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| Quench your Thirst |
| By Anandmurti Gurumaa |
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| What are the desires of the mind? |
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| People desire good clothes, good things, cars, etc., and “I too should get a chance to enjoy them!” The reality is that we are not even aware that there are repressed desires deep within us. We don’t even know which desires we are harboring and when they will come up to the surface, overpower us. |
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Only wisdom can show us the way out of the trap of desires that our mind creates; as such, not even experience can. If only the experience of sensual gratification could lead us out of it, the whole world would be wise.
But it is only the wisdom to distinguish the perishable from the imperishable, and the discernment to understand that there is a pit into which we can fall if we don’t watch out, that can help us come out of the web spun by the ego. It is not a bad thing to desire good clothes or good stuff, but to make it the means and not the end is harmful.
We do not have to judge only other people; we can be unbiased but critical of ourselves too. We need to just watch our mind and learn from our mistakes. If we are watchful, we can learn new things every moment – that is the only way to come out of the trap set by the mind.
The body has its limitations; we are built in a certain way and after a point we cannot really change that structure, but the mind can break the boundaries it has created and it can expand. Acceptance of limitations and boundaries is necessary to overcome them. What we see is not real; the world is not real…Everything seen is imperishable. ‘Conditions apply!’ Therefore be very vigilant and mindful all the time. Watch your mind. |
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| Why do we have desires, emotions and attachments? How can we detach our selves from them as they create so much of suffering? |
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| Desires and emotions are a part of being human. We have been blessed to feel emotions; the problem arises when we don’t know how to manage these emotions and when unnecessarily because of the ignorance we stumble upon our emotions and fall down. |
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You can’t blame nature for giving us emotions and should rather be thankful to it. From mother we experience unconditional affection; from father we get immense inspiration and support – both financial and emotional support; brothers & sisters and all other relatives play a very important role in shaping up your personality.
Whatsoever differences or problems may arise in our relationships but that doesn’t mean that emotions and attachments are bad. No, they are good. Even attachment is good.
It is only through attachment that one learns to cling and only the one who has learned to cling and enjoyed worldly affections can come out of it. Attachments are not meant to get stuck but to experience, enjoy and simply move beyond them. |
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Have you ever seen a dry leaf falling down from the tree? No one pulls the leaf; no one asks it to come down. Leaf is not making any conscious effort to fall down. But by just being with that branch one day it starts getting dried up. Leaf is attached to the branch but slowly the juice flowing in the leaf starts drying up, and gradually the color of leaf changes, and one day it simply falls down.
The family attachments and emotions are just like tree and leaf; we are like a leaf and family & society are like a tree. Till the time the juice of affections and emotions is flowing we are happy. But yes, whenever you are happy you should not forget the fact that you can’t continue to be happy always. Happiness comes after sadness.The fun of meeting a friend is only when you meet him after a long separation. When two friends or two relatives sit together and live together for a long time, all fun and ecstasy just vanishes. So we need some separation to enjoy the meetings and we need some sadness too to enjoy the happiness. We need death to celebrate life.
Every life is followed by death, happiness is followed by sorrow and every meeting is followed by separation.
So we should accept life in all its dualities. Problem is this that we want to remain on the bank only i.e. we don’t want separation, we don’t want death, we don’t want sadness and we don’t want misfortunes.
Whether you want something or not, problems are going to be there. Be easy and accept the life in its totality. When sadness comes be sad, when happiness comes enjoy, when death happens be very thoughtful, when birth happens rejoice.
Rabindra Nath Tagore, on birth of any child used to say that God is still not angry with the humans and that’s the reason a new being has entered in our life. |
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Who or what is God? |
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| This is an interesting question because more than half of the humanity is a believer in God, and every religion has its own definition which is quite different from the definition given by the other religion. This earth is having more than 350 religions, so we can say there are more than 350 kinds of God. And in this whole jamboree of so many plural Gods, one is seemingly so different from the one. It really confuses the mind. Then sometimes one tends to say that there isn't any God and it's just the fabrication of the human mind. Some sociologists come out with their own definitions that God is an idea which has been concocted by the priests and by the politicians for selfish interests. For some ulterior motive, God has been created, because God is never going to come up and say ‘I am God’. I'm saying this because God in most of the religions is seen as a person, as a gracious, superman, who sits on his golden thrown. And on whim creates the world and on whim destroys the world. Most of the religions tend to accept this notion of God. So they have their own one kind of idol or an image of God and then they have their own set of rituals, which they believe in with die-hard conviction. |
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The most important thing which is to be understood is that mind which is already over loaded with information about Gods. It seems so unreal to experience or to know really what God is. And truly speaking, most of the beautiful things in our life and in this world are beyond the category of defining in words like the scent of the best perfume - someone may ask you to describe. You may fill up volumes but in the end you would say please take a whiff from the bottle and that's the only way to know the smell, the fragrance. These are very small things and yet the things which we have been experiencing since day one in this physical body, we find it difficult to describe because all words have limitations. So have the mind and the things which are beyond the mind that words cannot express.
The moment we say, who is God, so many answers are given, readymade answers, by the scriptures, by the books, by the rabbis, by the priests. And yet the human mind is still hankering for what it really means. I would say this is something which cannot be explained by any enlightened master (living or not living). It is something which one has to delve within and know it what it is.
Similarly, one thing which I can definitely say is that God is not a person, God is not a supreme human being or like a human being sitting somewhere up there on his golden thrown. God is beyond the limitations of the body, of the mind. God is a reality; and reality is something which can be much closer to the phenomenon or the relativity of how we perceive things. What we are seeing in this world is so different from what it really is. Similarly, when I say God is reality, this reality is the essence. And the essence is of the truth and truth over here is not that truth which we use in our day-to-day life. When I say truth, it means existence.
So, if I have to put this in words, then I say God is the existential truth which can be known only by experience. And this experience will only happen to those who have a scientific aptitude and work like an explorer, who explores the depth and the breadth of the mind and explores these layers of mind. One ends up with that oceanic feeling of consciousness. Initially, it is sleeping and slowly it begins to rise and in those moments of gaps which come in between of the waves of the mind, these waves of the consciousness, something peeps up and that gives the first glimpse of what truth is or what God is but that definitely is not a form. It is not imaginative. It is as much real as you or I. We can deny the existence of everything but we can never deny the existence of our own self. So we need to know what this self is. We need to understand not just by mind, not just by words, not just by scriptures but with experience. And this experience comes from meditation. |
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Why are we in this world and with what purpose? |
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We are here because we are here! There can't be any cause and there can't be any purpose. Because all purposes are very calculative, selfish modes of the mind and when this selfishness creeps in, it is not higher thinking. Just look at the world around you, so beautiful, beauty in abundance, it is so luminous, so colorful, full of rainbows. It is just like a dance of a dancer, not of that dancer who is a professional because a professional dancer wants fee. It is more like a dance of a child who is just jumping around and if you ask a child what's the purpose of your jumping? What's the purpose of your dancing? He'll just give a very awkward look and would like to ask you, can't you see that I'm dancing because I'm enjoying dancing. |
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So, this life is here and this world is here because it is the dance of the divine, without any purpose, without any ulterior motive. The scriptures provide us with many fascinating answers that God was alone and was lonely and he said okay let me do something. He got so bored of his loneliness, he created this world. So he created first Adam, then out of Adam came Eve and so on. Most of the religions say so and they always say there is a purpose of our coming here. For example, they'll say the purpose is to know who our creator is. I find this strange. Imagine, first the creator creates us, then he separates us from himself and now wants us to go back to him. I say, why start this in the first place? Rather I would say that there isn't any purpose.
We can say life is because life should be like this. In these very moments of beauty, of grandeur, of purity we are able to experience all this, then we will never ask this question, why? We never ask any one why you are happy. If someone is happy, you just join him. But if someone is sad, then you ask him, why are you unhappy? I believe those who have experienced beauty and truth never ask the purpose of life. They are already enjoying it, celebrating life. |
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If God is everywhere then why God allows violent acts? Why can't God stop it? |
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Electric current is available in wires. We can use it positively, and we can use it negatively. We can kill with this current and we can use life saving equipment with this current only. The electric current does not make any choices. It is how we use it. Similarly understand this; God is not the planner and dictator of our lives. God is the energy, God is the existence. We have been given the energy to think and we have been given the faculty to think, how and about what we think depends on us. We can use this thinking power in an abusive way or make good use of this power. The closest simile which I am giving is of electric current. How we will use it: it depends upon us. If we abuse it, we suffer; if we use it properly, we enjoy. |
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God is not a dictator who will run our life according to his whims. God is not a puppeteer and we are not his puppets. We have freedom to make our choices which can be good or bad and therefore have to bear the consequences for making choices. When will you grow up! When will you learn to take responsibilities? God is a being, not a personality. We have been given mind to think and intellect to make decisions. If one abuses this liberty, if he makes wrong use of his mind, commits murder, rape, induces pain, and agony for others, mind it! It is not God who is running the show; it is the person to be blamed. We live in a society and are inter-connected to one another.
Thus, choices made by a person affect another individual. And we suffer, so it becomes most important to spread this awakening of living our lives with great responsibility. A person who lives irresponsibly can evade the law of land; can evade the punishment of so-called God also. But he cannot evade his own consciousness which will punish. It is not that someone else will punish you for your deeds, other is not needed.
We all are the creators of our own hells and our own heavens. There is not any hell or heaven hanging somewhere in the sky. Or some unseen God will punish us for our actions, for our Karmas. It is us. It is our own mind which creates the hell and which is the creator of heaven. There isn't any God who is pulling our strings. Because if it is so then there shouldn't be any crime happening. If God is pulling the strings then criminals can easily say, God pulled my strings and I pulled the trigger of the gun.
It is just an excuse to save oneself from taking the responsibility for our own evil mindedness. It is us who do the action, it is us who think, it is us who decide, who acts upon our thoughts. Sooner we realize this, better will be our society. If we know that what ever we give to others will come back to me, we will think twice before doing anything. |
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