Dhyana Vahini - Post 40

Chapter XIV

Follow Krishna’s advice and meditate

In the third age of humans (the Dwapara-yuga), Krishna said,

When you start fixing your thoughts on Me,                                        all thoughts that agitate you will be stilled through My grace.

Mathchiththah sarva dhurgani math-prasaadhaath tharishyathi.

This discipline of meditation must be rigorously followed. In fact, dhyana (meditation) means “discipline”. Discipline, regularity, steadiness — these are the essentials of meditation. A spiritual aspirant who keeps these things in view can achieve quick results. 

Meditation is a first-class cure for the illness of worldly existence (bhava-roga). Along with it, another drug must also be taken; its name is contentment. If there is contentment in the mind, one enjoys an endless festival. Craving makes the mind waver; it is an all-consuming fire that will destroy people slowly and surely.

The royal road to meditation is contentment. Just as a traveller who has trudged along for miles in the scorching sun feels refreshed when taking a bath in the limpid waters of a cool and shady lake, so too the unfortunate individual struggling in the scorching heat of desires feels happy and relieved when bathing in the lake of contentment.

The three guards: peace, contentment, discrimination

At the gates of liberation (moksha) and Self-realisation (sakshatkara), three guards are posted to ask you for your credentials. They are peace or mental equilibrium, joy or contentment, and inquiry or discrimination (santhi, santhosha, and vichara). Even if one of the guards is made to become friendly, the others will facilitate your entry. 

First in the series is peace. If you make peace yours, contentment (thrupthi) is yours, and contentment is the highest source of joy and the most valuable possession. It is as much as an empire.

Without contentment, desire (kama) and greed (lobha) attain dangerous proportions and will overwhelm the power of discrimination itself. Desire easily becomes greed, and greed degenerates into miserliness and lust, which make you flit from object to object in mad pursuit of the evanescent sensual joy. How can people with such qualities develop the faculty of concentration? And without the capacity to concentrate, how can they engage in meditation? And without meditation, no one can get Godhead (Daivam).

Advise the mind that flows so swiftly in so many directions: “Oh mind, do not drag me along the floods of objects, along the path of sensual desires, and spoil my career. Instead, take me to the Lord. Flow in that direction, please.” Giving up all other desires and being ever content, dwell on His name and His form only, to the exclusion of everything else. Meditation on the name and form is real peace (santhi), genuine contentment (santhosha).

Contentment will not make anyone an idler, remember. It is an attribute of true pure (sathwic) character. It will make the mind turn always toward the Lord. It will save you from the tribulation to satisfy the unimportant wants and to cater to selfish needs. It will direct human talents toward efforts that elevate. The contented person will also be truthful and will therefore be in constant communion with the Atma. That is to say, the contented person can be immersed in meditation for long periods without rest or the feeling of tiredness. Meditation is the only method of counteracting the mental activities that surge forward in a thousand directions; there is no other method at all.

Introspection

Out of the 3 guards given by Swami in today’s post, He has elaborated on the first 2, viz., Shanti and Santosham or Peace and contentment.

Swami Sivananda writes on “Peace”

WHAT IS PEACE?

Peace is a state of quiet. It is freedom from disturbance, anxiety, agitation, riot or violence. It is harmony, silence, calm, repose, rest. Specifically, it is the absence or cessation of war.

Peace is the very nature of the soul or Atman. All the Vrittis or modifications of the mind are dissolved in the soul. There is no Sankalpa or thought in the soul.

The peace of God fills your heart. Realize this stupendous peace of God that passeth all understanding through meditation and devotion.

Peace is a divine attribute. It is a quality of the soul. It cannot remain with greedy persons. It fills the pure heart.

Speak, move, act in peace. Peace is the happy, natural state of man. It is his birth right. War is his disgrace.

WHERE IS PEACE?

Peace is not in the heart of the carnal man. Peace is not in the hearts of ministers, advocates, businessmen, dictators, kings and emperors.

Peace is in the hearts of Yogins, sages, saints and spiritual men.

Peace is not in money, estate, bungalows and possessions. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul.

Withdraw yourself from external objects, meditate and rest in your soul; you will realize everlasting peace now.

Wealth, women, children, property and palatial buildings cannot give you everlasting peace.

Peace deserts the lustful; it runs away from selfish people. It is an ornament of a Paramahamsa.

Dear All,

If we take the first para where the sage describes “what is peace?”, He says,

“Peace is a state of quiet. It is freedom from disturbance, anxiety, agitation, riot or violence. It is harmony, silence, calm, repose, rest. Specifically, it is the absence or cessation of war.”

In simpler expression, if the author has to define peace, “Peace is the actual, real state of mind, when the play of vasanas about one’s own self and the vasanas about others is transcended”

When all impressions are uprooted, then one exists in and as one’s real nature, Swa-roopa. 

This state has actually no expression, but for the spiritual seekers to relate to this state in their initial days of sadhana, the state has been defined as “Peaceful state”.

Contentment is the effect, the culmination of “Peace”.

When the heart/mind is at peace (as explained by Swami Sivananda), then, the sadhaka rests in that peaceful state and there is no craving to attain anything outside him. This state is the state of contentment.

 

Love.