Friday, June 28, 2024

Vivekachudamani - Post 32

  Verse 26   


सर्वदा स्थापनं बुद्धेः शुद्धे ब्रह्मणि सर्वदा
तत्समाधानमित्युक्तं तु चित्तस्य लालनम् २६

sarvadā sthāpanaṃ buddheḥ śuddhe brahmaṇi sarvadā |
tatsamādhānamityuktaṃ na tu cittasya lālanam || 26 ||

 

(Samadhana (tranquillity) is that condition when the mind is constantly engaged in the total contemplation of the supreme Reality and it is not gained through any amount of intellectual oscillations.)

Samadhana is concentration of mind. Be attentive always on that which you are seeking.

 

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. 

 

Some aspirants have peace of mind when they live in seclusion, when there are no distracting elements or factors. They complain of great tossing of mind - vikshepa - when they come to a city, when they mix with people. They are completely upset. They cannot do any meditation in a crowded place.

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:

'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.

Samadhana, as it is understood today, is an indifferent attitude towards both good and bad, especially towards insults and failures, threats and despairs. It is believed that samadhana is the mental attitude of an individual who has completely hardened himself and has grown to be insensible to the lashes of failures and the arrows of insult. 

 

Love.

 

 


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