Bhaja Govindam - Post 18

Verse 17

कुरुते गङ्गासागरगमनं व्रतपरिपालनमथवा दानम् ।

ज्ञानविहीनः सर्वमतेन मुक्तिं न भजति जन्मशतेन ॥ १७॥

kurute gaṅgāsāgaragamanaṁ vrataparipālanamathavā dānam,

jñānavihinaḥ sarvamatena

muktiṁ na bhajati janmaśatena.

(One may go on pilgrimage, observe vows, and give away wealth in charity. Yet, devoid of the knowledge of the Self, nothing can give freedom even in hundred lifetimes.)

After describing about the austerities and self denial in the previous verses, Sankara describes the proverbial ‘good' person in this verse. A person may go for pilgrimages to the banks of the Ganga, maintain vows and engage in charitable activities. 

There is no doubt that what they are doing is good in itself. There is nothing wrong or harmful in what is being described here. Indeed, the scriptures themselves have suggested these methods for people at certain stages of their spiritual life.

The truth that desires have to be rooted out in the mind is escaped even in this method. It is conveniently bypassed by focusing on all the external purificatory means given in the Shastras. All the pilgrimages, all the vows, all the charity will not avail if one does not educate the mind to give up its habit of seeking pleasure in outer objects and shall not  bestow mukhti, liberation  even in a hundred years if he or she is jnana viheena, does not have knowledge of the Self.

Truth or Jnana 

Sankara says, “jnaana vihheenah sarvam - atena” i.e., “All authorities are equivocal that without the experience of Truth”.

What is this TRUTH or JNANA which is referred in this verse or any vedantic treatise?

Swami says, 

“….When gold is melted in the crucible, it shines with a strange yellow glory. Where did that light emanate from? From the gold or the fire? What happened was only the removal of the dross by the fire; the effulgence belonged to the gold itself; it is its very nature. 

The fire is only an instrument for the removal of the dross. Nothing has been added to the gold by the fire in the crucible! 

If fire could give the splendor, then why doesn’t a stick or blade or pebble placed in the fire become as shining as gold? One has to conclude that the splendor came not through fire but out of its own inner nature.”

(Extract from Jnana Vahini)

Taking the fire and the gold example given by Swami, The fire is the spiritual sadhana or the Enquiry into “Who am I” in the path of wisdom and once, through the sadhana, all our impurities, our ignorance (about the fact that we actually are the Gold, The very Atman) is removed, then we exist as the TRUTH, the SELF or the ATMAN or DIVINE, which we ever have been. 

Swami clearly says, “If fire could give the splendor, then why doesn’t a stick or blade or pebble placed in the fire become as shining as gold? One has to conclude that the splendor came not through fire but out of its own inner nature”. This inner nature of each human being born in this creation is THE DIVNITY WITHIN.

The mukti that this verse speaks of is liberation from the clutches of EGO. The only way out of our constricted existence is to exhaust our desires. When we engage in charitable activities, go on pilgrimages and maintain vows as an end in themselves rather than a means to an end, we are unable to exhaust our EGO (and desires born out of our Ego). 

These practices are excellent to develop discipline and take one further on the spiritual path when performed with the right attitude. But this verse is only cautioning us against getting lost in activities such as these. 

Spiritual practices are meant to take us towards our goal of Self-Realization, the state of desireless-ness. If we follow these practices without this focus we grow to a limited extent beyond which we cannot progress on the spiritual path.

The most common criticism raised against Vedanta is that it talks only about esoteric things like Self-Realization while the rest of the world dies of poverty and hunger. Such views are misplaced. Vedanta encourages us to do charity, to expand our circle of concern and reach out to others. 

However, if these activities are performed without dedicating them to a spiritual goal to reduce our burden of desires, we get caught in a loop of desire. 

We hear of so many persons saying, “for me, spirituality means, BE GOOD, DO GOOD. Engage in charity and service to others”.

And thanks to Google, they can also pick up a line of Sai in the context of Seva where he says, “Leave all meditation if you can and rush to serve others, Manava Seva is Madhava Seva”.

As the author has repeated 1000 times in all his writings, if SAI’s instructions have to be understood, then we must read and  take in all His instructions, all His vahinis WHOLLY and not in parts, surfing google, taking only those lines which appeals to our approach, our way of looking at spirituality. 

This way, having a limited understanding of spiritually, we remain as far away from our goal as the persons described in the two previous verses. Examine the situation closely. Our goal is to reduce the number of desires. If we lose sight of our goal, we get lost in these ‘good' activities and create desires to engage in ‘good' activities.

On the other hand, if we remain focused on our goal and understand that these spiritual practices are a means to an end, we do not pick up more desires. The pilgrimages, charity and vows become an offering at the altar of our goal of Self-Realization.

Love.

Bhaja Govindam - Post 17

Verse 16

अग्रे वह्निः पृष्ठे भानुः रात्रौ चुबुकसमर्पितजानुः ।

करतलभिक्षस्तरुतलवासस्तदपि न मुञ्चत्याशापाशः ॥ १६॥

agre vahniḥ pṛṣṭhebhānuḥ

rātrau cubukasamarpitajānuḥ,

karatalabhikṣastarutalavāsaḥ

tadapi na muñcatyāśāpāśaḥ.

(Behold there is the man who sits warming up his body with the fire in front and the sun at the back, at night he curls up the body to keep himself warm; he receives his alms in the bowl of his hands and lives under the shelter of trees. Even then he has not been released from the noose of desires.)

This verse depicts the self-denial of a spiritual aspirant / sadhu, in the hope that it will exhaust all  his desires. 

Aversion, as opposed to indulgence, is attempted. If some have discovered that they have been fooled by indulging in desires, there are others who have been equally fooled by making senseless efforts to deny themselves all bodily comforts. These efforts are also doomed to failure because they do not address the Mind, where the problem lies. 

In this verse certain torturous methods of inviting bodily discomfort are used to check one’s desires. 

A renunciant may not have a proper home, a proper place to rest. His body is exposed to heat of sun in the day and to the cold during the night as he sleeps under the sky.

Swami Sivananda writes on the extreme levels of endurance to which a sadhu puts himself in Hardwar/ Hrishikesh.

He even writes more extreme steps of self-denial where he describes that a sadhu, almost naked with no cloth to wear even in extreme winter, also subjects himself to lashes which he causes to himself with a whip in his hand.

And, even while or after subjecting his body to such a torture / self-denial, the purpose apparently being to rise above body consciousness, the same sadhu, seated with his bowl / hands raised to get food from passerby, gets instantly provoked when a beautiful female passes by and bows down to him and offers him money / food.

All these self-denial methods ignore the root cause of problem. The main problem is in mind and if analyzed further, all the problems caused in one’s mind is due to one’s ego.

A pure mind will not think of the techniques described above. Only a Rajasic or Tamasic mind, which does not have the power to grasp the essence of what scriptures are trying to say, will reveal its lack of understanding by adopting such methods of austerity. 

In this whole process, Desire remains untouched! 

Sage Sivananda seated in Ananda kutir, writes or rather sums up the essence of this entire verse, while writing about such sadhus thus;-

“What is required is mental nudity, not physical nudity”.

What does this line mean?

Be pure in your heart, keep your mind free / naked, without the attire of desires, hatred, attachment and fear. 

King Janaka achieved this mental nudity, even while acting as King of Mithila, with many wives, enjoying all the comforts of a King. 

Dear Readers,

If we apply this verse to our spiritual sadhana, then what this verse reveals to us in a subtler manner if we are able to contemplate and grasp the essence??

·     The extreme endurance described above can be compared to the pilgrimage we undertake, the fasting we undertake, continuous loud chanting of chosen mantra that we do, the practice of keeping awake during the entire Shivaratri night that some of us undertake. 

      Readers can imagine / think of many such extreme austerities that they undertake or they have observed some others undertake.

·    While all these austerities are not condemned at all, the purpose behind all these austerities is to rise above desires and to arraign purity of mind.

·    Even with such austerities, one is not able to control or transcend one’s desires at mental level, as described in the case of a sadhu when he happens to look at a beautiful woman, then all such austerities lose their very purpose. 

    Meditation / prayers lose their sanctity if one is thinking of all the issues that have to be solved in his office that day, fasting loses its purpose when one forsakes main course during fasting but keeps filling his belly with fruits, juices etc, keeping awake on a shivaratri night loses its purpose when one switches on youtube to watch few entertaining movies so that he can keep himself awake,  then,  there is no use of keeping silence for few hours daily/during some auspicious day,  if the mind is noisy and is traveling here and there!

·  Silence is often understood as silence of words. Silence in terms of speech is only 25% silence achieved. Real silence is silencing our mind, eliminating or at least reducing our thought flow. 

O mind, get within.  Seek the Lord within. In Tamil, we address God as Kadavul which in essence means, Kada + Ul or Remain + Within!

For how many more births are you going to search for peace, Bliss, for temporary satisfaction in million things in the world. 

Believe and practice Sai’s words, “True happiness is within”.

Love.

Bhaja Govindam - Post 16

Verse 15

अङ्गं गलितं पलितं मुण्डं दशनविहीनं जातं तुण्डम् ।

वृद्धो याति गृहीत्वा दण्डं तदपि न मुञ्चत्याशापिण्डम् ॥१५॥

angaṁ galitaṁ palitaṁ muṇḍaṁ

daśanavihīnaṁ jātaṁ tuṇḍam,

vrddho yāti gṛhītvā daṇḍaṁ

tadapi na muñcatyāśāpiṇḍam.

(The body has weakened; the head has turned grey; the mouth has become toothless; the old man moves about with his staff. Even then, he does not give up his bundle of hopes and desires.)

Many people have been tricked into the belief that by fulfilling their desires they will be able to bring them to an end. No one has been able to get rid of desires by fulfilling them. That philosophy has deluded many people. 

Initial 3 lines of this verse show the physical signs of over-indulgence in one’s body. 

Man, ignorant of his divine nature, binds himself to his physical identity and starts glorifying his physical charm in his youth and when he crosses his youth and steps into the next stage as a man.

Anybody born in this world as a human being, must go through the six stages of existence-birth-growth-disease-decay and finally death.

However, a human being, when he / she reaches his 40s and then his 50s, they fail to accept that their physical charm is diminishing and he is reaching the stage of disease in the six stages explained above.

However, the desire to enjoy even with such  a derelict body  does not  leave  them and hence, they  indulge in efforts to look young, feel young, rejuvenate themselves, bolster their energy levels with artificial drugs, etc. 

People will lift heaven and earth to find some way of enjoying pleasures. No one accepts that decay, old age and death are part of the package we were born into. 

Instead of finding satisfaction, people merely find addiction. Not only that, they lose the power of their senses. Their bodies take the strain by appearing ragged and aged years before the proper time. 

Desires can never end by fulfilling them. And the reason for the same is that desires belong to the Mind, the mind can still be ‘young’ in an old body. Desires live with us till death, and are taken with us into our next birth! For they are not a function of the body but of the Mind. 

Reaching a step beyond the literal meaning of the verse, one has to address to all the problem caused due to their mind.

Spiritual sadhana in any of the path - Karma or Bhakti or Jnana - has to be pursued by man not when he has to lean on others for support, as the verse says, but in his young age, when he is physically strong and mentally capable and intellectually sharp.

Mind which takes him to the world has to be diverted and channelized towards God through spiritual sadhana.

Love.