Peace. Peace. Peace. These are the three words that many of our shlokas and meditative verses in Sanskrit end with. Among the six types of wealth that a seeker needs to cultivate, peace ranks first. Shama (control of mind), Dama (control of the senses), Uparati (withdrawal of the mind), Titiksha (forbearance), Shraddha (faith), and Samadhanam (absorption of the mind in its own self) are the six types of wealth.
Shama is a state of being where the control of a desire happens in the mind. Desires spring up in the mind due to the presence of latent tendencies in our core personality. We are born with our own bag of latent impressions called Vasanas. That is the cause which makes two children born in the same family to be completely different from each other sometimes. The Vasanas are present in the causal body or that thought in us which makes us say ‘I’. We constantly use this single letter-word ‘I’ to refer to this individual body, mind and intellect. In that thought, there are many sensations of our likes and dislikes, talents and tendencies. So long as there is life in the body, these tendencies keep constantly surfacing like a dynamic volcano.
These Vasanas are present in an unmanifest condition. However, when the situation around becomes conducive for the expression of the Vasana, it springs up in the form of a desire in our intellect. That desire keeps bothering us until we give a concrete shape to it as a thought in the mind.
The thought in the mind gains a solid presence as we keep paying attention to it and this thought emerges through the body as an action.
The process does not stop here. The action yields results. The results, besides creating effects such as “I like what is happening”, “I don’t like what is happening” or “I am indifferent to what is happening” leaves an impression in the mind that triggers further actions of the same kind. When this cycle gets thicker and thicker as an impression, the individual personality gets trapped in a karma chakra of desire, thought, action, impression, results and so on.
There is no way out of this wheel which continues for lifetime. The only solution is by knowing the real nature of our true self. To qualify for that, these six types of wealth are required. The wealth of Shama is gathered when the mind is mastered. When a desire arises and manifests as a thought, we can just pay attention to that thought and not act upon it to generate an action. This requires great alertness and control of the mind. With constant practice, the mind is mastered and thoughts cease to bother us.
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