Blog

June – 2009

None gets bound by one’s possessions; it is the mental slavery to our possessions which shackles us. – Chinmaya

The one who thinks that the object, beings and situations are the cause of one’s happiness and misery is a ‘samsari’ even if he may be in the garb of a sannyasi. But the one who is ever happy and cheerful, even amidst all family responsibilities, office-related work pressures and social obligations, fulfilling one’s duties but remaining ever detached, is a true sannyasi.

Once Pujya Swami Brahmanandji was conducting a camp at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya, Mumbai. One among the delegates was a sixty-year-old lady who had undergone heart-valve-transplantation operation three months earlier.

During one of the days of the camp, as the class was in progress, Swamiji noticed her absence in the class. When enquired, Swamiji was informed that the lady had fainted while climbing the steep slope to the temple and was now lying down in her room. Immediately she was taken to a famous hospital nearby where she was admitted in the I.C.U. Her husband, a rich businessman in Shimoga was asked to rush immediately to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Swamiji made it a point to visit her every day in the hospital.

After three days, the husband arrived at Mumbai. He had come by car from Shimoga to Mumbai. There was absolutely no sign of worry, tension or anxiety on his face. When he was asked how he was able to remain so calm and composed despite his wife’s serious condition, he smilingly replied, “She has come for a noble purpose. Moreover, what is there to worry, when she is under the protection of Swamiji’s grace and loving care?”

True to their firm faith and unflinching devotion, the lady recovered soon and later on the blessed couple got the rare opportunity to serve Pujya Gurudev during one of His yajnas in Shimoga.

The true bondage is the bondage of the mind. To free ourselves from the bondage, the scriptures advise us to educate the mind by developing viveka and vairagya.

A deeper reflection will reveal the fact that all pleasures of the world are finite, time-bound and pain giving. Just as a fire can never be put off by pouring ghee into it, indulgence, which only intensifies our cravings, can never be the solution to gain absolute contentment. But in our thoughtless stampede to quench the insatiable thirst of the mind and the senses, we get totally drained out of all our vitalities leaving us tired, exhausted and weak in the end.

The realization which then dawns to us – that all pleasures are nothing but sugar-coated-poison – is called vairagya or dispassion.

To know that the Supreme Self is the only Reality of this world and that it is our own true nature is called viveka.

Thus, the wise man, endowed with viveka and vairagya, abides in his own blissful, infinite Self and ever remains peaceful and secure, irrespective of the ups and downs of the happenings around. Being ever content and ever full, no possessions can dictate terms to him or enslave him, just like the mirage water can never tempt the knower of the illusion.

Let us, therefore, first admit the weakness of our mind, instead of blaming others, and then try to come out of these self-created mental shackles of slavery and bondage.

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