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| Swami Suddhananda |
Often I have travelled in Coromandel Express to Orissa. Hence many in the pantry car know me well. Always there will be a smile whenever they see me. But there is an exception. When they are carrying the load of tea, coffee, snacks or any such thing to sell, they just pass by. When they have to adjust their walking in a fast moving train and balance the load they are carrying, the pleasantries seem to remain hidden within. Not that they do not recognise, but the mood does not allow them lighthearted pleasantries.
Similarly in life. When everything seems to be going relatively smooth in life, the smiles are out. But the moment there seems to be a burden, some pain or anxiety, niceties take a back seat. And very often an adult either encounters problems or initiates his own problems. Still more confusing is the imaginary problem. Even when there is no obvious crisis, the person imagines to be overwhelmed and he is no more in touch with himself!
The average man’s sense of burden
The average man’s sense of burden is
enormous. The innocence of the childhood yields place to the
complications of the youth and adult days. The innocent giggling
of the child permanently disappears. Thereafter every smile or
laughter is measured and there is a constant frown on the face.
Both the smiles and the frowns are used to manipulate others as
there is a miserable entity sitting down inside. The cloud of
ignorance seems to have covered the sun of wisdom. The darkness is
a more familiar mood than the light within. Pain, fear, anxiety,
greed, infatuation or insecurity is very effortless. The language
of happiness, joy or bliss is to be celebrated only in the pages
of the romantic poetry or the novels. That person who is in a
celebrating mood appears to be unrealistic and the whole world
will condemn him to be a compulsive dreamer or an impractical
incurable romantic! The tragedies invoke greater identity and
sympathy. That seems to be the voice of the millions.
Frivolous religious practices
Even the religious and secular practices that
are imposed to set a celebratory mood must be clothed in apparent
difficulty, austerity or hardship. At least the secular practices
may be excused for their frivolity, but the religious practices
must be different, harsh, austere and extremely serious! Nobody
must make it easy, as that will mock the intelligence of the
average! The whole world seems to demand: teach them but in my own
terms! How ridiculous! It is like the children demanding to be
told that the earth is flat or that the stars are like diamonds in
the sky or that the periods in the school must give lion’s share
to games and toys!
The adult – a grown-up child
The adults seem never to grow up. Once the
helpless innocence of the childhood is lost, the adults grow into
a mode of inflexibility – a rigidity that does not allow much
questioning. The sensation becomes the name of the game and nobody
looks for the right, the absolute certainty, away from the easy
convenience! If we ask people to choose between the right and the
convenient, everybody will choose the ‘the convenient’ or the
‘convenient right’. But that decision is the selfishness of
the individuality – the ‘I’ who never challenges him but
always challenges anything that upsets, inconveniences or
challenges him. That is why, the average adult grows up to be a
stubborn child and in every person remains inherent a stubborn
streak that is too finely tuned to be visible to the uninitiated.
Initiation into thinking
That is why every person must be initiated into
thinking and just not be inundated with the thoughts and the
ideals of many kinds. As even to possess an object does not mean
losing it, so also being familiar with a thought or idea does not
mean ‘thinking’. ‘Thinking’ is to learn to use the
thoughts as well as the objects of the thoughts. But that involves
a very subtle and simple perception about ‘the thinker’ - the
‘I’ - who seems to be clothed in many different roles at
different times and go on deciding according to the changing
roles. Hence, the same person is full of contradictions. Sometimes
flexible, sometimes rigid, sometimes smiling, sometimes miserable,
sometimes helpful and sometimes vindictive – the average person
leads a complicated life. Not only others fall a helpless victim
to the complications, but also the person himself is the first
victim of his confusion!
If you are a simple person with a few things to
sell in a train, you too can be harmful but not that harmful or
helpful as the top bureaucrats in the railway. The education
introduces people to different ideas and the ‘I’ picks up many
different identities. Once the individuality – the ‘I’ - is
unconsciously pushed into picking different identities, he/she
must also be initiated into a conscious process of being aware of
himself/herself so that he/she can ‘play’ the roles and is no
more overwhelmed by the roles. The thoughts have to be innocent
suggestions and not the compulsive impositions as those are made
out to be!
Self-knowledge
Self-knowledge initiates the person to himself
and never creates a new or convenient role or idea about himself.
The idea of the ‘Self’ is self-existent and ever-existent.
There is no question of ‘picking’ up an idea or identity about
one’s own Self. The very idea of ‘picking’ pre-supposes the
existence of the ‘picker’, ‘the identifier’. He already
‘exists’ and we need not say anything about it. Only when it
starts ‘picking’ or ‘identifying’ then only the roles
begin to become important and appear to be more important than the
already existent ‘Self’ that is innocent, all pervasive and
unassuming! It is like the silence. The presence of the all
pervasive silence is never imposing whereas a tiny sound is very
expressive, has a range, decibel and the audibility that can help
it appear more imposing than the all pervasive silence that never
needs any amplification, has no need of a range or to have the
decibel. As even we need not ‘do’ anything to create silence,
so also we need not ‘do’ anything ‘to be’ ourselves! A
sound needs to be produced. A role ‘needs’ to be picked! But
the Self is always there and when that is recognised as the source
of bliss, immortality, happiness, absolute security, the happy ‘I’
no more can escape filling all the roles and then deciding what to
do under a relative situation. The Absolute is effortless and the
relative situation, the roles need to be consciously expressed
where even the inconvenience, pain, frustrations are happily
encountered! Nobody can escape relative pain and pleasure, the
convenience and the inconvenience, the gratitude and the deception
and many such pairs of opposite emotions, ideas and physical gross
situations. But neither can one escape the Absolute, imperishable
Self. That is why with the absolute total Self-Knowledge the
person lives a very balanced pragmatic life without in any way
being a too rigid idealist or too permissive romantic. Yet, such a
person has the amazing freedom to sail through all possible
emotions and situations like the eye of the storm that remains
eternally still both when the massive clouds surround it or the
clouds seem to disappear. The centre is a centre in relation to
the clouds, but none can call it a centre in the absence of the
clouds. With the disappearance of the concept of the centre, that
little space, a part of total space does not disappear but is
always self-existent.
Be you – the ever existent Self – now with roles or now without any! Celebrate the vision!
Swami Suddhananda
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