In meditation we are going deep into ourselves, into the utter solitude that is within. As a counterbalance to this, it is necessary to be with people: to laugh with them, to sing with them, and to enjoy the healthy activities of life. It is not a luxury on the spiritual path to have hard work, or to have the company of spiritually oriented people; these are necessary for our spiritual development.
3. Those who have attained perfect renunciation are free from any sense of duality; they are unaffected by likes and dislikes, Arjuna, and are free from the bondage of self-will.
Sannyasi, ‘one who has renounced,’ usually refers to a monk who has retired from the world to a monastic order to seek the supreme goal of life. Sannyasa is often misunderstood as renunciation of the world, but for the vast majority of ordinary people like you and me, when the Lord asks us to renounce, he is not asking us to renounce the world. He is asking us to renounce our ego, our self-will, our separateness, which is the main obstacle to spiritual development.
In a story from the spiritual lore of India, the jackfruit is used to bring out the meaning of renunciation or detachment. The jackfruit is a big, burly fruit that grows plentifully in Kerala and Bengal. In Kerala, when we want to know if a household is well-to-do, we ask, “Do they have a lot of jackfruit and mango trees in their back yard?” A back yard groaning with jackfruit and mangoes is the equivalent of a land flowing with milk and honey. None of the jackfruit is wasted; the thorny skin is a delicacy for the cows, the pods are a delicacy for us, and the seeds are used in curry. People in some other parts of India, however, are not usually acquainted with the jackfruit. In Kerala a mischievous boy may ask a guest to eat a piece of it, and after the guest has eaten the fruit and enjoyed it thoroughly, the boy starts asking him all sorts of questions: where he comes from, what his name is, and where he went to school. When the guest tries to speak he cannot articulate his words, because the jackfruit has a very thick, gluey juice, like cement, and his lips have become glued together. But in Kerala, before we eat the jackfruit, we smear our hands and lips with coconut oil. Then, if I had been the guest, I could have finished eating and started in, “To be or not to be, that is the question”; and I would have been able to continue with the whole soliloquy of Hamlet because the coconut oil would have prevented my lips from being glued together. Sri Ramakrishna in a magnificent simile says that we cannot love God, we cannot put others first or forget ourselves in the welfare of all those around us, because our heart is glued so that not a drop of love can come out of it. Love circulates inside, wanting to flow out; but there is not a pinprick of a hole that is not completely glued up by the fruit of the ego, which is much bigger than the biggest jackfruit to be seen in Kerala. If we want to release our capacity to love all those around us and find the joy of selfless living as members of our family, our community, our society, then we should apply the oil of renunciation and dispassion so that we will not get stuck in the glue of the ego.
It is most important to remember that all of us have this inborn capacity to love. We don’t have to go to India or any other place to learn to love. Love is right within us; what prevents us from letting it flow outward to everyone around us, flooding our home and our community with happiness, is the glue of the ego which is so sticky that it hinders any attempt to love.
What is the evidence that we are detaching ourselves from our ego, that we are making our mind serene, that we are going beyond separateness? The word Sri Krishna uses is nirdvandva: ‘without duality,’ free from the pairs of opposites. As long as we see life divided into good and bad, right and wrong, success and defeat, birth and death, as long as we groan under the tyranny of likes and dislikes, always seeking the pleasant and avoiding the unpleasant, so long will our mind be like a sea that is agitated all the time.
Yesterday I happened to remember something my Grandmother did that shows how she could change her likes and dislikes at will. Many years ago, in our village, one of my uncles wanted to marry into a family which his family did not approve of on very legitimate grounds. Seldom in our village did any marriage take place without both families agreeing, and my uncle’s choice caused a good deal of agitation. My Granny, who was quite fond of my uncle, told him, “This choice of yours is making all your people unhappy. Tomorrow your wife has got to come and meet them, and she is not going to be happy when they are unhappy.” She tried all kinds of persuasive ways to get my uncle to choose another girl and let the girl choose another man, but it was springtime, and all of her persuasion fell on deaf ears. They married, even though everybody in his family showed their disapproval. On the very day when the marriage took place, when all the others were sulking, my Grandmother dropped all her opposition and disapproval and went up to them saying, “You are both meant for each other.” She had tried her level best to dissuade my uncle in the interests of the whole family, but when she saw that they wanted each other so much, she immediately dropped her opposition. This is how freedom comes, even in attitudes. There are times when we feel that we should oppose a certain course of action, but when we find there is another side to it, a better side, we should be able to drop our opposition immediately. There are few people capable of this, but through the practice of meditation, we can all develop this capacity to change our likes and dislikes at will.
How to go beyond likes and dislikes in everyday living is an immediate problem. For those of us who are living with our families and friends, and who have wide contacts, I think reducing self-will and going beyond likes and dislikes is an easy job because of the many opportunities we receive for putting others first. Arjuna has four brothers, and Sri Krishna reminds him that five brothers all living together should have ample opportunity for overcoming likes and dislikes. In our own case, therefore, it is good to put the needs of those around us first in matters like food, recreation, and of course comforts and conveniences. We can find opportunities even in little things. We want to go to one movie and our friend wants to go to another. His may be more likely to suit both of us, but we have read all about our movie: the stars are our favorites, and the music is by someone we like. There are all sorts of ways we can support our arguments, but all we have to say is, “I would very much enjoy going to this movie, but I’d rather go with you to the other movie which you will enjoy.” This is an excellent spiritual discipline.
4. Children say that knowledge and action are different, but the wise see them as the same. The person who is established in one path will attain the rewards of both.
Sri Krishna is making a statement here about people who think that knowledge and action are different. People who talk about wisdom but are not able to translate it into their daily life are children, says Sri Krishna. If we have spiritual wisdom, it has to show itself in our daily living. There is no condemnation in this; the Lord, very compassionately, looks upon us as not fully grown up when we talk about the spiritual life yet yield to our self-will, have difficulties in our personal relationships, and are unable to exercise reasonable government over our senses.
St. Francis of Assisi expressed this same truth when he said that our knowledge is as deep as our action. In the Upanishads, the sages make a useful distinction between two kinds of knowledge. One, called apara, is intellectual knowledge, which is useful for living in the world and manipulating our physical environment but is of little help in transforming our character, conduct, and consciousness. The other, called para, is spiritual wisdom. This spiritual wisdom is directly connected with the will, and shines radiantly through our every action.
Intellectual knowledge is unfortunately not readily transformed into everyday action. Take, for example, smoking. We have such alarming evidence of the causal connection between smoking and cancer, yet there are millions of educated people, quite aware of this connection, who still continue to smoke because they cannot give it up. Even in hospitals we see many of the patients, who have come to be cured, smoking while sitting in the waiting room. I, for one, do not understand why cigarettes are sold in hospitals. Th
is is the contradiction between intellectual knowledge and action. Intellectual knowledge, apara, does not seep into and transform the deeper recesses of our consciousness.
Contrasted with apara is para, spiritual wisdom. As our meditation deepens, we can ask the Lord, who is our real Self, “Let this craving fall away from me,” and it falls away. This is the miracle of meditation. When we have gone sufficiently deep, many old cravings fall away without any violence done to ourselves; as our desires become unified, they are withdrawn from lesser cravings.
All of us would like to be more loving, but we cannot love those around us more until we have learned to withdraw our love from material things. The victim of money, who is always thinking about money, is not capable of loving his family, his friends, or anyone else. The person who is on drugs is not capable of giving his complete love and loyalty to another. Every little desire for pleasure or power diminishes our capacity to love. Desire is the raw material of love.
The mind is really an endless series of desires. To desire, to desire, to desire – this is the nature of the mind. In our attempt to recall our love from all the wasteful channels into which we have allowed it to go, and to still the continual waves of desire agitating our consciousness, the intellect is of no avail at all. Whether it is the frantic pursuit of money, material possessions, pleasure, power, or drugs, the problem is the same: we are caught in these cravings as long as we do not have access to our deeper resources. In meditation we develop the spiritual wisdom and the strength of will to recall our desires little by little. Our desires are like untrained puppies; they will run down any blind alley we pass. We may be walking down Telegraph Avenue; they see a blind alley and immediately they’re off and we don’t know how to call them back. In meditation, we can actually train our desires by telling them, “When we are on the Avenue, we keep on the Avenue. We don’t go down side streets.”
Little, little desires, thousands of them – for this dress, for that car, for this candy, for that prize – by themselves weigh only a little, but when put together, they amount to a large sum. All these little desires, every day, drain our vital capacity to love.
To quote the bank advertisement, “It all adds up”: a few pennies here, a few pennies there, collected every day. While we were living on the Blue Mountain in India, we noticed that our local bank there had a very homely arrangement for collecting funds from the villagers. Poor villagers have very little to save, only a few copper pennies at most. To encourage them to deposit even these few pennies every day, the bank employed a boy who would go into the village to their homes, collect their few coppers, and enter the total in their account. In meditation it is the same: when the Lord comes, we can say, “We are no great mystic, but a few times today we have tried to be patient. A few times today we have tried to put our family first. A few times today we have resisted some little craving for personal satisfaction.” And the Lord will say, “Give me your coppers.” This is how most of us are going to lead the spiritual life for a long time. It’s mostly in coppers. But in these innumerable little acts of selflessness lies spiritual growth, which over a long period can transform every one of us into a loving and spiritual person.
When we meditate on an inspirational passage, repeating it every day in the depths of our consciousness, we will find that it releases our inner resources of spiritual wisdom. When, for example, we meditate on the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, “It is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,” we find in our daily relationships that we are not getting angry any more, that we are not being resentful, that we are beginning to forgive and forget. This transformation of character, conduct, and consciousness comes naturally to us when we begin to draw upon the power released in meditation.
5. The goal of wisdom and the goal of service are the same. If a man fails to see that knowledge and action are one, he is blind.
6. Perfect renunciation is difficult to attain without performing action. But the wise, who follow the path of selfless service, quickly reach Brahman.
The search for transcendental wisdom through negation of the world, and the path of karma yoga or a life of selfless action in the world, are both based on the practice of meditation, and both lead ultimately to the same goal. But Sri Krishna points out that the path of karma yoga is the easier of the two. Renunciation of the world, or rather of our selfish attachment to the world, is impossible for the vast majority of us without first practicing the disciplines of selfless action and meditation. Often we hear people, particularly the young, saying they want to lead the spiritual life and, therefore, have dropped out of school, quit their job, moved away from their family, and are living in the woods. They hope this will enable them to pursue their spiritual goal in peace. But the only barrier between the Lord and ourselves is our self-will, called ahamkara in Sanskrit. There is no other barrier, and the whole purpose of spiritual living is somehow to break through this barrier, which can assume gigantic proportions in our modern world. To eliminate our self-will, we need the salutary context of our family, our friends, our campus, and our society. Friends and family are not always easy to be with, but they give us the much-needed opportunity for rubbing off the angles and corners of our self-will little by little, in the innumerable acts of give-and-take in everyday life.
When we were living on the Blue Mountain in India, we ran into a young fellow from the Northwest who used to come to our place now and then and had become very fond of us. He had led a very lonely life: if ever there was a lone spiritual wolf, it was he. He used to avoid people completely, staying in lonely places so as not to come in contact with them. Sometimes he would twit me affectionately for always being with people, and would invite me to go on long walks to see the trees and hills. But even though I admire a beautiful landscape, I pleaded guilty to the charge of being more fond of people than of trees: I didn’t try to argue with him when he praised the virtue of solitude, but one day a suitable opportunity presented itself, and I explained my point of view.
He was fond of talking about “flower power” and about being able naturally to love everybody. One day he was working in the garden in the midst of the flowers with the gardener’s son, who was given to fist power. There was some altercation between them, and the gardener’s son, being a simple boy, took a spade and threatened our young friend, who retaliated by threatening him with the hoe. Someone separated them before they could do each other any harm, and our young friend came to us so agitated that his hands were trembling. His teeth were clenched and he was bursting with fury. Instead of arguing with him, I asked him to join us at dinner. It is difficult to be furious when eating, and this gave him a little time to cool down. After he had finished his dinner, I said, “What happened to all your flower language? What happened to all your love? Why didn’t you show him the universal love that you are capable of?”
He didn’t know what to answer. He said, “You tell me what happened.”
I said, “You are not used to people. You have never had the opportunity of living together with people who provoke you. You haven’t learned to grit your teeth, repeat the mantram, stand firm, and move closer to people when they provoke you. It takes a man to do this. To be angry, to take a spade and hit the other person – that is not worthy of a human being.”
He said, “How do you learn to do this?”
“Oh,” I said, “by living with people like you!”
Even for a deeply spiritual person, selfless action is necessary for a long, long time. Today our troubled world is clamoring for action from each of us to help resolve the dilemmas with which it is faced. The Gita must be interpreted in accordance with the times in which we live, and in our age, we all must make a contribution to the world. It is not the time for us to “do our own thing”; it is the time to make selfless action a part of our spiritual way. Any person who tries to drop out of life, to turn his back upon society, is depriving the world of the contribution he can make. Without being the president of the country or the p
rime minister, even in our own small life, in our home, with our neighbors, on our campus, in our town, all of us can make a real contribution to peace by not being violent under any circumstances and learning to live in harmony even with those who may cause trouble to us.
Even if there is one person in the home who is really selfless, he or she – usually she – helps everyone else in becoming selfless. I never tire of pointing out that the noblest role of the woman is to be the selfless support of all the men around her, whether as a mother or wife, as a sister or niece. Through my simple eyes, any home is beautiful where there is a woman looking with love at all those around her, forgetting her own self-will and separateness in supporting those around her. Even though a home may have carpets from Bokhara, candelabra from Italy, and all the conveniences of modern civilization, if the woman is not selfless, I do not see beauty in the home.
Meditation and selfless action go hand in hand. When we try to live more for others than for ourselves, this will deepen our meditation. When we deepen our meditation, more and more energy will be released with which we can help others.
7. Those who follow the path of service, who have completely purified themselves and conquered the senses and self-will, who see the Self in all creatures, are untouched by any action they may perform.
8–9. The person whose consciousness is unified thinks, “I am always the instrument.” He is aware of this truth even while seeing or hearing, touching or smelling; eating, moving about, or sleeping; breathing or speaking, letting go or holding on, even opening or closing the eyes. He understands that these are the movements of the senses among sense objects.
The End of Sorrow Page 31