SAMADHANA - MENTAL
BALANCE
Your eye is always on that, like the consciousness of a target of a bowman who
strikes it with an arrow. Concentration is the consciousness inside, fixing
itself with its attention on that which it wants.
When
you want a thing, why should you not be concentrating on it?
People say, “I want a thing, but my mind cannot go there”. The
reason is that you are not really wanting it.
If you
really want the thing, the mind must go there; and when the mind is not going
there, you are not really wanting it. Thus knowing, concentrate your mind.
A commentator while writing on Sri Sankaracharya's 'Atma-Anatma-Viveka' writes: 'Whenever the ears are engaged in sravana - hearing, and the mind wanders to any worldly object or desire, and finding it
worthless, returns to the performance of the three exercises (Sravana, Mañana and Nidhidhyasana) - such returning
is called Samadhana'.
The mind is free from anxiety amid pains. There is indifference amid pleasures. There is stability of mind or mental poise. The aspirant or practitioner lives without attachment.
He neither likes nor dislikes, he
has a great deal of strength of mind and inner peace, he has unruffled
supreme peace of mind.
This is a
weakness. This is not achievement in Samadhana. There is no balance
of mind or equanimity in these persons.
Only when a student can keep his balance of mind, even in a battlefield when
there is a shower of bullets all around, as he does in a solitary cave in the
Himalayas, can he be really said to be fully established in Samadhana.
Lord Krishna says in the Gita:
Lord Krishna says in the Gita:
'Perform all actions,
O Dhananjaya,
dwelling in union with
the Divine,
renouncing attachments,
and balanced evenly in
success and failure.'
This is Samadhana.
Again you will find in
the Gita:
'The disciplined Self,
moving among the sense objects
with senses freed from
attraction and repulsion,
Mastered by the Self, goeth to peace.'
This is
also Samadhana.
Love.
