Dear All,
We continue from the last post when we read 3 scenes.
We continue from the last post when we read 3 scenes.
Scene 4
“What did you say? This garden is
for sale? Good, consider it sold. I’ll take it”. So saying a trader went in
search of the owner of the garden and returned after some time accompanied with
a few labourers. The labourers immediately started plucking all the rose flowers.
The trader stood there watching it all and so was the gardener. But now he
couldn’t even let out a whimper of protest. Mustering up enough courage, he
softly asked of the trader, “Sir, why are you plucking all the flowers?”
“WHAT ?” the trader screamed back
at him. Then taking pity on the poor fellow he winked at him and laughed out,
“I’ll make Gulkand (a herb made of rose petals) out of it”.
Now, let’s see – how many of the
above 4 or 5 people actually saw the flowers. What a question? Of course,
everyone saw the flowers. But Vedanta asserts, “No. None of them saw the
flowers”.
“Well then, you mean to say, they
saw donkeys? Your Vedanta says anything. Nothing is clear”.
“Wait………..Listen carefully”.
The first girl saw the beauty of
her flower – bedecked hair.
The bhakta saw the beauty of
Krishna’s idol.
The lover saw the blossoming of
his beloved’s face.
And the trader had set his eyes on
the Gulkand.
The gardener never even had time
to notice them.
In short, everyone saw
merely their own vasanas or desires. Failing to notice the flowers all of them
established their own personal relationships with them. And this alone is Maya
!
We never really see any object or
person in totality. We see only our own preconceived notions about them, in
them. And this is Maya.
For example, we don’t see a radio
or a cycle as a radio or a cycle, rather, we see it as my radio or my
cycle.
And were someone to just mention
to us that our radio is not functioning properly, we would feel so offended as
though he had said that we ourselves had some defects in us.
Why is this?
Because of Maya. Since, in
essence, this relationship is itself delusory; Maya has ensnared everyone in
its spell of delusion and make believe. So much so that even the spell of
delusion is itself a delusion.
Vedanta teaches that whatever we
see, hear, feel…………….. is all, in reality, a delusion, but being within the web
of Maya, we have ourselves superimposed names and forms upon various objects
and deluded ourselves completely.
Just as a rose is not the beauty
of any bedecked hair, nor is it any trader’s Gulkand, but is actually, merely a
rose. In the same way, what we consider to be the jiva or the jagat is, in
essence, Brahman itself. And what we are lost in is Maya. And thus, Vedanta
emphatically asserts,
Brahma satyam jagat mithya,
jivo
brahmaiva naparaha
Brahman is the reality.
This world, a mere transitory
phase.
The
jiva is not separate from Brahman.
Indeed, it is difficult to
understand and assimilate this Truth but he who has searched for the Truth has
verily found it. The rest are drowning themselves in the ocean of Maya.
Hari Aum Tatsat.
