ARANI SERIES
Spark 46
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
WE MUST DO OUR BIT
The Importance of Self-effort
“Success can’t be spelled without u,” says1 Ranjini Manian, the author of the book – “Doing Business in India for Dummies”. That echoes Sri Krishna’s advice2 in the Geetā, “Lift yourself by yourself!” We may have many people to guide and help us but, if we do not do our part, everything will surely fail.
A hundred opportunities come to us every day where we have two choices before us: the good and the pleasing. {Once in a while, let us admit, something may be both good and pleasant; more often however these two – shreya and preya – are in opposition.} Looking at comfort and quick gratification, many choose the ‘pleasing’ and let go of the ‘good’. “The brave and wise person opts for the ‘good’ always,” asserts3 Lord Yama in the famed Kathopanishad. A dheera (wise and brave person) is marked by the ability to remain unswayed by temptations and provocations around her/him, as Kālidāsa would say4.
Scott Peck, who wrote the best-seller The Road Less Traveled remarks that most of the successful people in the world are characterized by the ability to delay gratification, which is not the same as denying gratification. This ability is now well-known as ‘impulse control’ in the literature on Emotional Intelligence.
Thus we can exercise our discretion and, with some amount of self-training, we can rise higher and higher on a daily basis. A Veerashaiva poet-saint warned5 his devotees, “A step ahead takes you to heaven, and a step back leads you to hell!” The steps ‘ahead and back’ obviously refer to choosing shreya and preya respectively.
Looking at the fact that hardly anyone is truly happy in this world, life looks cruel and unfair. A positive outlook however is that life is compassionate because we get almost unlimited chances to change our ways. We might have fallen a thousand times but we can, with proper adjustments in our lifestyle itself, learn to choose wisely. Our lifestyle is fraught with errors in many areas. We eat erratically, sleep (or stay awake) at odd times, talk too much at times (and too less at other), buy unnecessary things or waste our time on low priority items. Eating out (at restaurants) very often also is a modern malady. All these are connected to losing our ability to chooseshreya (the good) over the preya (the pleasing).
Never mind what happened so far. Let us build the fallen house with care and determination, beginning today.
Swami Chidananda
1 page v (Acknowledgements), published by Wiley India.
2 uddharetātmnātmānam.. – Geetā Chapter 6, verse 5
3 shreyo hi dheerah preyaso’bhivrineete – Kathopanishad 1.2.2
4 vikāra-hetau sati vikriyante yeshām na chetāmsi ta eva dheerāh –Kālidāsa while describing – in Kumārasambhava – Lord Shiva’s remaining unmoved during his tapas, while Pārvati, young and beautiful, is around.
5 adi mundide svarga, adi hindide naraka (vachana-sāhitya in Kannada -अडि मुंदिडे स्वर्ग, अडि हिंदिडे नरक / ಅಡಿ ಮು೦ದಿಡೆ ಸ್ವರ್ಗ, ಅಡಿ ಹಿ೦ದಿಡೆ ನರಕ)
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