Surge Fifty Eight
Peace: Geeta’s Guidance
Very few in this world are able to live in peace and tranquility. Material discomforts are the cause of agitation in a lot of cases and disturbed human relationships are the cause of trouble in other. Many imagine that living in spiritual centers (ashrams) ensures peace. Others fancy Himalayan settings. Yet others dream of special time zones, such as free mornings, cooler or warmer months, and vacation periods etc, as the gateways of peace. While all such factors of place and time may marginally help, the real key to peace is more elusive than is available to ordinary reason.
Giving up all selfish desires is the way to peace, says the Geeta (2.71). When the self (ego) ends, we find peace wherever we go. Otherwise no external arrangements are to any avail. To give up (the self and) the selfish desires, we need to have the wisdom of the Self. We must know we are full, adequate and completely secure. It is spiritual ignorance that makes us cling to a hundred things in the world and seek security in them. The Vedanta wisdom helps us let go of all false clinging.
The Song Celestial again says (5.12) we can discover profound peace if we abandon our attachment to the fruits of action. This is actually not different from the earlier revelation. The advice is put in different words. The emphasis on ‘what we get’ in a relationship is the attachment to the fruit. Such stress is born of the activity of the self only. We imagine that our worth is linked to the material rewards or the praise by people. Such thoughts are once more the result of spiritual ignorance. We must realize that our dependence on factors like comfort, profit, recognition etc keeps us eternally bound. What is more, such dependence is merely a bad thinking habit. We can drop it. A powerful insight into the truth, often facilitated by satsanga (contact with a sage), makes us just drop it.
Meditation is said to open the doors of deep peace (6.15). As we gain a better understanding of meditation, we realize that Shri Krishna is not giving a different medicine to our ailment here. Seeing is the essence of meditation. Rather than riding on thoughts, pleasant or unpleasant, we stay as the light of awareness that sees the play of thoughts as they construct the self and its myriad projections. There is no ‘adding fuel to the fire’ in this right seeing, as we are merely the witness. The mischievous machinations of the mind have to die a natural death upon being watched quietly by us.
Peace is ours when we wake up from our complicated, dreamy way of living, characterized by false identifications with goals and groups. When we rediscover the plain human being within us, the entire structure of seemingly endless fears and agitations collapses like a house of cards.
Swami Chidananda
Wednesday, July 30, 2008