Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Root cause of sins

In order to find out the root cause of sins, first let's see what is a sin? Our ancient philosophy defined sins as of two types - Paapam and Paathakam. One commits a Paapam when he doesn't properly discharge his prescribed daily duties. These duties include the daily worship, being kind to all the living beings, special worships on the festival days, meditation, contemplation etc. And one commits Paathakam when he performs any prohibited acts such as, stealing other's possessions, murder, adultery, etc. These two are commonly known in English as omission and commission mistakes.

Now let's see why most of us commit these mistakes, and why the Mahatmas, or enlightened souls, don't commit these sins. When it comes to omitting our prescribed duties, the most frequent excuse we give is lack of time or some kind of illness or discomfort of the body. But when you look at the lives of the mahatmas, they never miss their duties no matter how sick they are, or how busy they are. So what is the thing that is holding us back from performing our duties, which is not affecting the mahatmas? If you think deeper, it's the "identification of ourselves with our bodies." Because we think we are the physical body, we give higher importance to its illness and discomfort. Also, most of our day goes in nurturing the body and all other bodies related to it viz. our family members, relatives, friends and coworkers. That's the reason we say we are too busy to perform our prescribed spiritual duties. But when it comes to mahatmas, they don't identify themselves with their bodies. They instead experience their true existence as the soul, or Aatma. Thus, they always perform their spiritual duties irrespective of whether they are busy with their worldly duties or seriously ill.

And coming to the commission mistakes, or Paathakams, it's again the "identifying oneself with the body," which is the root cause. people do the prohibited acts like stealing and killing because they identify themselves with the body and will do anything to protect and nurture it. And any thing or person outside of that body is "the other" and their feelings/difficulties/joys are not ours! But the mahatmas, as they identify themselves with the all-pervading soul, see everything else in this universe as themselves and feel their pains and joys, and thus never even think of hurting any other living or non-living being. There is no "other" for them as the whole universe is "self".

Every spiritual seeker agrees that identifying oneself with their body is a weakness and tries to overcome it, but when you tell them that it's the root cause of all sins, they may not agree. But now we know from the above analysis that it's the root cause of all sins and thus needs to be overcome as soon as possible. While we enlighten ourselves to identifying with the soul, there is a simple remedy prescribed to overcome the consequences of the sins we already committed because of this ignorance.

Yatkrutyam Tannakrutam, Yadakrutyam Krutyavat Tadaacharitam,
Ubhayoh Praayaschittam Shiva Tava Naamaakshara Dvayochcharitam. Shiva Shiveti Shiveti Shietimat, Bhava Bhaveti Bhaveti Bhavetimat, Hara Hareti Hareti Haretimat, Bhaja Namasshivameva Nirantaram.

"I ignore my prescribed duties and also commit the prohibited acts as if they were my ultimate duties. Oh Lord Shiva! the penance for both these sins is the continuous recitation of the two syllable words that represent your names like Shiva, Bhava, Hara, etc."

Our Gurudev, Sri Babuji Maharaj, used to tell that identifying oneself with the body is like a tenant claiming ownership of his rented house. In physical world, when a tenant claims ownership of the house, he will be immediately evicted from the house forcefully. But in the spiritual world claiming ownership of this rented house, which is our body, seems to extend the tenancy! As long as one doesn't overcome this ignorance and enlighten oneself to the identification with the soul, he will be forced to get reborn into multiple rented bodies and continue to suffer the vicious cycle of rebirth. That's why they say "Paapi chirayu", a sinner gets the longest life.

Friday, July 27, 2018

The struggle for liberation

Once there was an innocent person living in a village. one night he was walking outside the village and he saw a well there. He looked down the well to see if there is any water and to his utter shock he found the Moon there, drowned in the well. He thought, "how can the villagers live without the Moon?" and decided to rescue the Moon at any cost. So, he gathered a rope and a bucket and started drawing the water out of the well. 

He continued this for hours and suddenly the rope broke and the man fell flat on his back. Lo! there he saw the Moon in the sky. He was overwhelmed with joy that he was finally able to rescue the Moon from the well and thus saved the lives of all the villagers.

This story may look silly at the outset, but if we think deeper it resembles our struggle for liberation. The Moon is the Omnipresent Brahman. The well is our gross-body and the water in it is the subtle-body. as long as the subtle-body is present, we see a reflection of the Brahman in it as Atman and believe that the Atman is bound by the body and needs to be liberated. The rope with a bucket at the end of it is the spiritual practice we do in order to liberate the Atman. as long as we strive to clear the mind out, we suffer from the grief of that bondage. 

But, as soon as the rope breaks and we start looking up instead of looking down into the well, we realize that the Atman was just a reflection of the Brahman and was never bound by the body or any other worldly things. There is nothing in this creation that can bind the Brahman. So, we have always been in a state of liberation, but we don't realize that as we keep looking into the well(the body) and identify ourselves with the Moon's reflection there. As soon as we turn this worldly outlook towards the divine, we realize our state of liberty.

So, does that mean we need not do any spiritual practice, or Sadhana? No, it doesn't mean that. We should keep doing the Sadhana, but the purpose of it should be to change our outlook, rather than to liberate ourselves. The mere thought of bondage in itself is a bondage that obstructs our vision from realizing our true state of liberation. As the great Gurus say, the mind is the key. As you can see daily at your home, the same key when turned in one direction, locks the door and when turned the other way unlocks it. In the same sense, when the mind is turned towards the world, it leads to the illusion of bondage. But when the same mind is turned towards the almighty, it leads to the realization of our liberated state.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Four learnings from the Char Dham Yatra

Sri Guru Maharaj recently granted me the great opportunity to participate in the Char Dham Yatra along with Pujya Sri Mathaji and other devotees. Since it's yatra of four holy places, wanted to share four things I learned/observed during the yatra.
As we went through the Himalayas we observed that many mountains were converted into farm lands through the process of step farming. We all know that it's the nature of water to always reach the lowest altitude. So all the rain that falls on a mountain directly follows down to the valley. To retain the water on the mountain, the farmer flattens a small portion of the slope and constructs a retaining wall. This will retain the water and make the soil ready for cultivation. He then flattens the next part of the slope and constructs another retaining wall so that any overflow of water can be retained in the next step. Like this the whole slope of the mountain is converted into several steps and used for farming.
If we imagine the mountain as God and the rain water as our mind, when we try to concentrate our mind on God, it keeps sliding down to the worldly things. The mind never likes to stay in place and always has the lust to wander, shop etc. So a Sadguru constructs retaining walls like yatra, deeksha, puja, japa, homa, etc to still retain the mind on God while we do our favorite things like travel and shopping.
The second thing we witnessed was the origins or holy rivers like Ganga and Yamuna. A river is formed with rain water from a mountain which in turn was the evaporated water from the ocean. Once a river forms, it starts it's journey to go back and merge with it's origin, the ocean. At the starting of a river there are huge rocks and big boulders washed off from the mountains by the mighty force of the river. The river also flows very actively with gushing sound. But as the river advances, the rocks keep colliding with each other and turn into small stones and finally sand and dirt. At the stage the river turns calm and serene. Finally when the river merges with the ocean it leaves behind that dirt too.
In the same way when we start our spiritual journey to reach our origin, the God, we are filled with the big rocks of our good and bad qualities, or Gunas. They keep colliding with each other throughout the journey reminiscent of the epic battle of Mahabharata. As we progress in the journey these Gunas diminish into insignificant proportions and we attain Sthitaprajnatva. Finally we leave out all these Gunas when we merge with God.
The third thing we observed was the ghat road. In plains the roads are straight and we don't see anything twice on the road. But the roads on the mountains go back and forth on the same side of the mountain and we see the same scenes again and again. One may think why are we going on the same road again and again, but we should understand that with each iteration we are attaining new heights. Same way, in a wordly curriculum there is no repetition. Punarukti, or repeating same words is even called a dosham. But in spiritual curriculum, we keep listening to the same concepts in the discourses and one may wonder why am I listening to the same things again or doing same yatra or puja every time. But we should realize that with each repetition we are attaining new spiritual heights.
The fourth thing we observed was that there are two kinds of mountains, those made of hard rock and those made of soft soil and small rocks. The rocky mountains are tightly packed and hardly have any tall trees, unlike the soily mountains that are loosely held together and host a lot of tall trees. It's very hard to construct roads on the rocky mountains but once constructed, the road is safe and free from risks of roadblocks by mudslides and trees falling. On the other hand it's easy to construct roads on the soft mountains but you always have the risk of the above mentioned roadblocks.
Great Gurus like Sri Babuji Maharaj went through the hardest of Adhyatmik Sadhana at a very tender age and through their hard work constructed the safest road for our spiritual journey. On the other hand those who give discourses by simply reading some books and memorizing, lead us on a road full of risks.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Our True State

Recently I underwent a surgery. The doctor was talking to me and I was narrating my experiences with our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj. Slowly they passed chloroform thru my oxygen mask and I slipped into unconsciousness. When I regained consciousness, the first thing that came to my mind was what was "I" during the past few moments?

As long as we are awake we keep thinking and saying, "I did this, I did that" etc. And in our dreams also we have the concept of "I" and we identify ourselves with a body, even though the body in the dream may look different from the physical one. We think we lose our connection with the body during deep sleep, but that's not true. We still identify ourselves with the body and its name. That's why we wake up when our name is called. We even maintain relation with our close family and identify their voices while in sleep. We also recognize when the fan or AC is switched off. Thus, we still identify ourselves with the body even while in sleep.

But when chloroform is given, we completely lose the concept of "I". In fact that state is concept-less, experience-less, thoughtless, emotionless, formless and nameless. That's our true state. Our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj used to say "The state you are in while on chloroform, you have to be in that state even when your body is awake and going about its daily duties. That's the true state of liberation."

I also remembered a verse from our Gurudev's charitra at that moment - "Moolaabhavam idam jnatam sareeram naasthi kevalam. Swapne prateeyamaanaani roopani yadha tadha" "In the root concept there is no experience or thought. There is no body itself. This body and all its belongings and relations are as true as the things in a dream."

When we wake up from a dream we easily write it off saying it was just a dream and not real. But as long as we were in that dream, we strongly believe whatever we see or experience to be true and real. Similarly when we are awake, we strongly believe our body and all the things we experience through it are real. And when someone says this is all just a dream, it's very hard for us to accept it. But just think, when we slip into the final sleep, leave this body and take another birth, if someone tells us the events of our past life, don't we realize that that was all not real? When we wake up from a dream and again go into sleep the next day, the same dream will not continue. That's why it's easy for us to believe that it was not true. But when we sleep and wake up the next day, our life continues to be same, and thus hard for us to believe that it is not real. But there is a final sleep for this body after which we wake up in a different body and the whole previous life of 80, 90 or 100 years turns out to be just a dream.

When we truly realize the non-existence of this body and everything related to it, we attain the state where there is no thought, experience, form, name, relation or any other worldly concept. That's our true state of liberation.