The End of Sorrow

by Eknath Easwaran

  21. Realizing That which is indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchanging, how can we slay or cause another to slay?

  22. As we abandon worn-out clothes and acquire new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.

  In this homely verse, Sri Krishna says that just as when our clothes become old and tattered we throw them away to put on new ones, similarly, when this body has become unfit for serving others, it is time to throw it away. We should not cling to it. When Sri Ramana Maharshi’s body was about to fall away and thousands of his disciples begged him to continue on, he said, “No, this body is no longer able to serve you. As long as it can serve you, I will retain it, but when the time comes when it can no longer serve you, I am going to lay it aside.”

  One of the facts about my Granny’s life that I do not usually refer to is her attitude towards death. For her, death was not a painful topic because she believed so firmly that our real Self cannot die. In other words, even though we cannot but grieve when our dear ones pass away, the mystics tell us that underneath this grief we should always remember that death is only a change of rooms. They are speaking mostly against the background of transmigration, or reincarnation. We should all be aware, though, that the spiritual life does not depend on our acceptance of reincarnation, nor does meditation require that we subscribe to the theory of transmigration of souls. Whether we believe in one life or in a million lives, the supreme goal is valid; the basis of meditation remains valid for all. I would strongly discourage trying to speculate about previous or future lives; this life is headache enough. Let us confine our attention to this life and try as far as our capacity goes to learn to love the Lord here and now.

  23. The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it.

  24. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry; it is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity.

  25. The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought and beyond all change; knowing this, you should not grieve.

  Arjuna still does not grasp what Sri Krishna means by “our real Self, our Atman.” In this particular verse, the Lord is trying to awaken Arjuna, and all of us, to the truth of our existence. In referring to our real personality, which is divine, he uses three words beginning with a, which means ‘not’: avyakto ‘yam, acintyo ‘yam, avikaryo ‘yam. Avyakta means ‘that which is not expressed,’ ‘that which remains concealed.’ Our real personality is not revealed at all; it is very cunningly concealed. It is acintya, or unthinkable, because it is beyond the dualities of conceptual thinking. It is avikarya, beyond all change. Our real personality never grows because it is ever perfect. It is never enriched because it is always full. If we try to understand the applicability of these three terms to our own personality, we may begin to suspect that it lies beyond the fleeting body, beyond the turbulent senses, beyond the restless mind, beyond the clouded intellect.

  Avyakta comes from the word vyakta, which means ‘completely expressed,’ ‘manifested.’ We all look upon ourselves as only our apparent personality, the body-mind complex, never realizing our real personality, which is the infinite, immortal, immutable Atman. If someone were to ask us what we consider our personality, we would be likely to say that our height is six foot three, our weight two hundred twenty pounds. To this a sage like Sri Ramana Maharshi would say, “I did not ask you the dimensions of your house; I want you to tell me what your real personality is.” If we tell him that we have two million in the bank, the illumined man will say, “You haven’t answered my question.” If we add that we have won the Nobel prize, he would still say, “Don’t beat about the bush.”

  Meister Eckhart summarizes the truth of the Atman beautifully when he points out that the seed of God is latent in all of us. In Sanskrit it is called the Atman; Meister Eckhart prefers to use the homely expression “the seed of God.” He says that just as apple seeds grow into apple trees and pear seeds into pear trees, God seeds grow into God trees. The word avyakta implies that our only purpose in life is to reveal the divine personality that is concealed in all of us. The seed has to be helped to germinate, the weeds have to be removed regularly, and then the plant becomes a God tree.

  The question then arises as to how we can reveal this hidden divinity in our everyday life. To see what noxious weeds keep the seed of our true divinity from growing, we have only to look at people who are insecure, who dwell upon themselves. Such people look at everything, everyone, through their own personal needs; these are the people who say they are very, very sensitive. In my early days in Berkeley, one of the expressions that I heard often when I visited Telegraph Avenue was “I’m so sensitive.” According to this interpretation, “insensitive” refers to anybody who treads on my corns, although when I tread on another’s corns, I don’t even know it. In the language of the mystic, being sensitive means being sensitive to the needs of others. You will find that the more you attend to the needs of others, in your own family for example, the less you will get hurt, agitated, or hostile over seemingly trivial things.

  In a movie my wife and I saw recently, one that had been highly praised by critics, the daughter could not sleep one night just because her mother had repeated one question twice: “Have you forgotten my candy?” The daughter thought that her insomnia that night was a result of utter sensitiveness. Now, my mother often repeats herself half a dozen times – repetition runs in our family. And I don’t say she is casting aspersions on my integrity. I just say she knows I am an absentminded professor, and I am likely to forget things. As long as we are deeply convinced that our parents want only our happiness, that our partner or our children want only to add to our joy, things are not likely to upset us. My mother uses curt language at times, but under no circumstances would it occur to me to think that she is trying to vent some pent-up hostility or to take it out on me, say, because the milkman diluted the milk more than he is permitted to. Wherever there is not this deep faith in those around us, I think that no attempt at courtesy, no attempt to repeat the right words and phrases, will bring about clear communication. Whenever we get agitated or apprehensive in daily relationships, because of some remark, some act of omission or commission from those around us, the very best thing we can do is use the mantram.

  All of us are trying to build our personality on the short span of time in which we thrash about in the sensory world. During the Anglo-Saxon period, a few Christian emissaries came to England to preach the gospel of Christ. One of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Edwin, took counsel with his advisors over the new faith. It must have been a bitter winter evening, with snow outside and torches lighting up the hall, for the answer Edwin received is as evocative as it is thoughtful. “My lord,” one man replied, “it has often seemed to me that we live like a swallow that suddenly darts through this hall at dinnertime and passes out again through a far window. It comes from the darkness and returns to darkness; for only a short while is it warm and safe from the winter weather. That is how I regard our life. I don’t know where I have come from; all I know is a little span of light, until I pass again into the darkness beyond. If this new faith can tell us truly what lies before and after, I think it most worthy of being followed.”

  The Gita says that outside of this life we come from infinity and go again into infinity. This short spell in between, called vyakta, the finite, the mortal, the physical spell, has hypnotized us so that we say, “My personality lives only for one hundred years, from the time my body was born until the time it will die.” But in the first word of this verse, avyakta, we are reminded that our life is infinite. Jesus constantly reminds the people not only of ancient Judea but of the whole modern world that we can have everlasting life by rising above the physical level of consciousness. This is a great challenge that can set the imagination of man on fire if he can understand that it is possible to rise so high above physical consciousness and fragmentation that he can see not only what goes on in t
he lighted hall, but also what is outside in the infinite darkness beyond death.

  The second word is acintya. Because our real Self, our divine personality, is beyond all the dualities of conceptual thinking, it can only be revealed when the turbulent factory of the mind has become completely still. For most of us, the mind factory keeps working twenty-four hours, day in and day out, without a holiday, and without any strikes either. There is only overtime. All of us must have experienced moments when we have begged, “If only I could stop thinking. If only I could close down, put up a little note, ‘Don’t enter here. It’s a misdemeanor.’” If we could, we would find ourselves beginning to reveal our true identity. One of the unfortunate trends of our modern civilization is described by that learned phrase, Cogito ergo sum: “I think, therefore I am.” The mystic says, “I have stopped thinking; therefore I am.” You can see the diametrical contrast. We are all under the impression that if we go beyond thinking, we are nowhere. If the mind is closed down, we fear we will be out of a job: “What will I do? How will I spend my time? What will I dream about in my sleep?” The answer is: why do you want to dream? Why do you want to go after personal profit and personal pleasure? It is in forgetting yourself, and in serving others, that you really come to life.

  One of the constant reproaches that used to be flung at me in my early days of meditation was, “You have such a fascinating personality. Why do you want to throw it away? Look at your intellect, razor sharp; why do you want to blunt it? Look at your mind, so active, so productive; why do you want to still it?” It is not even possible for most of us to suspect that at present we have no personality. Most of us cannot reveal even one ray of the magnificence within us. This is why Sri Ramana Maharshi and other mystics will not take us seriously when we say we live. The mystics tell us that if we can only succeed in throwing away this mask which has become part of our face, the physical-psychical mask that we now call our personality, then all our magnificent capacity for loving, acting, and serving will come into our lives.

  26. O mighty Arjuna, even if you believe the Self to be subject to birth and death, you should not grieve.

  27. Death is inevitable for the living; birth is inevitable for the dead. Since these are unavoidable, you should not grieve.

  28. Every creature is unmanifested at first, and then attains a manifestation, O Bharata. When its end has come, it once again becomes unmanifested. What is there to lament in this?

  In spite of all the Lord’s assurances about the immortality of the Self, there still lurks in Arjuna’s consciousness the thought: “I am the body; when the body dies, I die.” This is one of the occasions in the Gita when Sri Krishna teases Arjuna, telling him that even if he believes he is the body, even then he should not be afraid of death, because death is the natural consummation of the body’s span of life. The Lord is forcing Arjuna to break through his wrong identification with the body, which is only the house in which he dwells.

  Through the practice of meditation, we will acquire the delightful incapacity to associate people very much with their physical appearance. If someone asks me, “How tall is Jeff?” I have to take time to try to picture him, then use a mental tape and try to remember his height. This is a healthy sign. Particularly when someone asks me how old a person is, it takes a certain amount of time for me to recall. When we do not associate people with their physical appearance, with their age, we are beginning to associate them with the Atman. The more we dwell upon the physical appearance and age of others, the more we are conscious of our own appearance and age. The mystics tell us we should be concerned less about these details of packaging and concerned more with the contents. When I look at people, I like to look at their eyes. These are the windows into the contents, which is the Lord. Gradually, as we become more and more conscious of the Atman, we will be looking straight at people through their eyes and deep into the Lord of Love who is within.

  29. The glory of the Self is beheld by a few, and a few speak of its glory; a few hear about this glory, but there are many who listen without understanding.

  Sri Krishna passes on to a verse for which there is a close parallel in the parables of Jesus. Sri Krishna says that people in their response to the spiritual life seem to fall into various categories. Similarly, Jesus tells this parable: Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. (Mark 4:3-8)

  It is a beautiful presentation. And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. Unless there is a window open in our consciousness, some entry into the deeper state of consciousness, we will be unmoved by even the most eloquent presentation of the spiritual life. Somewhere in our consciousness there must be the suspicion that the passing toys of the world can never satisfy us. Even intelligent, educated, successful people, after listening to a talk on the spiritual life and meditation, may turn to their friends and ask, “What is he talking about?” In such people there is no window open; they are skimming, however successfully, on the surface of life. Very often they may ask, “Why do we need meditation?” Or, after I have waxed eloquent on what meditation can do in transforming all that is ugly into all that is beautiful in our consciousness, some good people have come up and said, “We don’t need meditation because we are beautiful. You folks need this transformation; evidently you have quite a lot to transform.” Still others of this tribe will say, “We are always happy. We get up happy; we go to bed happy; even in our dreams we are happy.” One of our friends on the Blue Mountain used to tell me to call such people “smiling cabbages.” When Jesus talks about the seeds falling by the wayside and the fowls devouring them, he is talking mostly about people in whom the words go in one ear and out the other.

  In order to grow, you need sorrow; in order to become loving, you very often need distress, and turmoil is often required to release your deeper resources. Unless you have suffered yourself, it is not easy for you to understand those who are suffering acutely. Unless you have gone through some of the distressing vicissitudes of life, you cannot easily sympathize with others. Many people, even when they have gone through a good deal, suffer from a convenient amnesia with the passage of time. The older person has a tendency to forget some of the things he did when he was young. That is why he condemns the failings of the younger generation too readily. His own past sufferings should enable him to understand, sympathize, and help.

  And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth. This is the second category. In Sanskrit there is a word – arambhashura, ‘those who are heroes at the beginning’ – which applies to many of us. The first time we hear a good talk on meditation, we really catch fire. On one occasion a young fellow came up at the end of my talk and said, “This is what I’ve been looking for all my life.” I am still looking for him. Others, on the way home, get a deerskin, a Patanjali pillow, Mysore incense, and Ravi Shankar records, all in preparation for meditation. But after this upsurge of enthusiasm has exhausted itself in shopping, meditation is forgotten. It is not enough if we content ourselves with the preliminaries; we have to see that it is not a temporary infatuation, which passes away within a few days. Jesus must have met quite a number of this type in ancient Jerusalem, because he goes into greater detail: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

  And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. This is the third type. When we were in Ber
keley twelve years ago, we tried to have a vegetable garden at the back of our house. We had tomatoes, corn, and pumpkins. My agricultural advisor was a young British friend who knew even less about gardening than I did; his main advice to me was, “Give the weeds a chance.” I listened to him carefully, and between us we got one ear of corn, a few tomatoes, and pumpkins which I was told would not be edible at all. The weeds had really prospered; they choked out the corn, the tomatoes, and the pumpkins. In meditation, even though we meditate regularly in the morning, if we do not take care to pull out the weeds that are rampant in the garden of the mind, spiritual seeds are not likely to thrive. On Lee Street, where we reside, we have one of the best lawns, thanks to our friend Sumner. The dandelions which used to form the majority on the lawn are now disappearing. The dandelions are rather attractive, and they also have a place in the scheme of existence, but on our street they are not looked upon with favor. In the early days, our neighbors must have found it a little disquieting when these dandelions came up so quickly. Sumner would come and pull up the weeds, and as soon as he walked away the dandelions would say, “Is Sumner gone? Let’s come up.” We didn’t know about their habits, so we had just been pulling off the flowers and throwing them away. Later Sumner explained that their roots go deep, and unless something drastic is done at the root, it is not possible to prevent the dandelions from coming up.