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Accept Family Life and Cultivate Non-Attachment
One of the primary teachings of Sahaj Marg is that we have a duty to
perform and we cannot throw away that duty in the selfish interest of
our personal self. Any man who is married owes a duty to his family,
to his wife, to his children. He has to protect them and see that they
are brought up in the right way.
Once a person has accepted certain responsibilities like wife, children
etc., he is duty-bound to discharge these responsibilities, and Master
indeed teaches that to run away from home and family is a sign often
of cowardice and selfishness. So under the Sahaj Marg system there is
no place for this traditional interpretation of renunciation. What then
does Master teach? He says we must cultivate an attitude of "non-attachment
attachment," that is, we perform our duties, discharge our obligations
in all spheres of our existence, while remaining unattached to all these.
The Raja Rishis like Janaka are stated to be examples of this
ideal of human living.
Master's most important teaching is that to 'give up' creates strain
and enormous tensions. So we are not required to 'give up' but to create
an attachment to higher values and purposes, when automatically and
naturally the unnecessary things of life drop off. That is, detachment
has to be created by developing attachment in a different direction.
When we attach ourselves to the Divine, the world falls off. We are
no longer part of it though of it. We are in it, living in it. This
may be the condition of "the living dead" that Master refers to. We
are alive while we are really dead to this existence.
Be a trustee in your family
Master gives a hint. He says, "Don't think your family is your family.
They are God's children entrusted to you. They are in your trust. Look
upon them as you would any other trust." Suppose I give a million dollars
to somebody and say, "Create a trust and administer it." You administer
it. That is all. But when we become attached then the trust becomes
something else. Distrust perhaps comes into it; mutual differences come
into it and very often we go to the extremes of separation and things
like that. But if we can discharge our duties by treating them merely
as trusts which the Divine has put upon us, everything becomes easy.
My Master used to say "instead of going to the jungle and remembering
your wife and children, stay at home and remember the jungle." And that
is very easy because, especially today, under the pressures that we
face in life, there are few people who don't wish they were in the jungle.
That means we are thinking of the jungle all the time. Few people don't
want to leave their wives and go away. They say what is this misery
that I have got into! But it is not a misery; it is a training ground.
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