People like Mahatma Gandhi, according to Sri Krishna, are those whose selfish desires, whose personal motives of profit, prestige, and power, have been consumed to ashes in the fire of knowledge. Sri Krishna, very compassionately, is saying that those who aim for office or anything else only for themselves are ignorant. They are ignorant of the most basic truth, that you and I are one.
20. The wise man, ever satisfied, has abandoned all external supports. His security is unaffected by the results of his action; even while acting he is only an instrument.
When you have directed your life towards a selfless goal, then Tyaktva karmaphalasangam: “Do not get entangled in the result.” In order to undertake the great work for peace that is dear to all of us, we should have an adequate sense of detachment from the results of our work. If we are going to get agitated every time there is a rebuff, every time there is a reverse, we ourselves will become violent. As we all know, sometimes even the demonstrators against violence become violent. In the words of the Compassionate Buddha: Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time. Hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law. Similarly, we can say today: “Violence will not cease by violence. Violence ceases by nonviolence. This is an unalterable law.” In order to win over opposition, to bring people together, we have to be serene and compassionate, whatever the vicissitudes of life may bring us. Mahatma Gandhi was at his best when seemingly defeated. He used to say it was from prison that he struck his hardest bargains. Most of us look upon defeat and reverses as weakening us; but in karma yoga, every time we are defeated we seem to go deeper into our consciousness to bring out greater resources. When we think we have been defeated, when we come home and tell our family that we have been beaten, Sri Krishna may say, “In my book I say the guy is doing well.” In order to grow, in order to strengthen our muscles, we need opposition.
Defeat is found very often in the lives of selfless people as an opening into opportunity. The Gita says that when you follow the spiritual path, living for others, very often there come to you increased challenges, increased threats, to make you go deeper and deeper into your consciousness. If there were no difficulties, you would only be skimming on the surface of life. Gandhiji, in a rare statement in which he gave himself away, said, “I love storms.” It is a thrill to be in the midst of a storm when you are keeping the welfare of those around you first, when the lightning is playing about your eyes, and thunder is crashing in your ears. When everything is against you, you feel so sure that the Lord is within you that you have only to put your hand out and say, “Hold me; my morale is sinking.” It is not that Gandhiji was not afraid. He could get as afraid as you and I do under the pressure of circumstances, but he always knew how to say, “Please take my hand. See, it’s trembling.” And Sri Krishna loves trembling fingers when they are stretched towards him. He does not like those who proudly say, “Feel my hand. How steady it is!” When you surrender to him – when you say, “By myself I am so weak, so incapable of facing opposition, but with the Lord supporting me, what opposition is there that I will not face?” – then he comes to help you.
Nityatripta means ‘always satisfied.’ When we are engaged in a great struggle, for example against violence, one day we will gain a small victory. Then we want to celebrate, sing and dance, and get very elated. But on the following day there may come defeat, and on that evening there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Here Sri Krishna says, “What kind of equanimity are you observing? When there is victory, you should go about quietly repeating my Name and at night peacefully fall asleep. There is nothing to be elated about. And when there is a reverse, why gnash your teeth? It’s not good for them. At that time, too, repeat my Name and in the evening go to bed and fall asleep in the mantram.”
Every movement in the mind is insecurity. Every movement of the mind, whether it is caused by ambition, anger, fear, lust, or any other agitation, alienates us from our real nature. This is why the Bible says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” When the mind is still, we have gone beyond the mind. In meditation we try to still the mind, which is a very difficult thing to do. We may have been meditating for half an hour, and the mind is fairly calm. “Well, the mind is still,” we think. “I don’t have to concentrate now.” We relax our vigilance and immediately pandemonium bursts loose.
At no time should we allow the mind to be agitated. Agitation of the mind prevents us from releasing our deeper resources for creative action. Nityatripta also conveys the idea, given elsewhere in the Gita, that in order to be united with the Lord, in order to discover the indivisible unity of life, the mind has to be serene and waveless. In the Gita (12:17) Krishna says the person who never gets excited is very dear to him. This word “exciting,” that has become part and parcel of our advertising paraphernalia, is a very dangerous word, because its other side is “depressing.” We usually see only the facade. But whenever we see excitement, we should say, “Turn your back. Let me see what is written on it: d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n.” This is the lettering on the back of excitement. If we could have excitement without depression, I would recommend it for everybody, but so far no one has ever succeeded in separating the two, and according to the Gita this separation is not likely to be effected, not even by our best psychologists or technologists.
When John F. Kennedy was being installed as president, and all of us were looking forward eagerly to what he had to say, I remember a journalist going up and asking him, “Mr. President, you must be greatly excited today.” It was a very mature reply, in the Gita tradition, that he gave: “Excited, no. Very interested.” This is the mature attitude. After all, one is likely to be very interested when one is moving into the White House. This mature equanimity that all of us can learn to have is not lack of interest. It is the mystic who is interested in everything. There is a photograph of Gandhiji looking through a microscope, and I do not think even Louis Pasteur could have had that expression of concentration. Gandhi was interested in everything, but not excited by anything at all.
When you and I have a tendency to get excited, especially when good things happen, that is the time to go out for a walk, repeating the mantram. When your ship comes home, when you see it moving up to the pier, don’t stand there clapping wildly. Get off the pier and go for a long walk repeating Rama, Rama, Rama or Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Otherwise, if you keep on saying, “My ship has come home! My ship has come home!” before you know where you are, you will not be on the pier; you will be floating about on cloud number nine. It is all right riding on cloud nine, but the next day you will be skin diving. Sri Krishna tells Arjuna, “I am not asking you to avoid excitement. But when depression comes, as it must, don’t ask, ‘Why did this happen to me?’”
In order to understand the powerlessness of the intellect, talk to people who are just going into a depression. If we ask people who have some self-knowledge, “Why do you look like that? Why are your eyes so glassy? Why are you so indrawn? And why can’t I hear some of those old chuckles?” they will reply, “We are going into a depression.”
And I have often suggested, “You have a bright intellect. Say ‘I am not going into a depression,’ and pull yourself out.”
“It doesn’t work,” is their answer.
At that time, go for a tearing walk, burning up the sidewalk. Walk as fast as you can, repeating the mantram, and see what just one hour of walking repeating Rama, Rama, Rama can do. When you come back, you may even have forgotten what you were depressed about. This is a comment on the powerlessness of the intellect as compared to the immense power of the Holy Name.
The next objective is even more severe: nirashraya, ‘without any support.’ In order to be the instrument of the Lord, we must let go of all supports other than the Lord himself. Now we are prepared to let our right hand go free, provided we can hold on with our left. We all are trying to hold on to something. If it is not money, it is food, or cigarettes, or alcohol. Others try to draw support and security from prestige and power. This is the human condition. We have to
hold on to something, and the Lord says, “Why don’t you hold on to Me? I am right inside you. You don’t have to walk miles in the rain. You don’t have to go searching for anything. You don’t have to work hard to make money. Just hold on to Me and say, ‘Let me be firm.’” The Lord says to all of us through Arjuna, “Let go of all your supports. Throw yourself at my feet, and I will protect you.”
Almost all of us will call to the Lord, “Hold me, help me,” but at the same time we continue to hold on to external supports. My Grandmother drove this home to me when we went together to see a ballet in Kathakali based on a very moving episode in the Mahabharata. Draupadi, Arjuna’s wife, is being stripped of her clothes in front of a large number of courtiers by a revengeful enemy of her husband. Draupadi, whose honor is being violated, cries aloud, “Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, protect me!”
Then, on another part of the stage, Sri Krishna is seen quietly seated playing on his flute. Sri Krishna’s queen gets very angry at her lord and says, “What kind of god are you? Here is your devotee, a loving, beautiful woman, being stripped naked in front of a hundred jeering enemies, and you are seated here, playing on your flute. Have you no love in your heart?”
Sri Krishna takes the flute from his lips very leisurely and pointing with it says, “Look.” Krishna’s queen looks down from their heavenly vantage point and sees that Draupadi is holding on to her sari with one hand while she stretches the other up towards the Lord in supplication. For a while Sri Krishna and his queen both look at Draupadi, until suddenly she lets go of her sari and joins both hands in prayer. It is a very thrilling moment, and when the whole gathering of courtiers gasps with terrible suspense, Sri Krishna sends down an unending sari. My Grandmother, even though she must have seen this scene enacted many times, was so thrilled that she said, “Go on! Keep pulling the sari. Let us see you exhaust it!” And the more the enemy pulled, the more sari there was.
On the spiritual path we are likely to say to the Lord, “We know you are the citadel of security, Lord, but we would prefer to keep 25 percent in shares, 25 percent in currency, and 50 percent in you.” We shall find that it is this reservation, this looking backward, that keeps us from making rapid progress on the spiritual path. Never has anyone succeeded in seeing the Lord except by surrendering completely to him.
The person who is the same in victory and defeat, who is always loyal to the goal, come obstacle, come ordeal, and who does not depend upon any external support, does not act at all; the Lord acts through him. The Lord will act through us if we will only empty ourselves of all self-will, of all separateness. This is what we do when we truly love. When a husband loves his wife more than himself, or a wife loves her husband more than herself, this is what they are doing; they are emptying themselves of themselves. This can be done in every relationship, and every one of us has the opportunity to empty himself of his selfishness in his relationship with his parents, partner, and friends. Someone once asked me, “Supposing there is someone who doesn’t have any of these?” I said, “How about enemies? Who is there who doesn’t have enemies?” It is possible for everyone, through unremitting endeavor and the practice of meditation, to empty himself of all that is selfish, self-willed, and separate, so that he can make a great contribution to the amelioration of the lamentable conditions that exist in the world today.
21. Free from expectations and all sense of possession, with mind and body firmly controlled by the Self, such a one does not incur sin by the performance of physical action.
To be free in action, to make his greatest contribution to the welfare of society, Sri Krishna tells Arjuna nirashi: he should have no expectations. It is a difficult concept for us to understand, because we think that if we do not have expectations, we will have no motive for action. But as long as we are expecting something, life can hold us hostage. Quiet reflection can bring home the profound wisdom of these words: if you want to go through life free, do not expect anything.
Sri Krishna says, “Do not go about begging of life, ‘Give me this; give me that.’ Then you are bound. Say instead, ‘I don’t want anything, Lord. If you want to give me defeat, I am not afraid. If you want to give me victory, I won’t object.’” This is the stature that the human being can reach by becoming aware of the Lord of Love within. He can function with complete freedom, not dependent on what comes to him in the way of success or defeat.
We have only to examine ourselves to see what a catalog of expectations we have in life. Accordingly, “disappointed” is one of the most frequently used words in our vocabulary. Almost every day there is some disappointment because, as the Gita implies, expectation and disappointment go together. In very loving language, Sri Krishna tells us through Arjuna, “I don’t want you to be beggars. You are my children, inheritors of all my wisdom, love, and beauty. There is no need for you to go about hankering for success or apprehensive of defeat.” When we take up a task which contributes to at least one person’s welfare – without asking, “Will this bring me promotion? Will this send my image down in history as a great man? Will this bring me that prize, or this profit?” – then we work without anxiety. To work in this way, without expectation, it is necessary to have complete faith in the Lord of Love within, who always sends us what is good for our spiritual development.
If we are to work and live in freedom, our body and mind must listen to us. When we sit down in meditation we are slowly teaching the body and mind to listen to us implicitly, to obey even our gentle hints. In the early days of meditation it is likely that the body will go to sleep. This is its idea of security. In order to train our body to keep awake in the deeper stages of meditation, every time we get sleepy we must draw away from our back support, sit up straight, and make the maximum effort possible to keep awake. For everybody at some time there is the problem of drowsiness. As concentration deepens, as the words of the inspirational passage begin to go slowly, the neuromuscular system relaxes. To see this happening during meditation we have only to look at the faces of people who have been tense; slowly they start smiling and the lips begin to open in beatitude. It pains me to say that this is the time when we should jut our chin forward and sit sternly erect.
As for the mind, for everyone the path of meditation begins with a wealth of distractions, because we have always let the mind have its own way. The Compassionate Buddha used to remark that there is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind. When we do not want to think about something, the mind will say, “That’s exactly what I am going to think about, and you can’t do anything about it.” None of us like harboring resentful thoughts, and we all have known times when hostile thoughts have kept boiling in our minds and we have tried to tell the mind, “This is not good for me.” But the mind says, “It’s good for me! It may not be good for you, but I like resentment. I like agitation, because that’s what makes me come to life.”
For a long, long time in meditation the main effort is in disciplining the mind, in bringing it back whenever it wanders away, in keeping it on the words of the passage in spite of all its attempts to get away from them. This is drastic and very dull discipline, but it will pay the richest dividends in the long run. Even if you sit for an hour in meditation doing nothing but bringing your mind back to the passage sixty times in sixty minutes, you have made progress on the spiritual path. Every time the mind runs out, you run after it, pick it up from the restaurant, or the bank, or the movie theater, and bring it back. Then, the moment you are not looking, the mind has run out again. You again run after it and bring it back. It is just like following a little child. For some years in meditation there is a real test of your patience. There are no thrills. There are no visions. There is no rapture. There is just plain tedium. If your desire for the Lord is great, you will put up with all this cheerfully, but if you are meditating just because, for example, the Beatles did it, your enthusiasm will not last long.
In the next word, tyaktasarvaparigraha, the Lord says, “You must not own anything. I am the owner. Don’t try t
o put your tag ‘mine’ on anything. Don’t ever say ‘This is my exclusive property.’” We own nothing because the Lord is the owner. He is the landlord; we are just transients. Here the practical application is that only when we are detached from things can we use them wisely. The man who is fond of money cannot use it wisely. Often rich people unfortunately use money to their own detriment, because they do not know how to use it for their own and others’ benefit. This does not mean we should give away everything. Sri Krishna is saying we should not be attached to our wealth and material possessions. It is possible for a millionaire to be completely detached in his villa in the south of France, while it is possible for a poor man to be attached to his shack with violent egoism. It is the attitude that matters here.
In the final stages of meditation, we become very eager to unify our love, to give everything to the Lord and be united with him. As Sri Ramakrishna puts it, when our boat is nearing the harbor we want to reach the harbor so soon, we are so eager to be in our home, that we start picking up everything and throwing it overboard to lighten the boat. We start throwing away all of the excess baggage that we have hoarded down the years. Then our eagerness becomes so great that we may start throwing away the anchor and the sails. This is where we have to be discriminating. The spiritual life does not require us to give up reasonable comfort and the necessities of life. If we live in poverty, without having enough food, instead of meditating on the Lord we will be meditating on food. It is luxury and the hoarding of things because of selfish attachment that we must give up.
Such a person – who has no expectations, who is prepared for weal or woe, who has no selfish attachments to things or people, who does not even look upon his body as his own, but as an instrument given him by the Lord with which to serve humanity – such a person does not act. The Lord acts through him. Sri Krishna almost implies, “Even when he raises his arm, it is not he who does it; it is I.” When he does anything, it is from the deepest level of his consciousness where the Lord dwells all the time. Instead of acting, on the surface level of life, he allows the Lord to act through him from the deepest level. Then there is no tension, no fatigue, no fear, and there is immense creative activity which enables him to give his very best even in the most adverse circumstances.
The End of Sorrow Page 26
