Vivekachudamani - Post 27

  Verse 21    

तद्वैराग्यं जिहासा या दर्शनश्रवणादिभिः ।
देहादिब्रह्मपर्यन्ते ह्यनित्ये भोगवस्तुनि ॥ २१ ॥

tadvairāgyaṃ jihāsā yā darśanaśravaṇādibhiḥ |
dehādibrahmaparyante hyanitye bhogavastuni || 21 ||

 

(That desire to give up all transitory enjoyments gained through seeing, hearing and so on, and also experiences gained through equipments ranging from a mortal body to the form of Brahma is called ’detachment '.) 

 

A complete and exhaustive explanation of vairagya is given here.  It is not only a detachment from external objects and circumstances.

 

That are conducive to joyous experiences, but it is a mental condition in which, the mind no longer runs after the phenomenal world in the hope of gaining peace or joy. 

 

The idea is that through  discrimination when one has come to, at least, intellectually  appreciate that sense objects have not in themselves any intrinsic  value for joy and that they are ephemeral, naturally, the mind will  never take wandering flights into the realm of the objects with a  craving for them. 

One need not prepare to lose the permanent thing. Why? It is not lost; One need not prepare to lose the permanent thing; because permanent thing is permanent, it is never lost. Therefore we are talking about a losable thing. Preparedness to lose the losable is called intelligence. 

Any losable, we are ready to lose. And the preparation is two- fold. Either I do not take that thing at all. Either I do not possess that thing, because possess, there is the worry of losing. Therefore either I avoid that thing; or there is no rule that we should avoid everything. Have that thing; but be mentally ready to lose that thing when the time comes, including life. If you take the whole life, preparedness for death is intelligence.

It has been logically concluded in our sastras that a man's mind will constantly hover around and land on objects only when it is convinced that there are three desirable qualities in them. 

They are - a sense of reality (satyatvam) of the objects, a belief in their permanency (nityatvam) and a faith that they contain potentialities for satisfying our craving for joy (samahitatvam). 

When we understand through discrimination that the objects perceived through the senses are all in fact unreal (asat), ephemeral (anitya), and that they have no real capacity to give us joy, riddled with sorrow as they are, our minds will not pant after them. 

In Sri Jnanesvara's commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, the  Yogiraja, beautifully brings out this idea in a series of inimitable  similes. Describing the attitude of a man of detachment towards sense objects, he gives some examples, which are very striking and effective. 

 

He says that a man of true detachment will run towards sense objects with as much enthusiasm as one would rush out to embrace a dead queen's rotting body; with as much satisfaction as one would decide to quench one's thirst by drinking the pus flowing out from a leper's wound and with as much readiness as one would enter a boiling cauldron of molten iron to take a refreshing bath. 

 

It is a very powerful way of expressing the idea  that where the intellect has come to firm conviction about the  hollowness of sense objects, the mind will not gush forth towards  them with hopes and expectations of satisfaction therein. This sense of detachment that arises from a full application of one's discriminative faculty is called true 'vairagya'.

 

Love.