Thursday, December 18, 2008
Story 50 – Story of Dwaraka Nirmaanam - 11
Muchukunda continued:
Somehow a person gets the human birth by which a person will be able to realize the ultimate truth of Lord. But still those ignorant people don’t worship your feet and consider the insentient objects of the world as real. Those people then suffer by not being able to get out of samsaara like an animal not being able to come out of a deep well.
Explanation
Sankara says in Vivekachoodamani thus:
Durlabham trayamevaitat daivaanugraha hethukam
Manushyatvam mumukshutvam mahaapurusha samshrayah
Three things are very tough to obtain in life and are obtained only by God’s grace (and one’s good deeds); these are human birth, desire for liberation and surrender to a man of wisdom.
Human birth is very sacred and gifted indeed. Humans have that which other beings miss – the intellect used for discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong, what to do and what not to do. All other animals are supposed to do the same action again and again – a dog barks, a cow meows, a lion roars etc. Whereas a human being can choose what action he wants to do after using his discriminative power as to what is right and what is wrong. This is the reason why the scriptures speak very high of human birth. Unlike other beings who just eat, drink, sleep and mate, humans can go beyond the temporary, dual and sorrowful world. Humans can thereby realize the ultimate reality of blissful Lord and remain blissful whatever happens in the world.
Though we are endowed with the gift of human birth with which alone we can realize the ultimate reality of Lord, still we forget to utilize this human birth for realization. Instead of realizing the ultimate reality of Lord, humans go behind worldly pleasures. This is by considering the objects of the world as real and thereby forgetting the ultimate reality of Lord. Thus though our very nature is that of blissful Lord, we suffer in the world. Muchukunda gives a beautiful analogy to illustrate the same. An animal goes in search of food and falls into a deep well. Thereby it encounters sorrow as it is trapped in the deep well. Similarly we seek pleasure (bliss) from the external world forgetting our very nature of bliss; seeking pleasure we fall a prey to the delusions of the world; thus we fall into the ocean of samsaara. Once we fall into the ocean of samsaara, we suffer and dearly want to come out of the sorrow. But unfortunately we cannot come out of the sorrow as we are addicted to worldly pleasure – in other cases, we are not ready to give up worldly pleasures and thereby suffer in the external world.
Bhagavatham here by mentioning the greatness of human birth and showing our state of suffering in the world though our very nature of bliss is trying to make us utilize the human birth by having devotion to the ultimate reality of Lord at all times. This devotion doesn’t mean we have to renounce the world and go to a cave and mediate. This doesn’t mean that we have to stop eating food and enjoying worldly pleasures. This only means that even while enjoying worldly pleasures, we have to remember that the worldly pleasures cannot give us eternal bliss and only the ultimate reality of Lord as the substratum of the temporary world can give us eternal bliss. Mere remembrance of the Lord as the substratum of the entire world and as our very nature of Consciousness all the while doing worldly actions like any normal human being is devotion. This devotion will slowly take us to the goal of being ever blissful irrespective of where we are and what we are doing. This can be compared to an actor enacting his role to perfection all the while being blissful and unaffected by whatever he is doing in the film. This might seem very tough to implement but is quite simple with some practice. We just have to involve the thought of the ultimate reality of Lord with remembering the Lord as the substratum of the illusory world thereby pervading the entire world while doing all actions in the world.
Muchukunda continued:
O Lord! A lot of time has gone waste for me as well due to being deluded into kingly pleasures. Thinking that I am the decaying body, I have been immersed in thoughts about children, wife, wealth, land etc. In this mud-like body, I have nourished the thought that I am the king. Due to this, I have wasted time by roaming around the entire world in chariots, elephants, horses etc. I had the thought that there are things to be done and things to be achieved in life. Attachment and greed towards objects started growing day by day. When man forgets you and gets deluded into attraction of worldly objects, then he encounters death standing in front of him like a hungry snake standing in front of the rat-hole.
Explanation
Here Bhagavatham is beautifully explaining as to how the blissful seeker forgets his very nature of Lord and finally ends up his life in utter distress, discontentment and sorrow.
It is a well known statement that “time waits for none”. Sankara mentions this in Bhaja Govindam as “kaalah kreedathi, gacchathi aayuh, tadapi na munchathi aashaavayuh” (time passes by, aging is happening and still desires haven’t vanished). Each moment of our life, we are being chased by death or Yama. Death is waiting to pounce upon us when the appropriate time is up. Bhagavatham beautifully compares this to a hungry snake waiting outside the hole of the rat. When the rat comes out, the snake will eat it. Similarly when our time is up, death will eat us up. We learned the last day as to how gifted is human birth. After many births of different species, we get the gifted human birth. And since we don’t know as to how long we will live, we have to utilize the human birth to realize our very nature of blissful Lord now itself.
When death stands in front of us, we would have wasted our entire life in searching for worldly pleasures. Worldly pleasures can never give us happiness as the world itself is temporary. Moreover we seek worldly pleasures after forgetting our very nature of blissful Lord. This ignorance of our very nature of bliss leads us to think that “I am the body”. Due to this body-notion, we enter into a lot of attachments, delusions, greed etc. Thus an entire life-time is spent going behind worldly pleasures thinking that they will give us eternal bliss. We go on seeking and seeking thinking that we have a lot of time on hand for the same. But all of a sudden, death stands in front of us saying that our time is up. Death is one person whom we cannot beat. Even the Lord couldn’t avert death – we don’t have an option with death. But we do have an option of as to how to welcome death. The knowledge that “I am the ever blissful Lord and everything else is only an illusion in the Lord” will make us welcome death with a happy and smiling face. As Balakrishnan Nair beautifully puts it, we will be able to say to death “O Yama deva! Come in – do you want to have a tea before we start?”. But this is not possible as long as we have the body-notion and we have forgotten our very nature of Lord.
What if we die? Anyway we will be born again – so nothing to worry.
Yes, we will be born again but we don’t know where and as what we will be born. Moreover, our very nature is that of eternal blissful Lord and not the dying body. Is it fine to accept that we are ignorant of counting and still be happy while paying for coffee at starbucks? It isn’t and it is only a foolish behavior. We don’t know where we will be born and as what we will born as the two factors which determines whether we are born again is “action and knowledge” – the actions we have done and the knowledge we have accumulated. Even if we are not realized at the time of death, at least if we know that our very nature is that of Lord but somehow cannot stand by it, still we will be saved. If this is not the case, we will not be saved.
As Vidyaranya puts it, most of us will “kurvathe karma bhogaaya, karma karthum cha bhunjathe” (do actions for enjoyment and enjoy for doing actions). Thus we will be immersed in the vicious circle of action and fruits never to be satisfied and content as contentment arises from negating the body-notion and asserting our nature to be that of non-dual Lord. We have already wasted so many births and many years in this birth – therefore Bhagavatham is giving us the wake-up call through Muchukunda to start negating the body-notion and asserting ourselves to be the ultimate reality of Lord.
This is very simple to do – we don’t have to abuse the body; instead we just have to remember that “I am not the body but the Conscious Lord”. I cannot be the body as the body is temporary and not present in deep sleep whereas I am present in deep sleep state. The body is inert after the soul passes away which means I cannot be the body. This analysis in our mind is to be done just once and then we just have to reassert as much as possible in our mind that “I am not the body but the Conscious Lord”. This remembrance of our nature in the mind will slowly make our life fruitful and we will be able to let go of the body at the time of death with a smiling and happy face.
We will continue with the story in the next day.
Somehow a person gets the human birth by which a person will be able to realize the ultimate truth of Lord. But still those ignorant people don’t worship your feet and consider the insentient objects of the world as real. Those people then suffer by not being able to get out of samsaara like an animal not being able to come out of a deep well.
Explanation
Sankara says in Vivekachoodamani thus:
Durlabham trayamevaitat daivaanugraha hethukam
Manushyatvam mumukshutvam mahaapurusha samshrayah
Three things are very tough to obtain in life and are obtained only by God’s grace (and one’s good deeds); these are human birth, desire for liberation and surrender to a man of wisdom.
Human birth is very sacred and gifted indeed. Humans have that which other beings miss – the intellect used for discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong, what to do and what not to do. All other animals are supposed to do the same action again and again – a dog barks, a cow meows, a lion roars etc. Whereas a human being can choose what action he wants to do after using his discriminative power as to what is right and what is wrong. This is the reason why the scriptures speak very high of human birth. Unlike other beings who just eat, drink, sleep and mate, humans can go beyond the temporary, dual and sorrowful world. Humans can thereby realize the ultimate reality of blissful Lord and remain blissful whatever happens in the world.
Though we are endowed with the gift of human birth with which alone we can realize the ultimate reality of Lord, still we forget to utilize this human birth for realization. Instead of realizing the ultimate reality of Lord, humans go behind worldly pleasures. This is by considering the objects of the world as real and thereby forgetting the ultimate reality of Lord. Thus though our very nature is that of blissful Lord, we suffer in the world. Muchukunda gives a beautiful analogy to illustrate the same. An animal goes in search of food and falls into a deep well. Thereby it encounters sorrow as it is trapped in the deep well. Similarly we seek pleasure (bliss) from the external world forgetting our very nature of bliss; seeking pleasure we fall a prey to the delusions of the world; thus we fall into the ocean of samsaara. Once we fall into the ocean of samsaara, we suffer and dearly want to come out of the sorrow. But unfortunately we cannot come out of the sorrow as we are addicted to worldly pleasure – in other cases, we are not ready to give up worldly pleasures and thereby suffer in the external world.
Bhagavatham here by mentioning the greatness of human birth and showing our state of suffering in the world though our very nature of bliss is trying to make us utilize the human birth by having devotion to the ultimate reality of Lord at all times. This devotion doesn’t mean we have to renounce the world and go to a cave and mediate. This doesn’t mean that we have to stop eating food and enjoying worldly pleasures. This only means that even while enjoying worldly pleasures, we have to remember that the worldly pleasures cannot give us eternal bliss and only the ultimate reality of Lord as the substratum of the temporary world can give us eternal bliss. Mere remembrance of the Lord as the substratum of the entire world and as our very nature of Consciousness all the while doing worldly actions like any normal human being is devotion. This devotion will slowly take us to the goal of being ever blissful irrespective of where we are and what we are doing. This can be compared to an actor enacting his role to perfection all the while being blissful and unaffected by whatever he is doing in the film. This might seem very tough to implement but is quite simple with some practice. We just have to involve the thought of the ultimate reality of Lord with remembering the Lord as the substratum of the illusory world thereby pervading the entire world while doing all actions in the world.
Muchukunda continued:
O Lord! A lot of time has gone waste for me as well due to being deluded into kingly pleasures. Thinking that I am the decaying body, I have been immersed in thoughts about children, wife, wealth, land etc. In this mud-like body, I have nourished the thought that I am the king. Due to this, I have wasted time by roaming around the entire world in chariots, elephants, horses etc. I had the thought that there are things to be done and things to be achieved in life. Attachment and greed towards objects started growing day by day. When man forgets you and gets deluded into attraction of worldly objects, then he encounters death standing in front of him like a hungry snake standing in front of the rat-hole.
Explanation
Here Bhagavatham is beautifully explaining as to how the blissful seeker forgets his very nature of Lord and finally ends up his life in utter distress, discontentment and sorrow.
It is a well known statement that “time waits for none”. Sankara mentions this in Bhaja Govindam as “kaalah kreedathi, gacchathi aayuh, tadapi na munchathi aashaavayuh” (time passes by, aging is happening and still desires haven’t vanished). Each moment of our life, we are being chased by death or Yama. Death is waiting to pounce upon us when the appropriate time is up. Bhagavatham beautifully compares this to a hungry snake waiting outside the hole of the rat. When the rat comes out, the snake will eat it. Similarly when our time is up, death will eat us up. We learned the last day as to how gifted is human birth. After many births of different species, we get the gifted human birth. And since we don’t know as to how long we will live, we have to utilize the human birth to realize our very nature of blissful Lord now itself.
When death stands in front of us, we would have wasted our entire life in searching for worldly pleasures. Worldly pleasures can never give us happiness as the world itself is temporary. Moreover we seek worldly pleasures after forgetting our very nature of blissful Lord. This ignorance of our very nature of bliss leads us to think that “I am the body”. Due to this body-notion, we enter into a lot of attachments, delusions, greed etc. Thus an entire life-time is spent going behind worldly pleasures thinking that they will give us eternal bliss. We go on seeking and seeking thinking that we have a lot of time on hand for the same. But all of a sudden, death stands in front of us saying that our time is up. Death is one person whom we cannot beat. Even the Lord couldn’t avert death – we don’t have an option with death. But we do have an option of as to how to welcome death. The knowledge that “I am the ever blissful Lord and everything else is only an illusion in the Lord” will make us welcome death with a happy and smiling face. As Balakrishnan Nair beautifully puts it, we will be able to say to death “O Yama deva! Come in – do you want to have a tea before we start?”. But this is not possible as long as we have the body-notion and we have forgotten our very nature of Lord.
What if we die? Anyway we will be born again – so nothing to worry.
Yes, we will be born again but we don’t know where and as what we will be born. Moreover, our very nature is that of eternal blissful Lord and not the dying body. Is it fine to accept that we are ignorant of counting and still be happy while paying for coffee at starbucks? It isn’t and it is only a foolish behavior. We don’t know where we will be born and as what we will born as the two factors which determines whether we are born again is “action and knowledge” – the actions we have done and the knowledge we have accumulated. Even if we are not realized at the time of death, at least if we know that our very nature is that of Lord but somehow cannot stand by it, still we will be saved. If this is not the case, we will not be saved.
As Vidyaranya puts it, most of us will “kurvathe karma bhogaaya, karma karthum cha bhunjathe” (do actions for enjoyment and enjoy for doing actions). Thus we will be immersed in the vicious circle of action and fruits never to be satisfied and content as contentment arises from negating the body-notion and asserting our nature to be that of non-dual Lord. We have already wasted so many births and many years in this birth – therefore Bhagavatham is giving us the wake-up call through Muchukunda to start negating the body-notion and asserting ourselves to be the ultimate reality of Lord.
This is very simple to do – we don’t have to abuse the body; instead we just have to remember that “I am not the body but the Conscious Lord”. I cannot be the body as the body is temporary and not present in deep sleep whereas I am present in deep sleep state. The body is inert after the soul passes away which means I cannot be the body. This analysis in our mind is to be done just once and then we just have to reassert as much as possible in our mind that “I am not the body but the Conscious Lord”. This remembrance of our nature in the mind will slowly make our life fruitful and we will be able to let go of the body at the time of death with a smiling and happy face.
We will continue with the story in the next day.
# posted by vedanta : 5:43 AM
