Conversation with Arun – Triggering of fresh thoughts
A couple of days ago, Arun spoke on phone, and as expected, the conversation covered a whole lot of topics; from CWG, laws of attraction, Jignyaasaa, et al. Amongst other things he said, one of them was this; He found himself motivated much more, to follow our swadharmam, after going thru CWG series, than say chella thathas, appa’s, or for that matter even acharyal’s repeated insistence on this.
The anugraha bhashanams compiled in book form, or Tatvaaloka etc, were hardly inspiring enough, invariably leaving him with the feeling of having been “done with” with just a few pages of reading, whereas, a CWG would inspire him so much that, he would want to do his sandhya regularly and sincerely from then on. In other words, he found hardly any contradiction between what Acharyal, thatha or Appa were/are all saying, and the CWG series, except for the fact that the latter is more lucid, captivating, and inspiring.
These are indeed not only thought provoking, but a very unpleasant reality; the western authors, the language, both are far more appealing, and which none of our traditional, Hindu, orthodox, spiritual leadership/ shishya kotis, would dare to admit. I therefore dread the possibility of our entire Vedas/upanishads/puranas being so totally absorbed in their thoughts, that we will all, one day, be reading about all of these from their pens, and totally forget the originals altogether. An obscene parallel would the re-mix of an original hit song getting so popular, as to completely erase the memories of the original. The very few who know about an original, would most likely be a laughable lot.
I am sorry folks; I am digressing from my main theme. The conversation with Arun triggered a totally different chain of thinking, and which finally led to a probable answer to the query “what do I really want” in the context of the aphorism “ask believe and receive”. I wanted to share this; quite unmindful of whether any of you guys are keen to know!!
I think a bit of a preamble is necessary; in order to understand what I want, I have to go back to my years in service, prior to retirement. The daily routine almost as a rule, in those days, was to get up in the morning, do the daily morning puja, rush to office, and on the way back home in the evening, look forward to that good TV serial followed by dinner etc.
Well, you came home, switched on the TV, and found that the electricity was “off”. What do you do? Curse every one, and deeply feel that the Gods revel in denying you even the most innocuous pleasure, and as if to justify your feeling, the electricity comes back, just when your favorite program is ending, giving you a glimpse of what you could have enjoyed.
A deeper reflection on these trivially frivolous events yields some revealing answers;
(a) The Lord is the source of inexhaustible and abundant energy, and the flow of electricity to our homes is just a manifestation of the showering of His Grace. You need not even switch your lights “on” to receive these, as He knows what you want.
(b) But alas based on merits earned by you out of your own free will in previous births, the Grace to you is regulated. Like an inverter, which works as a stand by, you can extend these with your anushtanams of swadharma. Once your balance is exhausted, lights go off.
(c) If you are able to be in sync with these feelings, you will neither “look forward” to that TV program, nor will you be disappointed when the lights go off. In other words, if you rid yourselves of wants and therefore needs, which incidentally benefits only the marketing kings of today, He will give you all you need. We have even stupidly coined a term for this unexpected gift; “luck/by chance” etc, without realizing that there is really no such thing, and that everything is His Will.
Still if you need to define what you want, it can just be “His sustained showering of Grace”. Does this therefore mean that once you understand this, you are in total bliss? Going by the turmoil in my mind about everything about and around me, this seems initially to be a joke. But when you realize that your present life is a result of past omissions and commissions, and that it is absolutely impossible to guess as to which of these combinations are at work at present, it becomes more and more clear, that surrender unto Him is perhaps the best if not the only option.
Which brings me to the question of when do I get delivered? It is believed that till such time you have a balance of either punya or papa from previous births, one cannot escape the birth/death cycle. For “papam” one has purgatory rituals prescribed, but how does one get rid of “punya” as this also will merit a birth to enjoy the fruits. The word “thyagam” in Samskrit means also “to rid” and hence a different (hatke) meaning of the upanishadic “na karmana na prajaya….”piece, comes to me which is:
One cannot sacrifice one’s sins, but he can sacrifice his “punya” ; so once you realize that you have to transcend from this “dual” relationship with Him and merge into “one reality” after suffering your punishments for sins, in order to make the balance “nil” for punya , you just have to sacrifice this ( thyagenaike would mean “only by surrendering your punya after ridding yourself of sins with “righteous actions” can you attain that elevated Moksham ……
Remember Karna in Mahabharatha? Krishna takes from the former all his punyas before finally liberating him. Think it over…. Love. s Vichu
In so far as we relate to "God in the image of Man"(or vice versa) we are bound to think of spiritual transactions in terms of "Giver-Receiver" or "Director-Actor", etc.
ReplyDeleteI am more comfortable in conceptualising God in terms of an "Order" or "Layers of Order" or a "Governing System whose details are Unknown". This allows me latitude to fit the observed or known or rather knit the observed/known in a larger weave.
Why should "what we do not understand" trouble us? If it were not for our "desire" to dictate "its" course of action.
(I specifically use a small "i" for the term "its" as the converse logic is not true for the "It" with a Capital "I")
I personally think that language plays an important role here. We are so comfortable with English that we tend to get influenced by good writings in English (deservedly so and I do not discount the greatness of those writings one bit). I still feel that a sound knowledge of Sanskrit and a "Vedic" approach to learning in the "Gurukuls" put together with intellectual debates in Sanskrit are some of the pre-requisites to get to a higher plane of understanding of existence unless you are already in an advanced standing from previous births.
ReplyDeleteThere are just too many unknowns and we are easily tempted to play the blame game. After what Appa went through in the mid-nineties or what Gulpa chitappa is going through, we have all become more philosophical. In some ways or the other the rest of us are also suffering and looking for guidance. If there were no troubles, we may not have created "Jignyaasaa" in the first place!
I am quite sure that if we are willing to spend even a month in Sringeri, what we can take home may be far more than what we can hope to get from "Anugraha bhashanams" that are addressed to the masses.
A firm belief that everything happens for the good and that good times will always come is the need of the hour.
I will conclude with the Bhavan's catchline "Aano bhadra krtavo yantu vishwatah: Let noble thoughts come to us from every side”