are you?’ someone asked a ‘gentleman’. ‘35’, he said. After 3 years, he was asked and he replied, ‘Of course, 35.’ ‘How?’ ‘Well, being a gentleman, I stick to my words.’ Stick to words!

To be a gentleman does not mean giving up one’s commonsense but to use it to its best!  o

References:

1. CW, 5:499   2. CW, 5.473   3. CW, 5.502   4. CW, 1.64-65

The Mylapore Temple

Walking down the busy Ramakrishna Math Road in Chennai, some hundred yards from the ancient Shiva temple of Kapaliswara in Mylapore, one cannot fail to notice a large-domed, partly-stone-built temple in the Ramakrishna Math. This magnificent temple, christened the Universal Temple of Sri Ramakrishna, can easily be seen from the road, and, if the temple is open, the marble image of Sri Ramakrishna adorning its sanctum sanctorum, too can be seen. One can get a glimpse of the image even travelling in the city buses that ply in front of it.

What strikes a passer-by or a first-time visitor to the temple is its bigness and a rather different design. It is architecturally different from the Dravida style usually seen in the Kapaliswara temple and other ancient temples that abound in Chennai or in South India in general. The Ramakrishna Temple has a blend of South and North Indian styles of temple architecture, combining elements from other faiths and places of worship as well. Flanked by a well-manicured garden, the temple is a centre of attraction bringing hundreds of devotees and visitors daily, and on Sundays and other festival days, thousands.

As one enters the temple, one is ushered into, as it were, a place pulsating with peace and holiness. The whole ambience is filled with purity and cleanliness. Sri Ramakrishna’s marble image in the sanctum, elegantly draped in dhoti, with a fresh flower garland around the neck, and flower vases around, seems to beckon the visitors. There is a Living Presence, filling the ambience with a sense of awe and calmness. A few devotees are seen sitting on the large carpets, meditating—and that is a distinct trait of the place. Meditation is in the air, as if. Indeed, creating and maintaining a meditative atmosphere is one of the characteristics of all Ramakrishna Temples. Unlike most Hindu temples where devotees go to have darshan of the deity but have little time or patience to meditate, the Ramakrishna Temples are a place of worship and meditation. They are not just ‘meditation halls’, but a place where regular puja and arati is performed and the Living Presence of Divine is maintained by meditation, prayer and bhajans. A holy atmosphere is a great aid in meditation. Adi Shankara says that a place of meditation should be a punya-pradesh, a place hallowed by holy thoughts.

A number of ‘tourist buses’ come to the Mylapore Math daily, bringing curious Indian and foreign visitors to its Universal Temple. The tourists are often in a hurry, though a few choose to sit in silent meditation. Outside the temple, they go around, admiring the size and design of the temple, and the flowers, shrubs and creepers in the garden. One can see these visitors busy clicking photographs in the front of the temple (the use of mobiles and cameras inside the temple is prohibited) before leaving.

Role of Temples

Temples are a place of inner reflection, a place for putting together our scattered lives. Today’s busy urban landscape and demanding lifestyle has further increased the need for a place to sit quietly and meditate. Just as a stadium and a movie hall meet man’s entertainment and sporting-needs, the existence of a temple, vibrant with spiritual activity, fulfils man’s spiritual needs in many ways. Man may be a social ‘animal’ but more than that, he is a spiritual being. He needs to explore the infinite dimension of mystery called life and death. Religion, in Swami Vivekananda’s words, is a search for the Infinite.

Of course, India is dotted with thousands of temples all over. But these temples are not intrinsic to the idea of Dharma and spiritual life in general. It is so because in Hinduism personal practices are held as the basis of all spirituality. It is the individual, intimate, relation with God, and not a mere congregational prayer, that is considered the basis of all spiritual progress. Says Swami Vivekananda,

The temples in India are not like the churches here [in the West]. They may all vanish tomorrow, and will not be missed. A temple is built by a man who wants to go to heaven, or to get a son, or something of that sort. So he builds a large temple and employs a few priests to hold services there. I need not go there at all, because all my worship is in the home. In every house is a special room set apart, which is called the chapel. The first duty of the child, after his initiation, is to take a bath, and then to worship; and his worship consists of this breathing and meditating and repeating of a certain name. . . After one has done this, then another comes and takes his seat, and each one does it in silence. Sometimes there are three or four in the same room, but each one may have a different method.¹

Spiritual life is essentially an inner journey; temples are only aids in this journey.

We should not, however, misconstrue that Hinduism does not approve of temples. They are necessary. What is to be understood is that only going to a temple is not the goal of a spiritual aspirant. Says Swamiji,

He [spiritual seeker] must not stop anywhere. ‘External worship, material worship,’ say the scriptures, ‘is the lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realised.’ Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, ‘Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine.’ But he does not abuse any one’s idol or call its worship sin. He recognises in it a necessary stage of life. ‘The child is father of the man.’ Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?²

Spirituality is an inner affair, concerning our feelings and thoughts. It is largely invisible but a truly spiritual person’s life and actions reflect this invisible content of his being. His actions become more unselfish and free from attachments and cravings. But before he reaches this state, he needs to delve into himself. He has to first discover where he stands, to which direction his life is proceeding, what his deepest beliefs, intentions and urges are. He has to become his own friend. A restless mind is man’s greatest enemy and a calm, pure mind, his greatest friend. One has to transform the enemy into a friend, an arch-rival and rebel into a loving, ever-willing friend. It is a difficult journey, as difficult as ‘walking on the edge of a razor’.

But even the longest journey has to begin somewhere. However large may be the size of a sculpture, the chiselling has to begin with small strikes of a hammer. Likewise, we too need to start our journey somewhere. Let us begin with something concrete—with places and images and all those forms which have helped countless spiritual travellers to reach their destination. The road is not the destination but it has to be travelled. There is no other magic formula. We will have to gather back ourselves, and a temple is a wonderful place to do it. It helps one to withdraw the mind from trifles.

The Temple Within

According to a well-known verse, the human body itself is the temple (deho devalayam proktam). The temple outside is only a representation of the temple within. In Swamiji’s words,

It is impossible to find God outside of ourselves. Our own souls contribute all the divinity that is outside of us. We are the greatest temple. The objectification is only a faint imitation of what we see within ourselves.³

With the help of external temple, one has to discover the inner temple. One has to seek Him within. Says a popular prayer:

Lord, they build high temples in Your name; they make large gifts in Your name; I am poor; I have nothing; so I take this body of mine and place it at Your feet. Do not give me up, O Lord.⁴

Such is the prayer that comes from the depths of a seeker’s heart. He has learnt that to find the Lord is the goal and purpose of his life, the true gift bestowed on human life. He goes to a temple not as a social ritual but to see his own Divinity objectified as the Beloved Lord worshipped in the temple. He can bring in any number of human feelings and needs to make the presence of Divine real to him.

But having neglected the inner temple for long, he has to first clean it up, remove the weeds of unwanted thoughts and desires, sweep clean all the dust of laziness and self-righteousness, sprinkle the place with the water of simplicity and light the lamp of faith and devotion. It is then that he will begin to see the presence of Deity within. There may be many obstacles and temptations on the way but he has to discover his inner temple and the Lord sitting there.

To one who has succeeded in discovering the temple within, God becomes an All-pervasive Reality. To him,

The whole sky is the censer of God, and sun and moon are the lamps. What temple is needed? All eyes are Thine, yet Thou has not an eye; all hands are Thine; yet Thou hast not a hand.⁵

Finally . . .

A temple is like a school for the growing soul. There, in the quiet hours of meditation and reflection, one has to learn his lessons and graduate from the lower forms of worship to the highest form of worship which is to see divinity within and divinity without. And finally discover that true peace comes, not from self-seeking but from unselfishness. Unselfish man is peaceful, having resigned himself to the Divine Being of his inner temple. Peace and inner joy are interrelated. Swamiji summarizes,

This unselfishness is the test of religion. He who has more of this unselfishness is more spiritual and nearer to Shiva. . . If a man is selfish, even though he has visited all the temples, seen all the places of pilgrimage, and painted himself like a leopard, he is still further off from Shiva.⁶

One goes to a temple without to discover the temple within, and find the Divine both within and without.

References

1. Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (CW), 5.302       2. CW, 1.16-17   3. CW, 7.59          4. CW, 3.84          5. CW, 7.14          6. CW 3.143

The Centre and the Circumference

A house is where one lives. It may be a large bungalow, a small room, an apartment, a hut or any other form of residence. Or it could be, in rare cases, a mobile house, as some tourists take up for travelling. While living in a house is a part of everyday life, hardly do we ever think that our body itself is a kind of house. It is the house given to us by Prakriti, the Nature, and we all occupy it for sometime, pay ‘rent’ and ‘taxes’. Till we are asked to vacate it, to occupy the next one, and then the next one—until, at last, we discover that we do not need any particular ‘house’ for we exist everywhere. By its very nature, the atman, the divine core of our personality, is omnipresent and universal.

Swami Vivekananda, taking an analogy from geometry, points to this all-pervasive nature of soul, thus,¹

Each soul is a circle. The centre is where the body is, and the activity is manifested there. You are omnipresent, though you have the consciousness of being concentrated in only one point. That point has taken up particles of matter and formed them into a machine to express itself. That through which it expresses itself is called the body. You are everywhere. When one body or machine fails you, the centre moves on and takes up other particles of matter, finer or grosser, and works through them. Here is man. And what is God? God is a circle with circumference nowhere and centre everywhere. Every point in that circle is living, conscious, active, and equally working. With our limited souls only one point is conscious, and that point moves forward and backward.

The soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere (limitless), but whose centre is in some body. Death is but a change of centre. God is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, and whose centre is everywhere. When we can get out of the limited centre of body, we shall realise God, our true Self.

This limited ‘circle’ is what we call as our body-mind. The soul takes up, as it were, residence in this body-mind in order to realize its true nature.

Sri Ramakrishna used to call all the ailments and physical pains one undergoes as the ‘house-tax’ one has to pay for living in this body-mind house! Of course, some have to pay more, some less, but everyone has to pay the tax.

The City of Nine Gates

One of the significant Sanskrit names for the term ‘soul’ is purusha. Etymologically the word purusha means ‘one who resides the city’ (puri shayate iti purushah). Puri means a city (it is a popular name for many colonies in India, such as Krishnaraj-puram, Raja-puram and so on). A puri naturally has to have many gates. The human body is compared to a city with nine-gates—a reference to nine-body openings such as eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth and organs of evacuation (Kathopanishad, 2.2.1, counts two extra ‘gates’—navel, and the crown of the head from where the jiva can leave the body). We, therefore, live in a house with several doors. In the Gita (5.13), Sri Krishna refers to a man who has attained ever-lasting peace as living in the city of nine-gates (navadvare pure dehi). The term purusha, therefore, does not refer to a male person but anyone who lives in the house called the body—male or female.

But then what about other types of bodies? The non-human ones? According to a Vedanta text, there are four types of bodies:

Those that pierce through the surface of earth (udbhijj) such as plants.

Those that are born of moisture and sweat (svedaj) such as bugs, lice and others.

Those that are born of an egg (andaj) such as birds and so on.

Those that are born of a womb (jaraauj) such as all mammals.

It is believed that the manifestation of divinity or consciousness in the first three types is rather dim and poor. In the last one—the mammals—is the place where the manifestation of soul begins to increase and when the soul assumes the human body, the inherent divinity can express itself most. Says Swami Vivekananda,

This human body is the greatest body in the universe, and a human being the greatest being. Man is higher than all animals, than all angels; none is greater than man. Even the Devas (gods) will have to come down again and attain to salvation through a human body. Man alone attains to perfection, not even the Devas. According to the Jews and Mohammedans, God created man after creating the angels and everything else, and after creating man He asked the angels to come and salute him, and all did so except Iblis; so God cursed him and he became Satan. Behind this allegory is the great truth that this human birth is the greatest birth we can have. The lower creation, the animal, is dull, and manufactured mostly out of Tamas. Animals cannot have any high thoughts; nor can the angels, or Devas, attain to direct freedom without human birth.²

What a glorious thing, then, to be born as a human! To get an opportunity to experience the inner divinity, which is of the nature of boundless joy and peace! A rare privilege indeed!

 Living in the House

Man, in this sense, is quite privileged but he also has to face some inherent flaws of life. The greatest defect of human beings is the outgoing nature of mind. The Kathopanishad says,³ using the language of creation,

The Lord has created the sense-organs naturally outgoing. Hence we see things outside easily but cannot see the divinity within easily. Rarely is there found a wise person, seeking immortality, who can withdraw his sense-organs from external objects and see the Self within.

Referring to this fact, Swamiji explains,⁴

From our childhood upwards we have been taught only to pay attention to things external, but never to things internal; hence most of us have nearly lost the faculty of observing the internal mechanism. To turn the mind, as it were, inside, stop it from going outside, and then to concentrate all its powers, and throw them upon the mind itself, in order that it may know its own nature, analyse itself, is very hard work. Yet that is the only way. . .

Suppose we restrain our senses, and turn our energies and mind inward. What do we see there? Only darkness. We see nothing except a restless mind, a jumble of desires, emotions, experiences, memories and so on. It is so terrifying that most people prefer to remain busy with their external life than to turn within. It is frightening and involves much effort to turn within. To turn within is to face oneself, to recognize and accept one’s life in toto, to take the responsibility for being what one is, without accusing or blaming others for our weaknesses and our responses. It is a difficult work.

But if we want inner peace, we have to turn inward! We have to learn to enter our inner world and train our mind to see within and struggle to bring change, to refine our mind to express our inherent divinity.

After we decide to ‘enter’ within, step in, face the inner darkness, we may stumble a few times but gradually our eyes will adjust to it. Then we will notice the inner dirt and disorder and will soon find how much ‘cleaning work’ remains to be done there! What a waste of time to set right others’ houses while our own house lies in disarray!

This turning within and cleaning is what is called spiritual practice. External symbols, rituals and temples are only helps in doing it.

Uncovering the Hidden Chambers

Let us briefly break off our narrative and make a point clear. According to Hinduism, the human personality consists of three identities: body, mind and soul. At times, people confuse mind with soul. In Swamiji’s words:⁵

The body is here, beyond that is the mind, yet the mind is not the Atman; it is the fine body, the Sukshma Sharira, made of fine particles, which goes from birth to death, and so on; but behind the mind is the Atman, the soul, the Self of man. It cannot be translated by the word soul or mind, so we have to use the word Atman, or, as Western philosophers have designated it, by the word Self. Whatever word you use, you must keep it clear in your mind that the Atman is separate from the mind, as well as from the body, and that this Atman goes through birth and death, accompanied by the mind, the Sukshma Sharira. And when the time comes that it has attained to all knowledge and manifested itself to perfection, then this going from birth to death ceases for it. Then it is at liberty either to keep that mind, the Sukshma Sharira, or to let it go for ever, and remain independent and free throughout all eternity. The goal of the soul is freedom.

Having made this point clear, let us turn to our inner stock-taking again.

This inner cleaning-up process presupposes that we equip ourselves with certain tools and appliances needed for it.

One thing which one needs in abundant measure is firm faith. Faith in one’s inner divinity and in the fact that it is possible to clean up the inner house, however disorganized and unclean it may be. No one is a born sinner. We make mistakes, we falter and fall but everyone has a chance, without fail, to improve and change oneself. Faith in oneself, in God, in the effectiveness of all efforts which we make to purify ourselves. Sri Krishna says in the Gita that even a most sinful person, once he turns within, can change himself. He has all the hope and all the potential to transform himself. Faith in these facts is vital to inner cleansing.

There are two basic tools which are required for cleansing. We will classify them in two pairs:

Viveka and Vairagya

Bhakti and Seva

Viveka or deep, incisive, honest thinking, and Vairagya or genuine dispassion for all selfish and sensory pleasures. Viveka helps one identify the unwanted things in our life and how to correct the wrong sense of value that we have assigned to them. Viveka is facing our weakness and realizing how we, and not others, are ultimately responsible for them. Others may have played a role in presenting those emotions and so on but it is our reaction or willingness to accept and then make them a part of our life that really matters. We, we, and we alone are responsible and that means, we can change the situation. We can become better.

Vairagya always accompanies true Viveka. It is de-valuation of all wrong values. Vairagya makes the mind calm and, slowly, the inherent joy begins to manifest itself. Viveka and Vairagya, the double-edged sword, cuts off the bonds of inner turmoil and the real nature of being begins to become clear.

We should know that it is not like preparing fast-food which takes little time to prepare nor is it like using a computer software which can be deleted or altered in no time. One has to have patience. It takes time.

In this context, let us recall an insightful answer given by Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi. Once a disciple complained to her: ‘I have been practising religious disciplines. I do not relax my efforts in that direction. But it appears that the impurities of mind are not growing less.’ Mother quietly replied:⁶

You have rolled different threads on a reel—red, black and white. While unrolling you will see them all exactly in the same way.

Bhakti and Seva, the other two tools, help one clean up the inner house in their own way. Devotion, or bhakti, makes one develop a close and intimate relation with God, the Divine Being which is the core of our person, and if one associates with the Pure One, one is sure to become pure! Tulsidas, the great composer of Ramacharitmanas, says in one of his works, addressing God,

O Lord this house of mine, my mind, actually belongs to you. Thieves and encroachers—anger, greed, lust, ego, fear, hypocrisy and others, have taken hold of this house, it is now your responsibility to take back the possession. If you do not drive them out, the people of the world will accuse you for not reclaiming what belonged to you. Reclaim your house, O Lord!

What happens when the ‘house’ is reclaimed by the Lord? Sri Ramakrishna explains, ⁷

Before visiting a servant’s house to receive his hospitality, a king sends there the necessary articles like seats, ornaments and food from his own stores so that the servant may be enabled to receive his master properly and show him due honour. In the same manner the Lord sends love, and faith, into the yearning hearts of the devotees before He makes His advent in them.

Seva refer to doing our actions with right intentions. It is spiritualization of our actions, doing them with devotion and detachment.

Driving Away the Encroacher

Finally, the house becomes clean only when ego, the fake king of our life, is driven out. Says Sri Ramakrishna,⁸

You shall have to banish your ego completely from the heart. If you have the egoistic feeling, ‘I am the doer,’ you can never see God. If there is somebody in the store-room, and if the owner of the house is asked to fetch a certain thing from the store, he at once says, ‘Well, there is someone already in the store; please ask him to get it. There is no need of my going there.’ God never appears in the heart of him who thinks himself to be the doer.

Will we let the rightful owner of the house, our heart, take up His residence?

References:

1. Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (CW), 5:271           2. CW, 1:142            3. Kathopanishad, 2.1.1        4. CW, 1.130                         5. CW, 3:127

6. Teachings of Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, p.32   7.  Sayings, p.257        8. Sayings, p.183

The Arrival of New Year

Source: Editorial, The Vedanta Kesari, January 2012

Author: Swami Atmashraddhananda

Every year is a New Year. Though new, every year comes with same old problem—the problem of ‘knowing’ but not practising what one knows. It is a never-ending problem —the problem of a weak will, a feeble resolution, an unending sense of helplessness. Everyone knows and yet . . .

Typically, celebrations mark the arrival of a New Year (not only the New Year Day according to Georgian Calendar, but according to language/religion/region) everywhere. People greet, rejoice and present gifts to their friends and observe the day with feasts and bursting of crackers. Delight and a sense of auspiciousness marks the day. After all it is a mangal divas, an auspicious day. The Sanskrit word mangalam means ‘wishing all the best’, invoking the blessings of progress and success. It has a positive ring of joy and goodwill.

The New Year Day is an occasion to celebrate. While people in all walks of life observe it in some way or the other, it is most widely welcomed by youth, especially, students. A New Year Day heralds a new day in their studies and it is the time to strengthen their resolve to progress and grow, to learn many things, and unlearn many meaningless things that one picks up in one’s journey, knowingly or unknowingly. Students, with their youthful energy and enthusiasm, wish their classmates in many ways, and a sense of humour rules the day. ‘See you next year,’ they greet with a smile, on the night of 31 December!.

The Same ‘Old Issue’

The grown-up, however, view New Year Day differently. Burdened with years of experience, they do not always look at it as something to celebrate. For many it is just a routine matter. To some others, it is a dreaded day for it means a heavy demand on their already light purse. Thus, the New Year Day brings hope to some, fear to some, anxiety or gloom to others, and to some, too busy to care for such nuances of celebrations, it is just one of the days in their humdrum lives. There are others, however, who despite their age, look forward to New Year Day. They have an undying sense of celebration and enthusiasm.

To a spiritual seeker, however, the New Year Day is a simple reminder of the passing nature of life. One may celebrate it, seeking blessings for all the good things that come in one’s way or one proposes to do. But a spiritual seeker is also aware of the fact that a New Year Day means one day—or one year?—is lesser in his life. He knows for sure that 365 days have been lessened from his life-account. And another account of 365 days has just been opened, and how well or ill he will use it, depends chiefly on him, though it is never sure whether and when he might be called away to shift his accounts to another bank—i.e., being called away to a fresh lease of life—during the next 52 weeks. It is a mixed world in which he lives, a world of hope and despair, as real as life. Time, the ‘Great Eater’, carries on with its assigned work!.

 Apart from these facts, the New Year Day is a good way to enthuse oneself. Nothing plays a more energizing role in our lives than enthusiasm. One may have all the essential things one aspires in life, but if one lacks enthusiasm for life, all things become insipid, just as a delicious food loses its taste in absence of appetite. What is appetite to enjoying a meal, enthusiasm is to life. It is necessary to truly explore and experience life’s infinite possibilities and for that an enduring sense of enthusiasm is indispensable.

Enthusiasm

The word enthusiasm is derived from en-theos, which means ‘God within’. Enthusiasm is the fervour or zest one derives from the Divine Source within. An enthusiastic person is, in one sense, connected with something within. He may or may not be aware of it, but the source of his undiminished enthusiasm has to come from something deeper.

A young child is enthusiastic by nature. He is full of curiosity and zest. If one is in the company of a child, one is very likely to absorb his bubbling energy and enthusiasm to some measure. This interest in life is a divine quality. One of the epithets by which God is described is ‘old and yet ever new’. He is also compared to a ‘today-born child’ (sadyojata). A just born child is full of many possibilities. Hence, God, the Divine in His individual or cosmic aspects, is full of infinite possibilities. He alone can be the source of enduring and unremitting enthusiasm.

How to remain enthusiastic in one’s spiritual aspirations, despite all the obstacles and distractions that come one’s way, is an issue everyone has to grapple with. After the initial interest in spiritual life wanes, everything seems dull and routine and one looks at wonder with those who have been carrying on with their spiritual practices uninterruptedly for a long time. It is no easy task to work hard with determination and with a sense of meaning throughout.

On the other hand, there is this need for patience. No one should expect a seed to get sprouted and become a full-fledged tree overnight! Nor does repeating God’s Name and living a morally vibrant life bring an overnight revolution in one’s life. In spiritual life, it is evolution, more than a revolution, which really happens, and matters. Of course, a sudden change may happen, in case of some, when listening a spiritual discourse, or reading a spiritual text, or meeting a holy man, or undergoing some traumatic experience. It is a moment of inner transformation. One suddenly comes face to face with a Spiritual Reality. Why and how this happens can never be fully explained. All that one can say is that perhaps there was an inherent treasure of holy and good impressions or samskaras in the person, waiting to be activated and the events mentioned above acted like a catalyst. It was like tearing off of the thin veil over the innate goodness and spiritual aspiration of a person. Sri Ramakrishna described it graphically thus,

Who gets this passionate love for God? Those who have performed many meritorious deeds in their past births, or those who are eternally perfect. Think of a dilapidated house, for instance: while clearing away the under-growth and rubbish one suddenly discovers a fountain fitted with a pipe. It has been covered with earth and bricks, but as soon as they are removed the water shoots up.¹

Not everyone, however, is blessed with such sudden inner development. Most of us have a long way to go. After the period of sudden or dramatic change is over, one has to, again, come in terms with the reality of daily life. It often brings a sense of what Aldous Huxley called, ‘sacred insensitivity’—a sense of weariness with even issues related.

Aldous Huxley called, ‘sacred insensitivity’—a sense of weariness with even issues related to our spiritual practices. We become insensitive and mechanical and enthusiasm gets damped. The question that nags us is ‘how to be enthusiastic and patient, simultaneously, and not end up as an arambha-shuraa (‘a-hero-at-the-beginning’)?’

Some Counsels

Sage Patanjali’s well-known sutra (2.14) says:

satudirghakalam, nairantaryam-satkar-asevitadridhabhumi

It [spiritual life] becomes firmly grounded by long, constant efforts with great love (for the end to be attained).

One has to practice for a long time, uninterruptedly, and with great love (satkara). The term satkara can also mean reverence or respectfulness. One should have respect for one’s spiritual life or ideal. Casualness or waywardness about spiritual matters should be completely avoided. One should have deep faith and hope in one’s spiritual potential, in God, in the Divinity within. Sri Ramakrishna would refer to two types of farmers—those who take to cultivating newly, and those who are hereditary farmers:

New farmers give up cultivating if their fields do not yield any crops. But hereditary farmers will continue to cultivate their fields whether they get a crop or not. Their fathers and grand fathers were farmers; they know that they too must accept farming as their means of livelihood.²

The incident was reported in a news-paper some years ago of a Polish woman whose husband went into coma while he was accidentally hit by a railway coach which he was handling as a mechanic. The doctors gave up all hope and told the wife to look after him, who, they opined, would not survive beyond a few weeks or months. The wife, devoted and committed as she was to her husband, continued to look after him—for 17 long years! Her services resulted in the husband returning to consciousness. Her care and nursing included changing her husband’s sides every two hours or so to avoid bed sores. When asked how she could do this stupendous service, she replied that it was prayer and patience which gave her strength in the midst of most trying conditions. Indeed, a sterling example of patience and enthusiasm.

The Bhagavad Gita (18.33) speaks of three types of tenacity (dhriti)—sattvika, rajasika and tamasika. Of these the sattvika type of tenacity is the most needed for spiritual strivings:

That tenacity, unswerving through Yoga, by which one controls the functions of the mind, the breaths (pranas) and the senses, is Sattvika, O Partha.

In rajasika and tamasika, one’s tenacity is directed to ‘earning wealth or enjoying objects of senses’, or towards ‘sleep, fear, grief, depression and pride’. The power of tenacity is same; the difference lies in the direction in which it is used.

Conclusion

Enthusiasm is vital to any achievement worth its name. But it should be coupled with patience, or else it would end up in restlessness and one will not gain any results. Enthusiasm is also infectious. If one lives with an enthusiast person, one is sure to absorb something of it.

This New Year, to know, and to practice what one knows, one needs to bridge the gap and that is overcome only by enthusiasm and tenacity. The same old, enthusiasm!.

References: 1. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p.659                2. ibid