|| Shri Hari ||
Freedom from Sorrow
continued.....
I go as far as to say that situations do not have the time to give pleasure and pain ! Poor thing ! The situations are busy on their path, they do not even touch us, then how can it give us pleasure and pain? Therefore, a man can be ever joyful, ever blissful with 'satsang,' (association with truth), with holy thoughts, with good feelings and sentiments; as situations and circumstances cannot give one sorrow. You are grabbing hold of sorrow and becoming unhappy. When we get favorable situations, we become happy, and when we get unfavorable situations, we find them unpleasurable, this is a blunder. In reality, situations are passing away. Just like day and night, these favorable and unfavorable situations will keep coming. Just as after day, comes night, and after night, comes day. In the same way, after pleasure comes pain, and after pain comes pleasure and so on.
Talks pertaining to one’s salvation are open to all. Human body is only for one’s salvation, not for sense enjoyment.
'yahin tana kar phal bishaya na bhaayi.'
(Manas 7/44/1).
Pleasure and pain are of two kinds. People seeing that we have money, possessions, glories, son, grandson, house, and various favorable things, consider us to be very happy. On seeing that we don’t have these things - no food to eat, clothes to wear, a house to live in, then people perceive that we are very unhappy. Thus, the name of various favorable, pleasure giving things is called happiness, and the name of various unfavorable things is called unhappiness. The feeling of joy in one’s heart is called happiness and the feeling of envy is called unhappiness. Of these, the pleasure and pain resulting from objects is circumstantial, and the pleasure and pain of the heart is out of foolishness. It is man’s main responsibility to get rid of this foolishness.
Just as when you do not know a language, then you can learn the language to get rid of that ignorance, in the same way, pleasure and pain are not in us - this skill can be learned by every man. It is for this knowledge that human body has been attained. Therefore on being born a human, we are not to become pleased and displeased, rather we are to rise above both pleasure and pain. What does it mean to rise above pleasure and pain? Where no pleasure can reach, nor any pain can reach. A verse has come in the Patanjali Yoga Darshan of Vyas -
Pragyaapraasaadmaaruhayaashoch
bhoomishthaaniva shailstah sarvaanpraagyonupashyati ||
(Patanjali Yoga Darshan 1/47 ka)
It means, a man who stands on top of a mountain, can see the men in the plains below, and, a man standing in the palace, sees both the suffering and not suffering.
continued......
From "Nitya Yog ki Praapti" in English by Swami Ramsukhdasji