Life is all about striving. We must strive to succeed, but it is also import to drive on the proper road to success. Here we will see many ways by which we can fine-tune our mind through sadhana or practice so that the mind becomes steady and simple. This state of mind is the highway to success.
Every week there will be a practice mentioned here.
When we follow these practical tips to success, step by step we not only succeed, but also guide others on the same path. It is important first to have a clear understanding of who you are—a sadhaka or a badhaka. A sadhaka is one who strives, works out, fine-tunes and achieves. A badhaka is one who does nothing, expects the world to give his success on a platter and most importantly hinders other sadhakas too. The information and practices in these columns will be of immense help to the sadhakas and not the badhakas.
Every thing, situation and person in this world gives us two experiences. One is bhoga or experience. By their very presence, we experience something. Every experience has knowledge for its result, but if we do not realise that the experience is there for the sake of knowledge, we will end up enjoying it with our senses and in the end there is only a wastage of our personal power which is on the depleting mode between birth to death.
In his famous verses called Vairagya Shatakam Bhartruhari says Bhoge roga bhayam—in excessive indulgence through the sense organs, there is only fear of disease. The only thing that can give us fearlessness is vairagya or withdrawal from the pleasures of the senses.
What is bhoga? When the five senses of perception and the mind come in contact with its respective objects of sound, form, smell, taste, touch and thought, experience or bhoga happens. What we call life is nothing but a series of experiences from morning to night.
Bhoga by itself is not a problem, but the labelling of the mind as good and bad, like and dislike is the problem. Somebody shouting in your neighbourhood will not deplete you of your energy. However, the moment you label that person as insensitive and shouting so as to disturb you, the person ought not to do that, this is a civilised society, people are insensitive these days, let me go and put an end to this noise—these are a series of thoughts that are triggered by the first thought on hearing the sound that it is a bad thing and he should not be doing it.
This whole week, until we meet next Sunday here, let us take the sense organ of hearing alone. Observe all the sounds without labelling them good or bad, like or don’t like and nice or not nice. Observe the sound and leave it there. Take nothing of it with you in the form of a meaning. You will experience a drastic reduction of mental noise and experience peace and tranquillity born of total acceptance.
(www.sharanyachaitanya.blogspot.in)