How Can We Cope With Change?
Swami Chidananda
We are interested in right living, we are interested in doing things rightly, speaking things rightly, even having right thoughts. Life has a whole lot of questions, from the cradle to the grave. You & I wonder about even fundamental issues like – why we are here? Probably some of you may be wondering – ‘why you are here?’ And even I am wondering – why I am here? For fundamental question remained unanswered, while we have answers to whole lot of secondary unimportant questions. And as long as most basic question remains unanswered, everyone of us remain in square one, after earning a lot or moderately, after getting this status or that position, after arriving somewhere apparently, we feel that the journey is very long one, we feel the destination is far away. Different people feel incomplete in different ways. Someone has a sense of financial inadequacy, someone else feels she is a failure in relationship, a third person might feel lost in terms of the so called knowledge – ‘I am a very ignorant person’. It may be his self judgment. So we are seeking, more wealth, more knowledge, more friends, admirers, more people to approve our way of living. We are looking out for better, than our today.
What exactly is the nature of our sense of incompleteness? I am sure some time everybody wonders – are we truly incomplete or is this sense of incompleteness, an illusion? ‘May be I am just alright’ and it gives a certain amount of peace and relief. Mostly it is short lived. One says, ‘How can I be alright, when everything is going to sixes and sevens?’ One feels again drawn to yet another pursuit. If one doesn’t feel, there are others who come and say – ‘How can you be so much at peace, something is wrong with you’. One believes to be abnormal. What a great confusion life is! Alas!
|
So here apparently, we are going to package a solution to age-old problems. Apparently everybody is going to go home with—‘Ah! I learnt a new approach. I got new answers to these questions.’ But it would be a very different thing, if some of you realize that I apparently did not answer any question but shook the problems. Do you have to always answer the questions? Perhaps another option could be to shake the very foundations of the questions.
Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi often said to the people, “Doubt the doubter”. If you have a doubt, you have to doubt the doubt. And he would go one step further – doubt the doubter. Very smart these spiritual Masters are! Putting the ball back in your court was perhaps practiced first by them. Who has the question? Who has the doubt? Find out, who you are? But you and I are so used to looking at everything as a method.
Friends, I am trying to throw some light on the intricacy of the questions of living. There are areas concerning these issues, which are rarely visited by enquirers. There is a dimension to human suffering which goes utterly unnoticed. In simple terms; we take the problems to be real, issues to be real, all the parameters to be real and we are out to find a real solution. For a change, could we question the very reality, validity of the problems?
The text Bhagavad Gita (700 verses) is a very fascinating book indeed. I am amazed, over the decades my grasp of this book has been evolving and it is quite funny, I think this is a very mischievous work indeed, no wonder Lord Krishna the mischievous Lord gave this super mischievous classic to humanity.
|
There are questions and there are answers. Different answers that suit different people but then there is an approach, where you take a dispassionate look at the questions themselves and you examine the very ground from where the question arise, the very bosom, your heart, your mind, your stream of thoughts, where these questions are formulated. Take a look at that very material of which the questions are made. You will find there is a very different flavor to spirituality itself.
Great Masters talks to us about no partial, fragmentary achievement, when you study some one like Nisargdatta Maharaj, whose conversation has been brought out as that great spiritual classic ‘I AM THAT’ or you see the beautiful gems of teachings of Ramana Maharshi and the most confusing statement of J Krishnamurti, there is a different quality. They talk to us about, not learning this or mastering that, owning this or gaining that skill. When you wake up from a dream, how many miles would you have covered in the dream journey? How you are progressing? Who started together? Who are now ahead? How many miles are left? And all those just disappear. You are awake and you blink and say, ‘Hey! What happened to that journey?’ and people ask, ‘Tell us more about the journey of awakening’ that immediately is made into another journey.
You and I face changes and really speaking changes sometimes cause happiness to us and many other times cause unhappiness or fear in us. There are both these kinds of changes of course. We are more concerned about coping with change which are hard on us. And I shall dwell here more on, to cope with changes but let us clarify right at the beginning that the light we throw on this issue of coping with changes applies to the changes that are pleasant also.
What are the unpleasant changes, which drives us to the wall, which makes us quite miserable, makes us feel lost and all that. We were wealthy, now we are poor that could be an example. We were very powerful, lot of people used to listen to us, lot of people were at our beck n call now hardly anybody cares for us. We were enjoying such wonderful health, but today getting up is one challenge, sitting down is another challenge. Then there is a very challenging area and perhaps more vital than what I mentioned before – of relationships. In fact, the issues of wealth, health, power etc. boils down to relationships only. In this world of ours, we find that, through wealth we have lot of good relationships, through good health we have good relationships and through power we have good relationships. So if we have no wealth, no health, and no power we find people are leaving us. So the vital issue is change in the quality of relationships.
|
Swami Chinmayananda often said, ‘To love and to be loved is the greatest privilege of life’ and perhaps there is more than a grain of truth. It is love that we seek even through power, position, pleasure, wealth, fame, name, health and all that. It is a sense of being accepted, then we spice it up. We put a whole lot of other details. If we were to ask ourselves, ‘what does being loved mean to me?’ we have a whole lot of ideas. We may think in grosser terms – how many people call us if there is any get-together or function, how many people greet us on our birthday? How many people smile at us? How many people praise us, talk well of us in front or behind? In numerous ways we have picture of to be loved. But basically it is a sense of security, a sense of psychological security, when we feel accepted. We look at someone and we don’t believe that he/she hates us. Then there is sense of feeling loved. We feel free to approach X/Y and we feel X/Y may jolly well approach us. ‘I would be happy to meet X/Y or she may not or I may not’. But whole thing is not an issue, no fear, there is no shaking or trembling within. ‘Oh! Does she have the regards for me now also as she had before?’; ‘Oh! does she think well of me, as she used to?’ like that suppose there are thoughts, then there is difficulty So these changes essentially are a certain disturbance in the psychological realm, on the plane of our thoughts, we find a certain lack of well being.
I asked somebody to give me an example of a change that is hard to cope with. He said, cultural change. We move from one culture to another and then in one sense we may be having everything but the cultural shock is hard to bear. Yes, that is yet another form of change. Take a look at it again, we are habituated to one way of living, one way of celebrating, a certain way of mourning, a certain way of exchanging pleasantries and a certain way of keeping distances perhaps. We are at home with certain ways, then there is a second set of ways and we find, we don’t belong there, we feel like a fish out of water. A cultural shock.
So in all these, do you see that the life is the movement in relationship and it is in the medium of relationship that the so called – finding it hard to cope with change, happens. It doesn’t spare even spiritual teachers. The so called religious activity, spiritual sphere, is also a human issue, a human affair. Somebody whom I taught in Bombay for two years and looked upon her as wonderful, she will make me famous, my student or her belief changes and she walks a different path and I the teacher feel quite odd, quite awkward, quite miserable, I might miss her, not just missing on an emotional plane, but I might feel threatened, I might feel insecure, I might feet that I made a fool of myself by a group of people, who after leaving are now with some other belief, so I am fool? Am I wrong? Or am I judged in some particular way by X or Y? What difference is there in such a situation, from family circumstances, company’s situation? Human life is the same.
Coping with change: Who is coping with change? Who has to cope with change? ‘I’ I have to cope with change. I was studying very well and met with an accident. So I had to get out of college, meanwhile family finances also broke and now for existential problem, I have to cope with it……numerous examples.
I have to cope with change, we have to cope with change—-fine!!
Now this ‘I’ is that area which goes unnoticed. Generally, we do not pay attention to what this ‘I’ could be? ‘I’ –‘I am’ what is there to talk about ‘I’? The attention is on the situation. Everybody goes and says, ‘see how much wealth I had up to 2002 summer, it is in last 1 ½ years now this is what I have’. All of us generally give attention to these details of wealth how it was, how it is. Popularity—how it was? How it is? The way people treated me/us and now how they treat me/us? Now this ‘Me’, is it an absolute reality? Is it an absolute entity? This ‘Me’ in which there are expectations, in which there are desires, in which there are certain views of how things should be. It is not an absolute entity. It is a product of a whole lot of influences.
In the Bhagavad Gita Sri Krishna advises Arjuna, repeatedly. He says, “Look you are in turmoil”. There is the line – dheerah tatra na muhyati a wise one does not get deluded by such a situation. Another place He says, taamstitikshasva bhaarata which means — “O Arjuna put up with it”. Arjuna found that he has to fight, send the arrows to his own teachers, elders, people whom he had always worshipped & adored. He had touched their feet and now there is a change. Friends have become enemies. Relatives have becomes enemies. Teachers are now ones whom I should shoot arrows at…..if I don’t they finish me out. What a situation? Arjuna’s situation on the battlefield of kurukshetra is indeed a very dramatic representation of changes that takes place in our life. It was a 180 degree change in relationship that he was facing. Coping with change…Drona, Bhishma and number of others change their position by 180 degree. They were with him, patting him, blessing him, encouraging him, praising him, hugging him and they are his opponents with bow & arrow, with maze and all kind of weapons. Does it not represent a tremendous change in relationship. Sri Krishna makes these statements as he opens his grand teaching in the Bhagavad Gita “Come on, Arjuna, wise people do not cry over these things a ashocyaananvashocastvam…” in the second chapter from 11th verse onwards till 30th verse dehinosminyathaa…. “Just as in the body youthfulness, middle age and old age are bound to occur, there is no choice, in the same way death and the soul, moving to the next life is choiceless for you—do not grieve.”
Change is inevitable, varieties of changes takes place. Sometimes you are not even conscious of various faces of those movements. Sometimes you apparently are engineering the whole thing. In a way you are the one at the wheel, you are steering it, but in another way the urges in you were so strong that you were helpless.
Change is unavoidable, by comparing somebody else with ourselves – ‘their life is very steady and the graph has been moving up and up. Why is my graph suddenly coming down’ we are in fact wasting time as well as presuming that the other person’s life is most wonderful. Life is bound to have up’s and down’s. So change is unavoidable. In everybody’s life there are lot of unpleasant changes, lot of changing relationships, the zones are being redefined, outside and inside. Sri Krishna would even touch upon—maatraasparshaastu.. “Heat & cold, sorrow & celebration, come and go, Arjuna put up with them. Bear with them”.
One more expression, in the 15th verse, He says – yam hi na vyathayantyete “One who stays equal, one who remains equal in sukha and dukha sorrow and celebration, he is fit for immortality”
The first thing that even a beginner takes it and says is I should remain equal in joy and sorrow, that’s where I am very weak, I have always been emotional. This is judging oneself and then saying, ‘I will try slowly step by step’. If you say, this is the change I will bring about in myself and towards this change in me I shall do this and this and this and by about so much time the change should take place. I caution you, you are working with thousand of variables and you have your hand on 3 or 4 handles. So here is the teaching of Bhagavad Gita – sama sukha dukha –dukha and sukha are changes, coping with change. And sama. So one movement of the mind is when we say, ‘I am weak here, I shall get stronger, alright, very fine! Yes there is a certain will. Where there is will, there is a way.
Interestingly this statement, is very wonderful statement, ordinarily it is to motivate people, because where there is no will there is no way, if you slightly modify the synonyms. What is will? It is deciding, rolling up the sleeves, getting down on a course of action. And the new meaning I am sharing with you is, where there is no will, doesn’t mean you are lacking in motivation and you are low in spirits or negative, don’t go to the opposite. Other than the will there is what is called intelligence. Roll up your sleeves and decide – good, hats off to it and be afraid and sink, collapse. Oh! We pity that, we sympathize with that, but there could be someone who says, Hey! I don’t want to come under any pressure outer or inner. At least in this situation there is no such urgency that I have to rush to the garage, take the car out and act. Wait a minute, let me see, this sorrow, this agitation, I would like to see, what this is?
|
You know, there is acting – karma, karmabhumi the plane of action. All of you do it. karmanyevaadhikaaraste… “Your right is to act”. Well said, but what is behind karma thoughts and these are all those saying, ‘sow a thought, reap an actionàsow an action, reap a habit->sow a habit and reap a character ->sow a character and reap a destiny.’ Wonderful! This has guided, shaped, inspired and motivated people, brought millions on the so called right track. We bow down before these teachings. But are they the ultimate teachings? Can we see a little beyond, word, deed, thought, motives of thoughts, what is there in you deeper, further beyond? That is the faculty of seeing. You can see your motives, you can see your fear, you can see your punctured self esteem or you can see your bloated notion of who you are. You can SEE or perhaps you don’t and that makes a big difference. You can see that, ‘I am fooling this fellow and I think I should stop.’ And that seeing can have tremendous scope. I can see that I am fooling somebody in very superficial way, I can see that I am fooling someone, for there is pleasure in it or there is a material gain in it, my security is in my being able to fool all these people, I can see so much more, I can see that ME in operation, I can see ME that tremendously contributes to sorrow and celebration, I believed these were caused by all these external factors and this cruel society and this wicked relatives of mine or that unkind boss or etc. Now I see that the ME, the ME which is full of certain desire, certain ambition, certain judgment, certain prejudice, certain presumptions, these makes the ME and if these were not to be there is no ME, you and I believe that there is a certain identity of ours free from our belief. I would question it. If you were to be free from belief, will there remain a ME.
|