|
Maintain Balance in Every Aspect of Life
If we are not able to make our minds and respond in a very balanced
way, we are either pulled towards the path of the material life, to
our spiritual detriment or as in the ancient life, we are pulled totally
towards the other side. We renounce the families, run away to the jungles,
become tapasvis and then the heart cries out for the family we have
left behind, the love for the children that we have renounced, and most
importantly, the inner conscience which says," My dear friend,
you really had no right to throw a family you have acquired willingly,
knowingly, lovingly and sacrifice them for your personal spiritual evolution,
which can be considered selfish."
Spirituality does not recognize pleasure as a goal. Because you see,
in the whole of the animal kingdom there is no such thing as pleasure.
A bull doesn't go around looking for a female. Instinct drives it. Honey
badger going for honey - yes, but that is its food, it does not know
that it is sweet. So in animal kingdom there is no pleasure even in
sex, you see, even in mating. It is an instinctual drive. The idea of
pleasure and pain comes only in the human existence, and today if you
see society, all of our efforts are towards maximizing pleasure and
minimizing pain. So what we are doing with our life? There should be
a balance between pain and pleasure. Ideally it should be so balanced
that there is no pleasure, no pain, like a no-profit, no-loss situation,
which is very good.
Spirituality says, there is no harm in earning money, being a king,
being an emperor, so long as your morals, your right living, your right
conduct, are established in you, and then your destiny makes you a king
or an emperor and at the same time you are a saint. Raja Janaka was
perhaps the only example of that sort of existence, a Raja Rishi,
where the two meet - the material excellence and the spiritual excellence
or eminence. It is very rare, not because the life is incompatible,
but because we don't aspire.
Master said, the need for spirituality is the need for inner existence.
It is the need for restoring a lost balance, that we live in the two
angles or two planes of existence when nature pushed us out into this
world. It gave us a body but it also gave us a soul. It is the soul
which assumes the body and if you are only pampering the body, only
seeing the growth of the body, its pleasure, its comforts, its purification,
its like a man who never baths but wears a new dress every half an hour
of the day. He will still stink, sometimes. So the basic need for spirituality
is, forget everything else that spirituality can give us - it is this
urgent need, permanent need, to restore a balance within ourselves.
It is like a seesaw which is at balance, not this way, not that way.
What is appropriateness of maintenance that is needed for the body?
The Upanishad is very specific - maintain it in a fit condition, not
a superlatively fit condition. Just a fit condition to take you from
here to there. Because this journey, ideally we should make only once.
Practically we can make only once, because we never use this body again.
Even if you are unfortunate enough to come back to this world, this
body is a once used body, a throw away body. So how much attention should
be given to it? Well, keep it fit. Do not furnish it, polish it, paste
it with badam (almonds) and pista (pistachio). It is not
necessary. Simple food, simple living, simple diet, simple exercise,
look at it with the minimum of attention necessary to maintain it in
a condition to transport you through the existence. So the body has
its place; it is a vehicle to transport me, the real Me, who is inside
me, who is occupant of this vehicle, from wherever He is, to wherever
He is to go.
So, in this Sahaj Marg system, in my Mission, Shri Ram Chandra Mission,
there is no denial of values of life. My Master questioned himself,
"I am here in a physical body, I am in embodied soul; I have to
live an existence in this environment. I have to be educated. I have
to earn, I have to marry, I have to have children. What on earth I am
supposed to do with them? But does it mean, that I cannot, if I choose,
become a rishi ?" So the perfection that we are aiming for, is
nothing but balance. Balance is perfection; perfection is balance.
|
