At a major corporation, a person was asked to give a speech about his LIFE experiences during his retirement party. The man then narrated his childhood, his education, marriage, children, house, property, tragedies in life, so on and so forth.
If you think about it, all the above life experiences can be broadly classified into only two.
1. Happiness (Sukham)
2. Sorrow (Dukham)
This is not just that old man's story. This is the story of all of us. Isn't it? There are only two things in life, Happiness and Sorrow. All the struggle in our lives is about securing happiness and divorcing sorrow as much as possible. This is the GIST of LIFE that we lead. Isn't it?
Everyone of us only seek happiness. None of us want sorrow. Why is that so? It is because of 3 birth defects.
1. Mala (Impurities of mind)
2. Vikshepa (unstable mind)
3. Ajnana Avarana (Veil of ignorance)
Mala
There are a total of 6 kinds of impurities of MIND. In Samsrkit these are known as Arishad Vargaa. Namely:
Kama - Materialistic desires such as wealth, prestige, status, attention and etc.
Krodha - Anger
Lobha - Greed
Moha - Delusional emotional attachment and temptations
Mada - Ego. The, I, I, thought
Matsarya - Envy and Jealousy
When the above 6 are in favor of us it is called, happiness otherwise it is sorrow. Simple as that!!
Vikshepa
It is the instability of mind. Reflect on this anecdote. Rama sat to perform pooja. While he was doing pooja, he started smelling something wonderful coming from the kitchen.
Needless to say that his wife was making his favorite food. Now let's see how his 'Mind Talk' goes.
"Last time she messed up cooking my favorite dish on purpose. I know...because of the fight we had last night. She is never happy with me. I bought her everything she wanted and yet she is unhappy. I think, her brought-up itself is not right. Her home town has terrorists and extremists. She is an extremist by herself. One of the major problem of this world is terrorism and extremism. No one does anything. We really need good political leaders in the world.....". See where the mind talk begin and headed to?
This is Vikshepa.
This unstable mind causes in us, worry, compulsive thinking, giving rise to Sorrow
Ajnana Avarana
As you can see from the above two. The happiness or sorrow are just the states of mind that one creates for oneself. Here the mind is impure and unstable.
Ajnana Avarana simply means, not realizing that mind is impure and unstable.
Now, how to get rid of these 3 birth defects?
The answer is in our Vedas. All the four of them. Rug, Yajur, Sama & Atharva.
How? Each Veda is further divided into 3 parts or Khanda. Each part is stipulated to address each birth defect as follows:
1. Karma Khanda - Karma Khanda includes, Pooja, Vrata, Japa, Tapa, Homa, Dana
Dharma. The main purpose of these karma is to cleanse and address the defect,
MALA. Here the goal is "Purity of Mind".
2. Upasana Khanda - It simply means to persistently worship your favorite Deva
(Ishta Daivam). This part of Veda is to address the birth defect, Vikshepa. The main
purpose of Upasana is to progressively achieve stillness of mind. This why all
great gurus like, Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Shivananda,
Vivekananda, Adi Shankara did the 'Devatha Upasana'. The rigorous the upasana
the calmer and thoughtless the mind. Here the goal is "Stillness of Mind".
3. Jnana Khanda - This is all about knowing you, that is knowing "Who am I?"
Once, one knows the true nature of oneself the Ajnana Avarana automatically
vanishes. Hence, Karma Khanda and Upasana Khanda automatically leads into
knowing one's SELF. The Upanishads talk about this Jnana. Here the goal is
"Realization of SELF".
The easiest way to understand this is, there is a precious diamond at the bottom of the bucket. But the water in the bucket is muddy (Mala) and disturbed (Vikshepa) like our Mind. Once, the muddy water is cleansed and the disturbance settles due to stillness, the lustrous diamond at the bottom automatically appears. No thing else need to be done. Here, the bucket is our body, the precious diamond is the ATMAN.
Hari Om
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