Friday, December 7, 2018

Bhaja Govindam - Post 24


Verse 23

कस्त्वं कोऽहं कुत आयातः का मे जननी को मे तातः ।
इति परिभावय सर्वमसारम् विश्वं त्यक्त्वा स्वप्नविचारम् ॥२३॥

Kastva ko’ha kuta āyāta
kā me jananī ko me tāta,
iti paribhāvaya sarvamasāram
viśva tyaktvā svapna vicāram.

Who are you? Who am I? From where did I come? Who is my mother? Who is my father? Thus enquire, leaving aside the entire world of experience, essence-less, and a mere dreamland, born of imagination.

Man is born divine, as he is created by divine Lord as He himself.


However, ignoring his real identity, man is caught up in the meshes of Maya and loses sight of his eternal status and on one hand, he is caught up in worldly desires and on the other hand, he keeps gathering knowledge, trying to perfect himself somehow.


Man keep walking hurriedly, slips sometimes, falls, gets bruises, falls sick and again gets up and again walks. Like this he spends / loses many lives.


Thus, he keeps accumulating Karma, keeps clearing karma and is caught up in the vicious circle of Birth and death.


A time comes when he starts thinking seriously about the futility of this world and the purposeless life he has been leading so far. 


He is able to accumulate wealth, he has his family, has a status in the society, good house to live, servants to work for him and still, deep within, he is able to feel that there is no lasting peace.


The more resourceful a man becomes in this world, the chance of his remaining peaceful gets lesser and lesser.


Such thoughts come to him more often at a time when he has cleared all his acute karma and has lesser karmic balance to clear.


And, at that time, he starts questioning himself.


What, after all, is the purpose of this life?


Have I come into this world only to eat, drink, sleep, make merry, prosper and then, experience my body getting week, then to fall sick and then to ultimately die?? Is this the purpose of my life?


All along, I have been thinking / believing that I am this body, but I am told, I am born, I die and am reborn again and again.


If that be so, I definitely cannot be this body, because, in one life itself, when man dies, his body is cremated and becomes ashes, which cannot regain the state of the same body in which he lived before dying.


If I believe that I am this mind and this intellect, then, I am wrong because, after all, all these are also gone when this body is gone.


Is there any other identity for me or I am just this body, mind, intellect?


If it is so, then, what leaves my body, to come back when I am reborn, to carry along with itself, all my previous sanskara, previous karma???


AFTER ALL, WHO I REALLY AM???


Who is my mother, who is my father is a question which has to be taken in the sense that from where have I come, if I have been coming and going several times in this world. I possibly cannot be having the same father and mother every time I am reborn into this world. So, what is the source from which I emerge, what is the source as which I exist and what is the source to which I retrace??


With what conviction can one say that the world is essence less? To justify this assertion; to make it even possible, the stage of Self-enquiry has to be preceded as we have just seen – by dispassion, burning desire for liberation, and the practical renunciation of all the comforts and security of life, surrendering oneself entirely to the Lord. 


When a man reaches this stage, God sends a qualified Self Realized Guru who knocks his door / enter in his life mysteriously to reveal the secrets of Self-enquiry.

In such a person alone will Self-enquiry bear fruit. He alone can honestly declare, “The world is unreal!” 


The world that we believe as real is like the dream that we get. In Dream, we never say that it is unreal. We move around in dream, so many other characters move around in our dream, so many things happen there. We even laugh / cry / enjoy / grieve in our dream which all seems to be so real.


Only when we get up from the dream, we smile and realize that it was just a dream.


The essence less world is the dream and the waking up from the dream is attaining the knowledge of SELF, experiencing our true identity.




Sankara writes in Atma Bodha, 


संसारः स्वप्नतुल्यो हि रागद्वेषादिसङ्कुलः ।

स्वकाले सत्यवद्भाति प्रबोधे सत्यसद्भवेत् ॥ ६॥


SAMSARA SVAPNATULYO HI

RAGA DVESHADI SANKULAHA

SVAKALE SATYAVAD BHATI

PRABODHE SATYASAD BHAVET


(The world which is full of attachments, aversions and so on, is like a dream. It appears to be real as long as the dream continues but becomes unreal when one wakes up, when true wisdom dawns)


Commentary on this verse is in post 13 in Atmabodha theme. 

Link for that post is given below.







Also, it is worthwhile to read the post on Ramana's quote on WHO AM I which is given in the following link






Love.




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