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Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 4

My notes excerpted from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 4

(Notes are in the order in which they appear from Volume 1 to 9)

In the world’s ritualistic symbols we have an expression of the religious thought of humanity. It is easy to say that there is no use of rituals and temples and all such paraphernalia; every baby says that in modern times. But it must be easy for all to see that those who worship inside a temple are in many respects different from those who will not worship there. Therefore the association of particular temples, rituals, and other concrete forms with particular religions has a tendency to bring into the minds of the followers of those religions the thoughts for which those concrete things stand as symbols; and it is not wise to ignore rituals and symbology altogether. The study and practice of these things form naturally a part of Karma-Yoga.

Our duty to others means helping others; doing good to the world. Why should we do good to the world? Apparently to help the world, but really to help ourselves.

Yet we must do good; the desire to do good is the highest motive power we have, if we know all the time that it is a privilege to help others.

It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the giver. Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect.

We think that we have helped some man and expect him to thank us, and because he does not, unhappiness comes to us. Why should we expect anything in return for what we do? Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellow men? If we were really unattached, we should escape all this pain of vain expectation, and could cheerfully do good work in the world. Never will unhappiness or misery come through work done without attachment.

First, we have to bear in mind that we are all debtors to the world and the world does not owe us anything. It is a great privilege for all of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. In helping the world we really help ourselves. The second point is that there is a God in this universe. It is not true that this universe is drifting and stands in need of help from you and me. God is ever present therein, He is undying and eternally active and infinitely watchful. When the whole universe sleeps, He sleeps not; He is working incessantly; all the changes and manifestations of the world are His. Thirdly, we ought not to hate anyone. This world will always continue to be a mixture of good and evil. Our duty is to sympathise with the weak and to love even the wrongdoer. The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually. Fourthly, we ought not to be fanatics of any kind, because fanaticism is opposed to love.

According to Karma-Yoga, the action one has done cannot be destroyed until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop it from yielding its results.

The cause must have its effect; nothing can prevent or restrain this.

He who in good action sees that there is something evil in it, and in the midst of evil sees that there is something good in it somewhere, has known the secret of work.

Man thinks foolishly that he can make himself happy, and after years of struggle finds out at last that true happiness consists in killing selfishness and that no one can make him happy except himself.

Both Pravritti and Nivritti are of the nature of work: the former is evil work, and the latter is good work. This Nivritti is the fundamental basis of all morality and all religion, and the very perfection of it is entire self-abnegation, readiness to sacrifice mind and body and everything for another being. When a man has reached that state, he has attained to the perfection of Karma-Yoga. This is the highest result of good works.

So you may find that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation.

Know that you are separated entirely from the world, though you are in the world, and that whatever you may be doing in it, you are not doing that for your own sake. Any action that you do for yourself will bring its effect to bear upon you. If it is a good action, you will have to take the good effect, and if bad, you will have to take the bad effect; but any action that is not done for your own sake, whatever it be, will have no effect on you.

To work properly, therefore, you have first to give up the idea of attachment. Secondly, do not mix in the fray, hold yourself as a witness and go on working.

When you have trained your mind and your nerves to realise this idea of the world’s non-dependence on you or on anybody, there will then be no reaction in the form of pain resulting from work.

Nothing has power over the Self of man, until the Self becomes a fool and loses independence. So, by non-attachment, you overcome and deny the power of anything to act upon you.

Our various Yogas do not conflict with each other; each of them leads us to the same goal and makes us perfect. Only each has to be strenuously practiced. The whole secret is in practicing.

Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple. Each one of our Yogas is fitted to make man perfect even without the help of the others, because they have all the same goal in view. The Yogas of work, of wisdom, and of devotion are all capable of serving as direct and independent means for the attainment of Moksha. “Fools alone say that work and philosophy are different, not the learned.” The learned know that, though apparently different from each other, they at last lead to the same goal of human perfection.

***

Drona: His Students and Not

It is instrumental to understand Dronacharya the teacher, his loyalties to Hastinapur and the throne, and his treatment of various students to understand the character and its motivations.

There was no doubt that Dronacharya had a favourable attitude towards two students, Ashwatthama and Arjuna. Out of them, Arjuna was probably his favourite student if one discounts the fact that Ashwatthama was his son. Drona bestowed Arjuna with the best skills, and impressed with his talent, dedication and character, promised to make him the best archer in the world.

But beyond the teaching, Drona hadn’t quite forgotten the anger he had on Dhrupad, and it turned out to be a motivator for him for a long time. When the Pandavas and Kauravas finished their education and it was time for the guru dakshina – the repayment fee so to speak. Drona asked the princes to repay him by defeating Dhrupad.

Duryodhana, always driven by insecurity, was the first to march ahead, to prove a point over the Pandavas, who, as per Arjuna’s strategic brain, stayed back a bit. Duryodhana found it tough to face the mighty army of Panchala, and had to return back empty handed. It was then that Arjuna unleashed his skills and, along with Bhima, terrorized the Panchala army, captured Dhrupad and brought him, defeated and arrested, in front of Dronacharya. Drona felt that his pupils had helped complete his revenge. He taunted Dhrupad that, unlike him, he will keep his promise and return half his kingdom, despite the fact that Dhrupad, having lost his kingdom, was now lower in status than Drona. Dhrupad fumed within but had no way than to tolerate it. What Drona thought was the end of his revenge became the start of Dhrupad’s.

Dhrupad knew that with his strength reduced, and with the skilled princes in Hastinapur, there was no way he could succeed by exercising any military options to exact his revenge on Dronacharya. Therefore he took to the brahminical way of sacrifice. He approached two renunciant brothers known to perform sacrifices for such gains and through those sacrifices was born Drishtadyumna, whose life’s purpose was to exact revenge for his father Dhrupad by killing Dronacharya. At the same time, Dhrupad’s strategic brain was impressed with Arjuna, and his sacrifice also led to the birth of Panchali or Draupadi, who Dhrupad wished to marry Arjuna.

Therefore, he had two purposes fulfilled from the sacrifice. One was to safeguard his kingdom by having an alliance with the Pandavas through his daughter, Draupadi, marrying the best archer in the world, Arjuna. Second was to seek personal revenge on Dronacharya through his warrior son, Drishtadyumna. In a sense, like so many things in the epic, this was preordained and reached its fruition towards the later parts of the epic.

But the greatness of Dronacharya as a teacher is reflected when Drishtadyumna approached him as a student. Knowing fully well about Dhrupad’s sacrifice and its outcome, as well as the purpose of Drishtadyumna’s life, Drona focused on his duty as a teacher and evaluated the student on his merits and decided to accept him. In a sense, some of those very skills he would impart on Drishtadyumna ran the risk of being used against him. But despite that, the teacher didn’t reject Drishtadyumna. This is particularly instructive because Drona did reject a few illustrious students.

The most illustrious of students he rejected was Karna. That was primarily due to the same reason that Karna faced rejection everywhere, and that was his birth in a charioteer family. At that time, it wasn’t clear that Karna would be a threat to Arjuna so that wasn’t the reason. It was mainly a disqualification based on entry criteria that were understandably stringent for the best school of warfare then. Drona perhaps decided that the resources he had were best used to train students who would have the best chance to use them as future princes, kings or warriors. Little did he know then that Karna would end up being a fierce warrior himself.

Another student rejected by Drona but someone who didn’t take the rejection lightly was Ekalavya. Ekalavya, though, went ahead and secretly practised the skills taught by Drona. He was discovered only later when Drona found his astonishing skills in stopping a dog from barking by closing his mouth with arrows without hurting or killing the animal. When asked who his teacher was, he said it was Drona. If I am your teacher, I need the guru dakshina, Drona claimed. He asked Ekalavya for his right thumb which Ekalavya instantly cut and gave to his self appointed teacher.

It is said that Drona had rejected Ekalavya, initially, despite his talents, and later, asked for his thumb on discovering his skills, due to Ekalavya being a threat to Arjuna. There is no doubt that Drona’s favourite student was Arjuna but it doesn’t fit entirely into Drona’s character as he accepted Drishtadyumna. His rejection of Ekalavya may have been more complex than that. It may have been a case of entry criteria first and then about his loyalty to Hastinapur. For that we need to know Ekalavya and his background.

Ekalavya came from the Nishad community that was known to be outcast due to being law and order problems. Moreover, his father was a general in the army of Jarasandha, a demon king who had a long enmity with Krishna and the Yadu dynasty. As Kunti was Krishna’s aunt, Jarasandha was against Hastinapur too. In that sense, Drona perceived that Ekalavya and his skills could be bad for the throne and misused. In a sense his loyalties to Hastinapur came into play. At the same time, as a teacher, he helped Ekalavya’s karmic account by not imparting him with those skills which could be misused, despite his talent.

In that sense, Drona, born out of an accident, became Dronacharya, a teacher by accident. But once entrenched as the royal teacher of celestial warfare, he performed his duties to produce wards that he could be proud of. It was a different matter, perhaps a combination of his own motivations and of destiny, that, like Bheeshma, his loyalty to the throne of Hastinapur overtook his primary identity of being a brahmin teacher of warfare. So much so that, in the final war, he found himself fighting on the side that was against his favourite student, his foremost opponent and the Lord Himself.

***

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 3

My notes excerpted from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 3

(Notes are in the order in which they appear from Volume 1 to 9)

It is the most difficult thing in this world to work and not care for the result, to help a man and never think that he ought to be grateful, to do some good work and at the same time never look to see whether it brings you name or fame, or nothing at all.

If you want to be a householder, hold your life a sacrifice for the welfare of others; and if you choose the life of renunciation, do not even look at beauty and money and power. Each is great in his own place, but the duty of the one is not the duty of the other.

Spiritual knowledge is the only thing that can destroy our miseries for ever; any other knowledge satisfies wants only for a time. It is only with the knowledge of the spirit that the faculty of want is annihilated for ever; so helping man spiritually is the highest help that can be given to him.

The miseries of the world cannot be cured by physical help only. Until man’s nature changes, these physical needs will always arise, and miseries will always be felt, and no amount of physical help will cure them completely. The only solution of this problem is to make mankind pure.

Work, but let not the action or the thought produce a deep impression on the mind. Let the ripples come and go, let huge actions proceed from the muscles and the brain, but let them not make any deep impression on the soul.

Therefore, be “unattached”; let things work; let brain centres work; work incessantly, but let not a ripple conquer the mind. Work as if you were a stranger in this land, a sojourner; work incessantly, but do not bind yourselves; bondage is terrible.

The whole gist of this teaching is that you should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do slave’s work.

Selfish work is slave’s work; and here is a test. Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction. Real existence, real knowledge, and real love are eternally connected with one another, the three in one: where one of them is, the others also must be; they are the three aspects of the One without a second — the Existence – Knowledge – Bliss.

When you have succeeded in loving your husband, your wife, your children, the whole world, the universe, in such a manner that there is no reaction of pain or jealousy, no selfish feeling, then you are in a fit state to be unattached.

Krishna says, “Look at Me, Arjuna! If I stop from work for one moment, the whole universe will die. I have nothing to gain from work; I am the one Lord, but why do I work? Because I love the world.” God is unattached because He loves; that real love makes us unattached.

To attain this unattachment is almost a life-work, but as soon as we have reached this point, we have attained the goal of love and become free; the bondage of nature falls from us, and we see nature as she is; she forges no more chains for us; we stand entirely free and take not the results of work into consideration; who then cares for what the results may be?

Do you ask anything from your children in return for what you have given them? It is your duty to work for them, and there the matter ends. In whatever you do for a particular person, a city, or a state, assume the same attitude towards it as you have towards your children — expect nothing in return. If you can invariably take the position of a giver, in which everything given by you is a free offering to the world, without any thought of return, then will your work bring you no attachment. Attachment comes only where we expect a return.

If working like slaves results in selfishness and attachment, working as master of our own mind gives rise to the bliss of non-attachment.

All thought of obtaining return for the work we do hinders our spiritual progress; nay, in the end it brings misery.

Now you see what Karma-Yoga means; even at the point of death to help any one, without asking questions. Be cheated millions of times and never ask a question, and never think of what you are doing. Never vaunt of  your gifts to the poor or expect their gratitude, but rather be grateful to them for giving you the occasion of practicing charity to them. Thus it is plain that to be an ideal householder is a much more difficult task than to be an ideal Sannyasin; the true life of work is indeed as hard as, if not harder than, the equally true life of renunciation.

Any action that makes us go Godward is a good action, and is our duty; any action that makes us go downward is evil, and is not our duty.

I am not the standard of the universe. I have to accommodate myself to the world, and not the world to me.

Let us do that duty which is ours by birth; and when we have done that, let us do the duty which is ours by our position in life and in society.

Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; it is a continuous friction otherwise. How else could parents do their duties to their children, husbands to their wives, and vice versa? Do we not meet with cases of friction every day in our lives? Duty is sweet only through love, and love shines in freedom alone.

The only way to rise is by doing the duty next to us, and thus gathering strength go on until we reach the highest state.

It is the worker who is attached to results that grumbles about the nature of the duty which has fallen to his lot; to the unattached worker all duties are equally good, and form efficient instruments with which selfishness and sensuality may be killed, and the freedom of the soul secured.

***

The Dip

Recently I read another Seth Godin book titled “The Dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick)”. Though I would not classify it in the same category as ‘The Practice’ or ‘This is Marketing’, it nevertheless is a very good book with a lot of wise one-liners that are typical of Seth Godin’s writing.

Here, I have compiled and reproduced a few of them that I found profound and stuck with me.

Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most. Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.

The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.

The Cul-de-Sac (French for “dead end”) is so simple it doesn’t even need a chart. It’s a situation where you work and you work and you work and nothing much changes. It doesn’t get a lot better, it doesn’t get a lot worse. It just is.

Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources. That’s it.

The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.

If you’re going to quit, quit before you start. Reject the system. Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world.

The decision to quit or not is a simple evaluation: Is the pain of the Dip worth the benefit of the light at the end of the tunnel?

The best quitters, as we’ve seen, are the ones who decide in advance when they’re going to quit.

To succeed, to get to that light at the end of the tunnel, you’ve got to make some sort of forward progress, no matter how small.

Figure out how much pressure you’ve got available, then pick your tire. Not too big, not too small.

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 2

My notes excerpted from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 2

(Notes are in the order in which they appear from Volume 1 to 9)

It is an insult to a starving people to offer them religion; it is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics.

The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air and water are placed around it. Does the seed become the earth; or the air, or the water? No. It becomes a plant, it develops after the law of its own growth, assimilates the air, the earth, and the water, converts them into plant substance, and grows into a plant.

Similar is the case with religion. The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth.

All knowledge, therefore, secular or spiritual, is in the human mind. In many cases it is not discovered, but remains covered, and when the covering is being slowly taken off, we say, “We are learning,” and the advance of knowledge is made by the advance of this process of uncovering.

Like fire in a piece of flint, knowledge exists in the mind; suggestion is the friction which brings it out. So with all our feelings and action — our tears and our smiles, our joys and our griefs, our weeping and our laughter, our curses and our blessings, our praises and our blames — every one of these we may find, if we calmly study our own selves, to have been brought out from within ourselves by so many blows. The result is what we are. All these blows taken together are called Karma — work, action.

Our Karma determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate. We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.

If a man works without any selfish motive in view, does he not gain anything? Yes, he gains the highest. Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it. It is more paying from the point of view of health also. Love, truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. In the first place, a man who can work for five days, or even for five minutes, without any selfish motive whatever, without thinking of future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind, has in him the capacity to become a powerful moral giant. It is hard to do it, but in the heart of our hearts we know its value, and the good it brings. It is the greatest manifestation of power — this tremendous restraint; self-restraint is a manifestation of greater power than all outgoing action.

All outgoing energy following a selfish motive is frittered away; it will not cause power to return to you; but if restrained, it will result in development of power.

Let the man, who knows no better, work for selfish ends, for name and fame; but everyone should always try to get towards higher and higher motives and to understand them. “To work we have the right, but not to the fruits thereof:” Leave the fruits alone. Why care for results? If you wish to help a man, never think what that man’s attitude should be towards you. If you want to do a great or a good work, do not trouble to think what the result will be.

The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint, he has controlled himself.

We must do the work and find out the motive power that prompts us; and, almost without exception, in the first years, we shall find that our motives are always selfish; but gradually this selfishness will melt by persistence, till at last will come the time when we shall be able to do really unselfish work.

In every man there are these three forces. Sometimes Tamas prevails. We become lazy, we cannot move, we are inactive, bound down by certain ideas or by mere dullness. At other times activity prevails, and at still other times that calm balancing of both.

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.

Such is the central idea of Karma-Yoga. The Karma-Yogi is the man who understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also knows that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power in actual possession, and also what is called the resisting of evil is but a step on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power, namely, non-resistance. Before reaching this highest ideal, man’s duty is to resist evil; let him work, let him fight, let him strike straight from the shoulder. Then only, when he has gained the power to resist, will non-resistance be a virtue.

Inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means resistance. Resist all evils, mental and physical; and when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come.

Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered   and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender.

Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it. That is a surer way of progress than taking up other men’s ideals, which he can never hope to accomplish.

***

The Science of Mind Management

Here are some excerpts from the book ‘The Science of Mind Management’ by Swami Mukundananda:

Our mind is the single-most important factor that determines the quality of our life. Successfully controlled, it becomes our best alloy, but if allowed to run wild, it steals our inner peace and undermines all our productive endeavours.

We experience both happiness and distress because of the state of our mind.

What are thoughts? They are subtle bundles of energy created in the factory of the mind.

Like diligent horticulturists, we must carefully weed out all kinds of negative thoughts that sprout, such as anger, greed, hatred, envy, illusion, fear, and anxiety, from the orchard of our mind.

The mind is the cause of bondage, and the mind is the cause of liberation.

Agitation by physical objects is possible only as long as desires for them are present in the mind. If these desires are vanquished from within, then external objects no longer hold sway over us.

The difference between our needs and our wants is created by greed.

Imagine how blissful life would be with the wealth of inner contentment that would come if we could free ourselves from greed.

To want, log, or hope for something is kamana (desire).

The cause for anger is the obstruction of desire.

The uncommonly known secret of this world is that desire can never be eliminated by satiating it.

If you satisfy desire, it results in greed.

That person who eradicates wants and becomes situated in a state of contentment becomes like God.

Where does desire originate from? The answer is that when our mind is attached to something, we experience desire for it. The cause of desire is attachment. The mind is a frequent visitor to the things and people it is most devoted to.

It is our attachment to an object, not its intrinsic properties, which create desire for it.

If we harbour attachment, it will lead to desire; from desire will arise anger and greed.

What is the cause of attachment? When our mind repeatedly revises the thought, ‘there is happiness in this object or person’, our mind develops attachment to that object or person.

By repeated contemplation of happiness in the objects of the senses, one develops attachment to them. Attachment creates desire, and from desire arises anger.

***

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 1

My notes excerpted from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Notes 1

(Notes are in the order in which they appear from Volume 1 to 9)

We know that all religions alike, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, are but so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite.

India is at one with the most puritan faiths of the world in her declaration that progress is from seen to unseen, from the many to the One, from the low to the high, from the form to the formless, and never in the reverse direction.

She differs only in having a word of sympathy and promise for every sincere conviction, wherever and whatever it may be, as constituting a step in the great ascent.

It must never be forgotten that it was the Swami Vivekananda who, while proclaiming the sovereignty of the Advaita Philosophy, as including that experience in which all is one, without a second, also added to Hinduism the doctrine that Dvaita, Vishishtâdvaita, and Advaita are but three phases or stages in a single development, of which the last-named constitutes the goal. This is part and parcel of the still greater and more simple doctrine that the many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the mind at different times and in different attitudes; or as Sri Ramakrishna expressed the same thing, “God is both with form and without form. And He is that which includes both form and formlessness.”

If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realisation. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid.

These, then — the Shâstras, the Guru, and the Motherland — are the three notes that mingle themselves to form the music of the works of Vivekananda. These are the treasure which it is his to offer. These furnish him with the ingredients whereof he compounds the world’s heal-all of his spiritual bounty. These are the three lights burning within that single lamp which India by his hand lighted and set up, for the guidance of her own children and of the world in the few years of work between September 19, 1893 and July 4, 1902.

From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists, and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu’s religion.

Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is located in the body, and that death means the change of this centre from body to body.

Why should the free, perfect, and pure being be thus under the thraldom of matter, is the next question. How can the perfect soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect?

How can the perfect become the quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute, change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shelter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion; and his answer is: “I do not know. I do not know how the perfect being, the soul, came to think of itself as imperfect, as joined to and conditioned by matter.”

“Hear, ye children of immortal bliss! even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again.”

And what is His nature? He is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful.

And how to worship Him? Through love.

It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love’s sake, and the prayer goes: “Lord, I do not want wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth, but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward — love unselfishly for love’s sake.”

My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association, the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you, it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent.

Man is to become divine by realising the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood: but on and on he must progress.

“External worship, material worship,” say the scriptures, “is the lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realised.”

If a man can realise his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth.

The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realised, or thought of, or stated, through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols — so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for every one, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong.

***

 

The Enemy Within

“I think Raichand is back to his shenanigans,” Swami said when we met at the café the other day. Jigneshbhai and I stayed silent. In the past, we had seen Swami suffer due to his boss Raichand’s penchant for making money by hook or by crook.

“He wants me to talk to some placement consultant and evaluate the agency,” Swami continued. “I suspect this has got something to do with the hiring budget Raichand has got approved for this year,” Swami mused with a lot of ugly memories from the past. We sipped our coffees in silence.

“What is it that makes perfectly sane and intelligent people do things that they know are not to be done?” Jigneshbhai asked me and Swami as he finished his coffee.

“Hmm.. Like Raichand? I wish I knew,” Swami replied.

Jigneshbhai looked up surprised.

“Most people have a good sense of right and wrong, good and bad,” he replied. “What makes them do the things that they know aren’t right?”

Swami rolled his eyes and remarked, “I am not sure Raichand has that sense.” He further asked, “Otherwise why would he keep doing this kind of nonsense stuff for some petty greed?”

Jigneshbhai and I could sense his dismay.

“Lying and playing games. Hiding stuff, not being transparent. All this crookedness that I see in people like Raichand or Somasekhar. I wonder why they do it,” Swami mused, referring to two of his favourite bete noire.

“Yeah, it is inexplicable. Perfectly sane, intelligent people, doing well in life, having no reason to do such things. Why do you think they do it?,” Jigneshbhai asked with his usual curiosity, laced with wonder and an iota of scepticism.

“Lack of willpower or discipline?” Swami ventured a guess.

“Well, they seem to have a lot of it, when it comes to other things,” Jigneshbhai said.

“Easy way out? Greed? Incentive to not work hard?” Swami gave a few more options.

“Well, these are highly motivated, even disciplined, people otherwise in many ways,” Jigneshbhai countered Swami.

“What else then? Genetics? The company they keep?” Swami was running out of options for sure.

“Hmm.. Nothing in their family suggests so,” Jigneshbhai still didn’t agree. “There must be something else.”

That’s when we heard Deja say, err bark, something. Swami scrambled for a pen and paper. He wrote what Deja barked.

“It is who you are. You have an enemy within,” Swami read out, converting the spiritual dog’s barks to words.

Jigneshbhai and I intently listened. This time we were the ones musing over it. Deja continued to bark, and Swami continued to write.

“You have a three-level existence; body, mind and consciousness,” Deja told Swami, as Jigneshbhai and I looked on in awe. Deja sounded like the real spiritual guru that he claimed he had been in his past life before he became a dog.

I could see that Swami had a look of awestruck pride about Deja, his spiritual guru from a past life, throwing out truisms and gems like it was nobody’s business.

He had a newfound sense of ownership over Deja in his eyes as he wrote what the spiritual dog guru said. But as he read on, that ownership slowly dwindled.

“That existence is like hardware, software and user,” he read out with a confused expression, rechecking if he had noted the words correctly or made an error.

Swami’s expression of pride now got tinged with a frown, unable to understand if he or Deja had got something wrong.

Why had Deja changed topics from spirituality to technology? Swami wondered. But Deja continued to bark, and Swami continued to read out.

“The you you think are not the you you are. You are above those yous you think,” Swami read, now with a look of concern. Jigneshbhai and I wondered what Deja had for breakfast. But Swami continued reading what Deja had said.

“The lower yous are taking you astray. Rise above to the real you. The other lower…umm.. yous are the enemy within the..err.. higher you,” Swami stuttered.

The earlier pride on Swami’s face now changed to embarrassment. He mentally disowned Deja, perhaps. The frequent you-you reminded us that Deja was, after all, a dog. But we didn’t say anything.

“The outer you is the.. well, hardware. The inner you is the software. The real ..umm.. you is neither. And it is.. err.. corrupted by the hardware and software,” Deja continued and Swami read, while Jigneshbhai and I rolled our eyes.

“So neglect those.. umm.. yous that are not the real.. err.. you. They are the enemy within you,” Swami read and sat down.

Jigneshbhai and I were more likely to neglect Deja instead of the various you’s he wanted us to neglect. We stole awkward glances with Swami ensuring Deja wasn’t watching. I could see that Swami was as lost as we were. No wonder these spiritual gurus go nuts after a while, I thought.

Swami was relieved and felt happy that his spiritual guru from a past life had become a dog. If Deja went nuts, as he seemed to have as of now, Swami could, at worst, let him bark rather than listen to his you-you.

With that thought, Swami turned his attention to a muffin. After such a you-you experience, some stress relief was required. Jigneshbhai and I also munched our muffins in silence. I can’t say which of our yous were silent and which you was enjoying the taste. But be that as it may.

“There is an enemy within, which spurs you,” we heard all of a sudden while we were gainfully engaged in the muffins.

For a moment, I dreaded that Deja had started speaking in a human voice without Swami doing the bark to words conversion. But thankfully that was not the case. I turned around to find the wealthy, old man standing next to us. It was he who was doing the talking.

With all our inner and outer yous, hardware and software entirely engrossed in the muffin, we had not noticed him walk towards us and talk.

Deja seemed to have had an influence on him. As he walked out with Deja, he turned around, looked at us, and said, “All of us have an enemy within that spurs us to act in crooked ways. Neglect the enemy within and he will then become your friend.”

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Vedanta in Practice, Its Goal and Universality

My notes from ‘Vedanta: Voice of Freedom” – a selected compilation from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.

“Vedanta in Practice”, “Goal of Vedanta” and “Universality of Vedanta” – Chapter Highlights reproduced below:

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The less the thought of the body, the better. For it is the body that drags us down. It is attachment, identification, that makes us miserable. That is the secret: to think that I am the Spirit and not the body, and that the whole of this universe, with all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is but as a series of paintings— scenes on a canvas— of which I am the witness.

The truth has to be heard, then reflected upon, and then to be constantly asserted. Think always, “I am Brahman.” Every other thought must be cast aside as weakening.

Infinite manifestation dividing itself in portions still remains infinite, and each portion is infinite.

I will ask you to understand that Vedanta, though it is intensely practical, is always so in the sense of the ideal. It does not preach an impossible ideal, however high it be, and it is high enough for an ideal. In one word, this ideal is that you are divine. “Thou art That.” This is the essence of Vedanta.

The central ideal of Vedanta is oneness. We must not look down with contempt on others. All of us are going toward the same goal. The difference between weakness and strength is one of degree. The difference between virtue and vice is one of degree. The difference between heaven and hell is one of degree. The difference between life and death is one of degree. All differences in this world are of degree and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything. All is One, which manifests Itself either as thought or life or soul or body, and the difference is only in degree. As such, we have no right to look down with contempt upon those who are not developed exactly in the same degree as we are. Condemn none. If you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

Real activity, which is the goal of Vedanta, is combined with eternal calmness, the calmness that cannot be ruffled, the balance of mind that is never disturbed, whatever happens.

The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do.

Vedanta does not, in reality, denounce the world. The ideal of renunciation nowhere attains such a height as in the teachings of Vedanta. But at the same time, dry suicidal advice is not intended. It really means deification of the world— giving up the world as we think of it, as we know it, as it appears to us, and knowing what it really is. Deify it. It is God alone.

So do your work, says Vedanta. It first advises us how to work: by giving up— giving up the apparent, illusive world. What is meant by that? Seeing God everywhere. Thus do you work. Desire to live a hundred years. Have all earthly desires if you wish, only deify them, convert them into heaven. Have the desire to live a long life of helpfulness, of blissfulness and activity, on this earth. Thus working, you will find the way out. There is no other way.

When there is a conflict between the heart and the brain, let the heart be followed, because intellect has only one state, reason, and within that, intellect works and cannot get beyond. It is the heart that takes one to the highest plane, which intellect can never reach. It goes beyond intellect and reaches what is called inspiration. The intellect can never become inspired. Only the heart, when it is enlightened, becomes inspired.

It is the heart that reaches the goal. Follow the heart. A pure heart sees beyond the intellect. It gets inspired. It knows things that reason can never know. Whenever there is conflict between the pure heart and the intellect, always side with the pure heart, even if you think what your heart is doing is unreasonable.

The pure heart is the best mirror for the reflection of truth, so all these disciplines are for the purification of the heart.

When a person attains these three— a human birth, a strong desire for liberation, and the grace of an illumined soul— then his longing for Self- knowledge becomes intensified.

Be brave and be sincere, then follow any path with devotion, and you must reach the Lord. Lay hold of one link of the chain, and the whole chain must come by degrees. Water the roots of the tree— that is, reach the Lord— and the whole tree is watered. Getting the Lord, we get all.

Determine your own nature and stick to it. Nishtha [devotion to one ideal] is the only method for the beginner, but with devotion and sincerity it will lead to all.

Neither seek nor avoid. Take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing. Do not merely endure— be unattached.

Religion without philosophy runs into superstition. Philosophy without religion becomes dry atheism.

Man has an idea that there can be only one religion, that there can be only one Prophet, that there can be only one Incarnation, but that idea is not true. By studying the lives of all these great Messengers, we find that each was destined to play a part, as it were, and a part only— that the harmony consists in the sum total, and not in one note.

None can make a spiritual man of you. You have to teach yourself. Your growth must come from inside. What can an external teacher do? He can remove the obstructions a little, and there his duty ends. Therefore help, if you can, but do not destroy. Give up all ideas that you can make men spiritual. It is impossible. There is no other teacher to you than your own soul. Recognize this.

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Drona: Teacher of Warfare

The story of why the best teacher of Vedic culture was named Drona is a fantastic one.

Legend has it that Bharadwaja, the great seer, while having bath, once saw an Apsara, a celestial beauty named Gritachi, having a bath at the same spot. It was one of the rare occasions when even a saint of his standing couldn’t restrain his desire, and as a result, some of his seed found a way out of his body. Bharadwaja collected that seed and put it in a pot. Out of that pot was born a powerful son and because, he was born out of such a vessel, Bharadwaja named him Drona. Well, that’s the fantastic story, so let’s leave it at that. Let us turn to what that son did in his life, as that is more instrumental and, perhaps, more amenable to analysis.

Drona, though technically a brahmin, was interested more in warfare. Therefore, not only did he learn the scriptures at his father’s hermitage, but also became adept in the use and teaching of weapons and warfare. Agnivesh, another disciple of Bharadwaja, was his teacher and Drona learnt all he could from him. Drona is also said to have learnt the art of celestial weapons from Parashuram, thereby elevating him to a different league of teachers altogether.

At his father’s hermitage, he had a very good friend named Dhrupad. They were so close that while studying together, Dhrupad promised Drona that he will share everything he gets in life with him. This promise of childhood and, more importantly, hanging on to it, like so many other promises in the epic, turned out be instrumental in the life and eventual death of Drona.

Now it so happened that after they grew up, Drona and Dhrupad went their own ways but found themselves at different levels of stature in life. Dhrupad was a Kshatriya and became the King of Panchala, while Drona, though not a renunciant, ended up becoming a householder brahmin teacher, who found it difficult to make ends meet.

Drona married Kripi, the sister of Kripacharya, another exalted teacher of Hastinapur and had a son, Ashwatthama. One fine day, Drona saw other boys make fun of Ashwatthama as he couldn’t afford to drink milk, and that shook Drona out of his poor, hand to mouth existence. If not for himself, he felt he deserved to do better for his family. As a brahmin, he was no longer interested in living on alms, and proceeded to Panchala to remind his dear childhood friend Dhrupad of the promise he had made. Drona felt he was entitled to half the Panchala kingdom as per the promise, which was a tall expectation. But at the very least, he felt he deserved a generous maintenance from Dhrupad.

To his utter dismay and surprise, Dhrupad didn’t entertain any such requests. As such, Dhrupad was not an evil king nor was Drona an evil or materialistic man. But like so many other characters in the epic, they were not perfect and had their weak moments. Dhrupad hadn’t accounted for half his kingdom going away just due to a childhood promise he had long forgotten. Drona hung on to that promise obstinately. In the angry melee of arguments, Dhrupad insulted Drona saying that the promise was made when they were equals, and now that they weren’t equals, there was no obligation for him to keep that promise. At best, as a King who offers charity to brahmins, he could offer some charity to Drona so that he doesn’t die of poverty.

Drona wasn’t looking for charity. He got enraged and walked off warning Dhrupad that he will have to pay for this insult. Dhrupad neglected him but the furious Drona walked out with anger and revenge embedded in his heart. As it turned out, Drona reached Hastinapur looking for means of livelihood for his skills in warfare and teaching. When he reached there, he saw the five pandavas and the hundred kauravas playing with a ball. The ball had fallen in a well and the kids were distraught on how to get it back and resume play.

Drona saw it as an opportunity to display his amazing skills. He asked the princes if they could provide him food if he taught them how to get the ball out. At that point, it was Yudhishthira who promised Drona that not only could he arrange for food, but also take care of his maintenance for life. Much pleased, Drona caught hold of a few blades of grass. Using fantastic skills and chants, he threw them one after another, starting with the first one piercing into the ball. To the prince’s utter surprise, the blades of grass stuck to each other forming a rope which Drona then pulled and got the ball out. He then repeated a similar trick on his own ring and the princes were astonished.

They ran towards Bheeshma, their grandsire and father figure, and told him all about it. In a sense, Drona and Bheeshma knew about each other due to their common teacher Parashuram. Bheeshma instantly recognized Drona and requested him to take up the role of the teacher of the Pandavas and Kauravas, and to turn them into fierce and skilled warriors that Hastinapur needed. Drona was more than pleased and thus the greatest teacher of Vedic times, Dronacharya, made a start.

It is said that Dronacharya’s school was on the outskirts of the kingdom and, in present day geography, corresponds to Gurugram. Students from far and wide across the world, princes of prestigious kingdoms made a beeline at Dronacharya’s school, as his reputation grew by leaps and bounds.

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