Now comes the big (biggest ?? ) question of my life ( or is it everyones' ? ) ...... WHY
????.....as usual, comes the first question ......
Why is life unfair at me ?
and then goes the list .............
Why shud i always STRUGGLE to go to the top........ and then SUFFER there???
When nothing is permanent, WHY do i feel that SUFFERING is permanent ?
Why can't i do the work assigned, in my own way, rather than following the proposed
method?
and the list continues.............. rather CONTINUED....... till i met a friend, who
immediately prescribed me the speeches of Swami Vivekananda, looking at the list :D.....
then i thought ....... WHY not try this out???......... As a kid, i was fascinated by the stories of the
heroics of this man ........ and i remember my mother telling me about his childhood,
a few incidents he had at the sea when he shot all the 12 shells in 12 gun shots
.......etc .......etc...... But never took it so seroiusly........
moreover, things were not going good for me then, with unrest and stress ruling
me.........i started off reading the first speech, which was the one delivered at the Parliament of
Religions, and it increased my curiosity .........
and immediately, i went on to read 'Work and its Secrets' which answered many
questions........ :)
in the words of Swami Vivekananda.......
"If we examine our own lives, we find that the greatest cause of sorrow is this: we take
up something, and put our whole energy on it — perhaps it is a failure and yet we
cannot give it up. We know that it is hurting us, that any further clinging to it is simply
bringing misery on us; still, we cannot tear ourselves away from it. The bee came to sip
the honey, but its feet stuck to the honey-pot and it could not get away. Again and
again, we are finding ourselves in that state. That is the whole secret of existence. Why
are we here? We came here to sip the honey, and we find our hands and feet sticking
to it. We are caught, though we came to catch. We came to enjoy; we are being
enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked.
All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life. We are being
worked upon by other minds, and we are always struggling to work on other minds. We
want to enjoy the pleasures of life; and they eat into our vitals. We want to get
everything from nature, but we find in the long run that nature takes everything from us
— depletes us, and casts us aside. "
and the solution !!!!
"Had it not been for this, life would have been all sunshine. Never mind! With all its
failures and successes, with all its joys and sorrows, it can be one succession of
sunshine, if only we are not caught.
That is the one cause of misery: we are attached, we are being caught. Therefore says
the Gita: Work constantly; work, but be not attached; be not caught. Reserve unto
yourself the power of detaching yourself from everything, however beloved, however
much the soul might yearn for it, however great the pangs of misery you feel if you
were going to leave it; still, reserve the power of leaving it whenever you want. The
weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery.
Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death. There
are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us
unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them.
There may be a million microbes of misery, floating about us. Never mind! They dare
not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened.
This is the great fact: strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal,
immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery: weakness is death. "
and more !!
"Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to
you — but do not think of that now, it will come back multiplied a thousandfold — but
the attention must not be on that. Yet have the power to give: give, and there it ends.
Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly.
Sooner or later you will have to give up. You come into life to accumulate. With
clenched hands, you want to take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes
your hands open. Whether you will it or not, you have to give. The moment you say, "I
will not", the blow comes; you are hurt. None is there but will be compelled, in the long
run, to give up everything. And the more one struggles against this law, the more
miserable one feels. It is because we dare not give, because we are not resigned
enough to accede to this grand demand of nature, that we are miserable. The forest is
gone, but we get heat in return. The sun is taking up water from the ocean, to return it
in showers. You are a machine for taking and giving: you take, in order to give. Ask,
therefore, nothing in return; but the more you give, the more will come to you. The
quicker you can empty the air out of this room, the quicker it will be filled up by the
external air; and if you close all the doors and every aperture, that which is within will
remain, but that which is outside will never come in, and that which is within will
stagnate, degenerate, and become poisoned. A river is continually emptying itself into
the ocean and is continually filling up again. Bar not the exit into the ocean. The
moment you do that, death seizes you. "
these were the words, which almost created a storm in my mind that night .............. i
cud hardly sleep......... i read the entire speech atleast a 10 times that night, and started
answering the questions which were troubling me ..........i was thunderstruck by the way solutions were coming by themselves, with just a little
thought as input...........
it took time for the results to show up, but the results came promptly :).........
That brought me closer to his literature...........
as Swami VIvekananda rightly said ,
"It is very difficult, but we can overcome the difficulty by constant practice. We must
learn that nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it. I have
just said, no disease can come to me until the body is ready; it does not depend alone
on the germs, but upon a certain predisposition which is already in the body. We get
only that for which we are fitted. Let us give up our pride and understand this, that never
is misery undeserved. There never has been a blow undeserved: there never has been
an evil for which I did not pave the way with my own hands. We ought to know that.
Analyse yourselves and you will find that every blow you have received, came to you
because you prepared yourselves for it. You did half, and the external world did the
other half: that is how the blow came. That will sober us down. At the same time, from
this very analysis will come a note of hope, and the note of hope is: "I have no control of
the external world, but that which is in me and nearer unto me, my own world, is in my
control. If the two together are required to make a failure, if the two together are
necessary to give me a blow, I will not contribute the one which is in my keeping; and
how then can the blow come? If I get real control of myself, the blow will never come."
having done a great deal of experimenting with my own thoughts, i realized the truth
behind swami's saying about the internal world of man..........
then i began my next feat with his doctrine of 'Practical Vedanta'...........i had to read every speech atleast 20 times to understand what he was trying to
talk.......his talk about "The Real and Apparent Man" and "Maya or Illusion" mesmerized me, and
i wondered, "How can a human being probe into such depths of Vedanta??".............His three lectures on Practical Vedanta, are equivalent to something more than the
Vedas and Upanishads put together........
he says it beautifully,
"These are the principles of ethics, but we shall now come down lower and work out
the details. We shall see how this Vedanta can be carried into our everyday life, the city
life, the country life, the national life, and the home life of every nation. For, if a religion
cannot help man wherever he may be, wherever he stands, it is not of much use; it will
remain only a theory for the chosen few. Religion, to help mankind, must be ready and
able to help him in whatever condition he is, in servitude or in freedom, in the depths of
degradation or on the heights of purity; everywhere, equally, it should be able to come
to his aid. The principles of Vedanta, or the ideal of religion, or whatever you may call it,
will be fulfilled by its capacity for performing this great function.
The ideal of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. If faith in ourselves had been
more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and
miseries that we have would have vanished. Throughout the history of mankind, if any
motive power has been more potent than another in the lives of all great men and
women, it is that of faith in themselves. Born with the consciousness that they were to
be great, they became great. Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come
a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to
have faith in himself. But it is better for us that we should know it from the very first.
Why should we have all these bitter experiences in order to gain faith in ourselves? We
can see that all the difference between man and man is owing to the existence or
non-existence of faith in himself. Faith in ourselves will do everything. I have
experienced it in my own life, and am still doing so; and as I grow older that faith is
becoming stronger and stronger. He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The
old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion
says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself. But it is not selfish faith
because the Vedanta, again, is the doctrine of oneness. It means faith in all, because
you are all. Love for yourselves means love for all, love for animals, love for everything,
for you are all one. It is the great faith which will make the world better. I am sure of
that. He is the highest man who can say with truth, "I know all about myself." Do you
know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces are still lurking behind
that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have
passed since man first came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has
been manifested. Therefore, you must not say that you are weak. How do you know
what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that
which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness. "
i feel Practical Vedanta is the very essence of life.......... and so, i named my Blog :).....
