Goodness & Love

Swami Chidananda

 

 

 

 

Goodness & Love, no one has to be free of them. However, these two faculties of thinking & feeling are very often at loggerheads with each other.

                        Insightful living is something deeper than both thinking & feeling, yet it makes thinking & feeling come in harmony with each other. And when there is this inner harmony, inner integration, there is automatically the harmonious relation with the so called outer world and others.

We shall go into some reflection on Goodness & Love.  Both these are very popular words, ideas so dear to   every one’s heart; our life revolves around Goodness &  Love.

We expect Goodness & Love from others and we ourselves believe in enriching ourselves in Goodness & Love. Without Goodness & Love none of us would look at life as worthwhile.  But how sad! These things like Goodness & Love sought by every one of us every moment from our very birth tend to be illusive. No one is able to truly grasp and live in Goodness & Love. So we need to examine this.

Summarily in advance, we shall touch upon –

• Goodness & Love as the natural perfume that will emanate when we do away with false fear, false insecurity and false selfishness. 

Both Goodness & Love we shall try to show are intimately related to absence of the two drives within us –

• The selfishness, which appears as selfish desire.
• Second drive, is personal fear or insecurity. 

 Unless we understand how these two – desire and fear are governing our thoughts we would not be arriving at true Love. We seek Love, we have concept of Love and once more we make the mistake of ‘putting the cart before the horse’ as the idiom goes. We say we love someone; someone loves us; there is love; we are bound by love don’t we? We even make mission statement or pledges or some slogans. That is how whole humanity of which we are part, works. That is how the popular propaganda of even morality operates for one doesn’t know better. It quickly appeals and then we busy ourselves with realizing it. This has of course given to people some sense of Love. Not only words or well worded passages, paragraphs, some poetic compositions but also gestures, holding each other’s hands, may be standing in a circle, putting some flag up- ‘we love each other’ and so on. Maybe putting some word, evocative planks or boards at places – ‘At this place, at this office our watch word is LOVE,’ ‘This family is together in Love.’ We can do a home propaganda, office propaganda. We have been doing it. But we find that this is not adequate. Many a times with all this, something is boiling within and then it comes to a point where people just take sticks in each other’s hands. The very people who put those posters or flags and slogans tear them apart and say, ‘this has lost its meaning now, because of you’ and that person says, ‘this is because of you’. In cooperative effort they tear apart that slogan.

 ‘Love’ has been a magic word. ‘Goodness’ also has been a word of instant appeal.  Therefore, in as much as these popular approaches of using the word and evoking a certain concept, evoking in each other’s mind a certain picture and then seeking co-operation towards it has been popular.  But it has not been very effective.  Therefore, we wonder what it would be ‘to put the horse before the cart’, what it would be to halt and to bring about the inner explosion.  When we examine deeply how we have failed in being truly good, being truly loving we find that on a deeper level in our bosom we tend to carry, we tend to sustain certain fears & desires and without undoing them we have a dressing, we have an outer touching up with lot of noble sentiments. Inward transformation is neither attempted nor identified as necessary by most people. By and large therefore as all these spiritual classics say, ‘we have been less observant of deeper layers of our mind’s working’.  All spiritual classics talk about turning inward, being introvert, antarmukha—antas cakshuh.

As an example the great Kathopnishad’s verse is well known

We generally don’t have much understanding of this looking inward. This looking inward, to do justice to it really has to be of that enhanced or heightened awareness of factors within us which come in the way of true Goodness and true Love.

In the name of Love we very often become use to the other person saying, ‘I love you’ and more often unknowingly we expect that person to fulfill some ambition or desire or aspiration of ours.  All of us realize this sometimes in retrospect – ‘I was quite possessive and yes, it was more an attachment than true Love, but I didn’t realize at that time’.

In some movie a father says to his daughter ‘you will not marry the man whom you love. My dear one, you will marry the man whom I love’. With great love he says this to his daughter. Very comic and make us laugh. There is the truth hidden that relates to this theme.  This happens between two individuals, even between countries. One country wants another country to tow its line, if the second country does it, the first country showers its ‘Love’. And if does not then it penalizes and imposes tension etc.

 Desire & fear:    This whole world has power seeking attitude and thus we upon introspection and examination notice that there is a powerful drive in us seeking domination, seeking position, seeking respectability and so on. And without understanding it and without doing much about it we want to sprinkle love upon our relationships. We want loving relationships with neighbors, with family members but safeguarding so called personal interest. There are lots of conditions – natural. Overnight we cannot lift our conditions it is not a matter of removing conditions by will, for will cannot go very far, will goes a bit of distance. What goes very far is clear understanding.  If we look at something as a burden, as a cause of unhappiness then without will power we would drop it. If we see it as necessary (evil), if we see it for our comfort, our security, we would not let go of a particular movement of the mind.

So the self in us, not the pure Self- the ego, the little sense of ‘I am this, I am that’ is constantly driven by these two forces—Desire and Fear.  And where there is desire or fear there is no true Love, no true Goodness.

Ordinarily we think of even in spiritual parlance – quietening the mind, calming the mind.  No wonder, even one of the yoga sutras of Patanjali praises samaadhi which is considered as cessation of all thoughts and Swami Vidyaranya calls it as dharmamegha – a cloud that showers virtue. In samaadhi – in experience of utter quietude of the mind one is so reassured, one feels so secure. One is no more in need of this prop or that support, this gratification or that praise. When one is thus utterly sufficient in ones self, true Goodness flowers within.  So samaadhi gives dharma if you take dharma as one of the words for Goodness.

Samaadhi – quietude of mind; however if you inquire into it – can mere quietude of mind give you true love, true goodness?  Making the mind quiet of course makes one feel wonderful, just like deep sleep refreshes one. Ten minutes of very deep sleep refreshes us so well, many times hours of lying on the bed without getting sleep does not refresh us like that.  When no thoughts are in the mind and not even dream, utter quietude, we get revived. In the same way, if one were to consciously arrive at the so called samaadhi where there are no thoughts –nirvikalpa samaadhi certainly there is a great amount of freshness. But especially in Vedanta this question (can mere quietude of mind give you true love, goodness?) is raised with great force- quietude cannot transform one within. One’s judgment, one’s outlook, one’s perception of the world and the perception of oneself cannot change by a mere quietude. What is more – one may seek such experience again and again, one may seek the quietude more and more but once when one is out of that quietude one may miss that-‘oh!, how nice it was to be in the state of absorption now again I see all these differences, rich & poor, mighty & weak and where do I fit in’. This whole business of self judging, placing oneself as ahead or behind etc. and as we place ourselves somewhere, as thoughts become active there is some satisfaction but there is some sense of inadequacy.

Therefore in relationship as we relate to friends, neighbors, people at work and society in general can we look for those patterns of thinking where either there is seeking or there is running away. Where there is seeking and running away there is the obstacle to true Love. 

Granting fearlessness: A line from an Upanishad says, ‘one goes for the higher disciplines of spirituality (using the word sanyaasa) when one grants fearlessness to everybody around’

-abhayam sarva bhutebhyo datvaa sanyaasam aacaret

It is a very thought provoking mantra from the Veda. The literal meaning is- one says to all, ‘you don’t have to be afraid of me’ and then take sanyaasa.

In renunciation as Buddha did- walking away, as Shankara did – walking away with hardly any belongings or any personal possessions.  What is involved in giving fearlessness, who is afraid of this sanyaasi? What is the connection between granting to all fearlessness and renunciation?  It seemed a contradiction until I saw the psychological significance and deep import of it.  In fact to carry guns, to have wealth, to have some great power is not as much a threat to fellow beings as really speaking selfishness is, when anyone has it. If you are selfish even with very little power or very little arms also matters because it is the mind of a terrorist which is apparently frightening others, really it is itself in great negativity, great disharmony. The mind of the terrorist is so divorced from love, is so away from any sense of harmony. The mind of this violent person has a problem so even a nail-cutter can cause havoc.

So it’s not what you have outwardly. The Upanishad, Vedanta these exalted and profound works do not concern themselves with external descriptions. One who has to practice the higher discipline of spirituality denoted by sanyaasa, that total love of God has to offer abhayam that means I will not encroach upon anybody’s mind, psychological freedom and psychological space.  When we are possessive we take away the psychological space of other person. We do not let the other person be what he is, we want the other person to be as per a picture that we have. And there is fear. Then the other person feels suffocated. In lack of love there is suffocation.  You and I, though we are working or living together etc. psychologically are not at home and when the so called other person is away you breathe free….so is that love if it takes away our space?  This doesn’t mean that wherever there is fear the other person does not truly love.

The terrorist is also afraid of the police so we don’t say police are unloving people. When expectations are rooted in dharma, rooted in universal values it is fine. But we are talking about such expectation and such conditions which emanate from personal bias, which come out from lack of understanding. You will see, as you reflect on this theme Goodness & Love that this is a matter that has bearing on our life from childhood till our death.

Detachment & eliminating selfishness:    We have this system of education all over the world there are so many halls of education, as we call temples of learning. And what is true education?  We would say in the light of this reflection that true education is where one is helped to let go off the selfishness and fear.  Suppose we have many skills and many enviable amount of information. We are taught how to operate some machines and there are only handful of people in the whole world who know to operate such machines generally we tend to value such education a lot. In education we are generally after ‘I must master that machine’ and  in that there is fear, in that there is envy, in that there is a sense of being behind, being ahead, a whole amount of energy goes into acquiring skills and somehow feeling up to the challenge at the end of the day – ‘I am okay’. Alas! Are you really okay with acquisition of skills?  The cold truth of life is we are never okay unless the self centeredness is dropped.  Otherwise with all skills and with enviable acquisition of other kinds, if there is self centeredness we could be most destructive.  As time and again many cases have proved.  It is the very smart ones, the very resourceful ones, who work havoc something to the whole world at large.

So what is true education?  Not necessarily limited to schools and colleges but as it applies to whole life and not limited to what we receive from teachers and elders bring into it the self education. For all other teachers come and go, the one teacher that is in us is, oneself.  We are our teachers, we are our own student. No teachers from outside is with us for 24 hours.  Though in devotional sentiments we constantly remember if we are devoted to a Guru that shows that everybody has a certain need of constant guidance. We have relied on certain emotional, devotional, sentimental processes for reassuring ourselves. And I guess they give some benefit, I personally believe in psychological benefit from them and from outside too, I believe in God, I believe in God answering our prayers.

But here we are looking into the whole issue from a different angle and greater depth than this sentimentalism. While we do that, how do we look at our own fears and desires?  Do we just shut our eyes to these? All our divisions?  So we find central to unfolding of Goodness or Love in our heart, is the issue of detaching and eliminating self centeredness. 

 Why are we insecure?  It has become psychological habit in us. Incompleteness, it is so much of habit in us that most of us, if not all believe that discontent is the very prerequisite for living a dynamic life.  If we feel complete, if inner insecurity goes away life may grind to a halt. We have made a case for fear. We have all become in this social conditioning, devils advocates without realizing it. We must have a fear, we must have ego… so on.

While I agree to say, ‘there is fear in us’ is a different thing than saying ‘we have to have fear’.    So let us look at it as a ground reality. It is there in every one of us. But do we have to think that it has to be there. If you think it has to be there you know what it amounts to?  Suppose there is terrorism in a country and government sponsors it, what a terrible situation! State sponsored terrorism. So if I have jealousy and if I believe that some jealousy is good then only I will be active, I will be on the run, I will take care of my family then it is like state sponsored terrorism.  There is jealousy, there is fear and there is selfishness. Let’s not endorse it nor should we deny it. Don’t sweep the dust under the carpet, don’t close your eyes to the ground reality- the fact.  Rather, face the fact. Let us face the fact. Suppose scientists, engineers, doctors & attorneys, teachers & students all look at this deeper layer in themselves – Oh! Oh! In and through of whole lot of our daily working the underlying current, a certain stream flowing deep within me is a certain insecurity.  I am living in fear, outwardly I give plastic smiles and I do whole lot of things people regard me as so efficient, so able and well mannered. Outwardly I have come long way in life one may feel so. But here the question is- internally have you come a long way?  In your childhood did you truly love your classmates? Your teachers? Or did you envy? I envied, I cried. Now how is it after four decades and so many facets have dramatically improved?  Do you have this envy, lost feeling if someone else gets attention?  You say, YES, I do feel envious and a wave of anger rises in me, I suffer. Then we would say true Goodness & Love in you, in me, in everyone will flower only when we tackle this envy.

 Silent mind:  How interesting! compared with the usual approach which I call ‘the cart before the horse’.  Here Goodness & Love come from a silence. The silent mind can Love, the silent mind is good. We think silence means void, silence means emptiness and we wonder what can come from emptiness?  For this we begin with a thought, begin with something structured for we always believe that from a structured rises Goodness.  Our faith in structures has been very firm.  Once more, this is not to say dismantle the structure now.  It is not at all in the plane of ‘doing’ or ‘not doing’. The ground reality is all of us have certain structures it is a fact. If you cannot dismantle even if you want and if you try, will only go from Tweedledum to Tweedledee. One structure you dismantle and in no time another structure comes. Many a time it will be from frying pan into the fire. Or from structure you will go to chaos. So it is not a matter of turning cynical, turning bitter and negative. That would be so immature.

I would say every relationship is very delicate. Including the relationship between you and me now. We have a very delicate affair between us. There is great responsibility in both of us because we are reflecting on life together. And even one person going berserk in negative way can cause lot of damage in society.

So no wonder in true Love, we compare it with caring for a tender plant growing in your backyard. If you love that plant morning and evening you will have a look at it- So can we attend to our relationships?  

 The tragedy of todays living is decreasing happiness  among increasing comforts 

Swami Chinmayananda

 So there is mind in the prison of self seeking, endlessly. Even after winning a Nobel Prize

or Oscar alas! The human mind tends to remain in the prison of ‘what will complete me’ looking out, will that complete me? Will this make me full? And the approach that is desirable is to examine the incompleteness. If many degrees, wealth, name-fame, awards and a lot of lime light did not make me complete in all these years. Why should I imagine that one more acquisition of something will make me complete. The belied that, ‘that’ will make me complete is questionable. Acquire we may, let it happen. You live a loving, alert life, various opportunities come your way and in the name of spirituality you are not going to turn away opportunities. But the point is, you do not anymore believe that this acquiring will make me secure. Security is not in any acquisition. Security is when you see that nothing can give you security. Seeing nothing can give you security you do not cling, you do not depend, you do not lean on pleasure or wealth, power or position it becomes a side issue. And for this let us not make compartments that, this is very inspiring but it is for renunciates we are householders, we are beginners, this compartmentalizing is a dangerous thing.

 If you look around you find people who truly have fragrance of Love in their life. You have many examples of illiterate people living in Love or very qualified people living in Love.  So to associate the finding of Love with certain background or scholarship or some external initiation or spending some years in Himalayas is another erroneous zone in your thinking. So drop it. You examine your life without the interference of ‘I may not be ready for it; I may need to be very simple now etc’. If you believe that you need, I am afraid but you stay with them. But without interference if you examine a trait, a certain tendency that was with you as a young child, then college, now also it is continuing, that is the thorn in the flesh which is paining you and no wonder with all that you acquired- the academic qualification and this and that. And the apparent amount of service that you do it is all superficial. The security you feel is rather shallow. True security is when you shed your dependence on these things and you go about this in a sportive way. If award comes your way go to the platform and get it, but come down and forget it. If you can do it, then you can find love in your heart. Then something opposite happens, there also you will laugh it out, for you did not have this dependence. It is a matter of steadiness.

 So how can we come upon Goodness?  By discovering this silence, by arriving at this silence which is waiting to be discovered.  But we promote noise, we promote calculativeness. Our mind in the name of being clever, we make our mind a noisy mind. When we arrive at true simplicity by gently seeing, ‘I am caught in a trap this insecurity is a snake upon the rope, it’s an illusion, I am fine.’ Should be a discovery. Not an auto suggestion.

 We could pick the best statement from Upanishad or Emerson or Shelly or from Swami Chinmayanandaji and say to myself ‘I am Brahman, I am ever secure, I am the fountain of Love, I do not depend on anything, I rejoice in giving’ we do it; our meditation very often takes this form. But the plane truth is, this is also a wonderful window dressing. The plane truth is for those who bravely see it, more than saying I am this and I am that, which are all true, you need to see at different times in the day, somebody not smiling at us makes us a bit jittery. I am aware of it and in that awareness, in that questioning, do I need to have this jitter? Is it not on my part violent that she should smile? So I see that I have to give her, her psychological space. To smile or not to smile is her privilege; let me not jump to any conclusion. And if she has any negative image about me, let me examine.

 Undoing the Self:   So I undo that self in me which shook. Which vibrated. Which trembled. In the undoing of the self there is the coming upon that ‘I am the fountain of Love’ and that is meditation. You could have an intense moment of meditation at that moment when somebody did not smile and jitter took place and you handled it, dissolved it, you came to termsà you discovered peace. Without verbalizing, the signal that came from you was- ‘you can be yourself. I have no objection to your not smiling’. You accept her as she is. That is meditation. And can we do this every moment? Beginning with this moment? If we do this, there is the gush of Goodness; there is the flowering of Love.

MASTER SPEAK:

 Love and Goodness are not superficial state of mind, they are not a make believe.

They are letting go of deep hidden fears, of the incessant seeking of self-image, self-security, and self-gratification.

When this seeking and this avoiding cease thanks to seeing, there is harmony.

That harmony reflects as spreading of happiness.