Vairagya
Running away from life is cowardice, retiring to a jungle, non-appreciation of things around and about us, denial of bare necessities of body - these are not vairagya.
As a result of one's
discriminative capacity (viveka), when one differentiates between the real and
the unreal in the world outside or in the world within, all false values
automatically drop off.
When once a thing is understood to
be full of bitterness, pain and imperfection, rare is the man who will continue
to court it.
Thus, vairagya born out of viveka
is what is called as detachment.
The author (in his teens)
interacted with a sanyasi while he was in mathura. The sanyasi was from west
and had opted for sanyas and was staying in Brindavan in an ashram. He was
young and energetic.
Author asked him one question-
"If you ever happen to like a girl and want to marry her, what would you
do"?
The answer was- "I shall
leave this sanyas and marry the girl".
The reason for narrating this
incident is not to undermine that sanyasi but to drive home one point strongly.
If the sanyas is taken up out
of differentiating between real and unreal and out of a strong conviction to
discard this world and take up spiritual sadhana and evolve spiritually to
realize SELF, then the possibility of marrying would have never ever been there
for that westerner turned sanyasi.
We see girls / woman belonging
to different religions embracing Christianity / Buddhism, becoming
nun or a Buddhist monk etc. The reason for such a change in few
cases, if enquired, would be more often failure in love or any such thing.
This running away
from life and taking up as nun / monk is not born out of viveka, an
unshakable conviction to leave the material world and to take the
spiritual path.
How Vairagya Dawns
Note how Vairagya arises in the
mind. The transitory and perishable nature of all things creates a sort of
disgust in all minds and, in proportion to the depth and subtlety of nature,
this reaction from the world works more or less powerfully in the mind of every
individual.
An irresistible feeling arises in
our mind, viz., that the finite can never satisfy the Infinite within us, that
the changing and perishable cannot satisfy the changeless and deathless nature
of ours.
More on the subject in next post.
Love.
