VIVEKA Continued....
A King was hunting in the depths of a forest
from dawn until early afternoon. He was afflicted by intense thirst. At last,
he found a hermitage where he took refuge. The inmates gave him cool clear
water to drink.
That was the medicine which he needed most. It
made him fresh and fine. If the drink intoxicates him, robs him of reason and
degrades his personality, it is the cause of many other diseases. Discrimination
will reveal the dangers lurking in becoming a bond slave of the senses.
We have dealt with discrimination in detail in
the MBCA posts when we dealt with Buddhi, one of the 4 Antah karanas.
The special instrument that God has allotted
man, namely, Buddhi or the Intellect, has to be used by man to become master of
these down-dragging senses. The Intellect has to be used to judge and decide
the means for the upliftment of the human to the Divine. It has to help man to
realize God and nothing less.
We learnt in MBCA posts that only those actions
which are undertaken by using one's intellect / Buddhi, which is
unaffected by our stored impressions of the past (chitta) or our Attachments
and hatred (Ahamkara) will be in the right path, with a clear understanding of
what is right and what is wrong.
In practical life, we are very shrewd and we
easily make the distinction between what is good and what is bad for us.
For example, if we are walking on the
street and there is a manhole left open, our instinct immediately makes us
cross that place without falling into the manhole. Here, there are no
thoughts involved and our basic instinct works.
However, when it comes to actions taken out of
thoughts, then our thoughts get colored by our Ego (Ahamkara) or our
impressions of the past (Vasanas) and we lose our discrimination and end up
taking up actions which are bound to generate fresh / newer vasanas or
impressions.
In spiritual sadhana, 90% of us fail to
witness progress, ONLY and ONLY due to our failure to use our discriminative
intellect or viveka.
We just seem to be carried away in our life,
taking up actions with the influence of our ego / vasanas, without
breaking this chain, without sitting in quietude, without using our
intellect, without discriminating between real and unreal, right
and wrong.
Without developing and using viveka or
discriminative intellect, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROGRESS IN SPIRITUAL
SADHANA. This is a fact beyond any doubt.
The author has seen few spiritual seekers in the
world, some of them well known to him as well. He has seen them stuck up,
stagnant in their spiritual journey in spite of efforts made for few decades.
The reason- "when they face the world after their prayers /
meditation, when they have to think and act, then, the discriminative
intellect is overpowered by their subtler vasanas / subtler
ahamkara which propel their mind to act, with their Buddhi blinded.
The author has not taken up this issue with them
in depth because, "they may lack the viveka to really understand that
the author is speaking the RIGHT for them"!!
Love.
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