अपनों से अपनी बात – September 2016
Dialog with loved ones …
Dear loved one,
Divine Blessings,
The Guru Poornima festival was very joyful. A month has passed but it still feels that the event occurred yesterday. My heart is still vividly feeling all the sweet memories of the entire festival. Every scene is memorable. My mind is joyously delightfully filled with your experiences, your love, your abilities, your sense of service and your dedication to duty. Such events should regularly occur, the Upanishads should become a part and parcel of our lives. You sit besides me, and I sit besides you, may such sweet moments unceasingly come into our lives.
The sweet moments in the cycle of life are our greatest assets, we repeatedly delight in remembering them. This sweet sensation enters our hearts. This becomes our emotional and spiritual asset. Nobody can snatch away this capital, and it can never die away. This is ever-living. The relationship between the Guru and the disciple is also ever-living, it is a continuous flow of experiences, which flow out in the form of innumerable disciple rivers and merges within the Guru ocean. This pure cycle continues unceasingly.
Today I would like to state some facts about asceticism. The literal meaning of asceticism is tenacity, which kindles heat and energy. Tenacity signifies rigorous discipline. It means complete avoidance of indulgence and luxury, and a sense of sacrifice. This is the only process – which eliminates all defects of life, and purifies the inner personality (mind or character). Only and only the flame of wisdom can eliminate the repository of karma. The raging fire of wisdom in this life of yours, will terminate all the accumulated, destined and current karmas. The purpose of asceticism is to liberate your soul from the sanskaars, so that new painful and defective sanskaars do not emerge again. This process is called the penance, it is called the Sadhana. Sadhanas mean, achievement of goals, and the goals can be achieved only after purification of the soul.
Asceticism is a kind of Sadhana penance, which burns all the ignorant impurities of the mind, consumes it completely, and only the Sattchit or gold like pure soul remains behind. This initiates the flow of energy in life. The Upanishads were composed to communicate this energy. The union-merger of Guru-disciple took place, so that the disciples could learn to accumulate the flow of energy under guidance and direction of Gurudev. Guru only initiates the process of understanding the self (Swaadhyaye). The literal meaning of Swaadhyaye is self-analysis. However the root concept of Swaadhyaye is to view various sides of your mind. When you yourself perform the complete analysis of your personality, physical, mental, sensory and spiritual aspects, then you realize that you are not what you are visible from the outside. You realize that you have a different intense personality. The physical, mental, sensory and spiritual situations are different for each person. The dialog by the disciple towards his Guru, and the inspection and understanding of different aspects of personality is the Sadhana itself, it is the penance.
Heiyam Dukhamanaagatam …, Drashtridrishyayayoah Sanyogo HeyahetuH … ||
Whatever sorrow hasn’t arrived, it should be averted. The anguish which one is suffering currently, should be borne. The karmas which have matured, give sorrow, and the only way to relieve them is to finish them by bearing the suffering. However, we can certainly stop the arrival of what has not yet started. The happiness-sorrows are part and parcel of this life, but the control of future is in our hands. Whatever we have sown, we certainly have to bear it. It is not in our control to change it, however regarding the future crop, you are at full liberty to decide how the future crop should be conditioned. The fruits of a person’s karmas can be changed. One needs to pursue the current karmas according to the desired fruits, i.e. it is necessary to plough the seeds of actions through conscious actions.
This is the mental freedom. The basis of Guru’s teaching is the mental freedom. The Guru’s task is to give you the sensation so that you can become mentally free. Your own system should open up, it should grow and develop. Only the mental freedom can grant us happiness, however generally we perform completely opposite acts. When any object gives us pleasure and happiness, then our mind runs over and over again to repeat that experience. This mental race is called as indulgence. It is not a difficult task to eliminate indulgence. A small shock can remove the indulgence from the personality. Both indulgence and its opponent – envy, cause bondage, both of them tie you in bondages. The way to liberate yourself from these chains and bondages of indulgence and envy is to repeatedly perform the mental, self analysis of our mind and personality.
The only way to take your life, your consciousness from low level to high position is the Sadhana, the penance, which is a continuous running process.
Navratri and Diwali are the stages in that journey, using which we can achieve the goals. If you cannot practice Sadhanas, then you are controlling yourself with imperfect mind in-spite of having a full personality. How can one experience the complete personality with an imperfect mind.
It is essential that you should not leave the Shakti path on the Sadhana path. Lakshmi is the essence form of the goal achievement. You should continue on the path of dynamic actions in your life, with the goal in full sight. You should continuously and unceasingly remain as the Sadhak. This will be highest level of your life, the superior excellence, then you will realize your self. You will achieve the Supreme bliss within you.
You have held my hand, I have grabbed your hand. Now we should continue along on this path with the Vedic sense of “Om Saha Naavavatu … Saha Nau Bhunaktu..”
Cordially yours
Nand Kishore Shrimali