Balance, Inner
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For A Balanced State Of Mind
The speaking tree - For A Balanced State Of Mind
What kind of lifestyle would facilitate achieving liberation? Should one progressively withdraw from the external world and its inconsequential activities and live in isolation? Or contemplate the Divine while being engaged in worldly affairs? Some sages advocate the path of rigorous asceticism, while others believe that one can gain enlightenment even as a householder. A spiritual aspirant is constantly debating which out of the two is the better option? The Mahabharata says, a sage named Jajali stood motionless for many months while practising extreme asceticism and some birds built their nest and laid eggs in his hair. Overcome by the thought that if he moved, the birds might suffer and die, Jajali remained in that position without food and water till the time the birds grew up and flew away . Jajali rejoiced that by doing so he had reached the pinnacle of asceticism, compassion and spiritual growth. Just then a heavenly voice told him that a merchant named Tuladhara was more advanced in spirituality than him and he must visit Tuladhara. When Jajali met Tuladhara he observed that as Tuladhara went about his business of selling goods, different kinds of people came to the shop. Some customers were good, others were bad; some expressed gratitude while others ridiculed the merchant. But Tuladhara remained in perpetual equanimity , he was neither exulted by the love nor distressed by the hatred and went about doing his work honestly . While balancing the scales in his business, Tuladhara had achieved an inner balance that transcends duality .
Enlightenment is a transcendent state where one realises that the Self is different from body , mind and its sensory objects. Also, pairs of opposites such as pain and pleasure, love and hate, birth and death, attachment and detachment, loss and gain, activity and passivity are nothing but a playful manifestation of consciousness.
Consequently , the person remains in a balanced state, at all times and under all circumstances. The individual is full of bliss, having experien ced the vision of absolute consciousness. And all the emotional, physical and psycho logical problems that troubled him dissolve completely .
Enlightenment is achiev able if one makes rigorous effort to know the truth. What is important is that the individual contemplates absolute consciousness constantly and uproots whatever it is that creates false illusion in his mind and drives him away from the truth. Whether he is meditating in a remote cave or envisioning the Divine while doing his job in a metropolitan city is just an ancillary event.
One powerful yogic technique that can help a person achieve this difficult task is Pratyahara, elaborated in the Shandilya Upanishad. Pratyahara is the withdrawal of the senses from their objects. It is crucial to understand that the `withdrawal' is of the senses, and not the external objects per se. Therefore, one can withdraw one's attachment and attention to external objects anywhere, whether it is a secluded forest or a busy shopping mall.
This is accomplished when one repeatedly tries to see the one absolute consciousness hidden in all forms and aspects of creation. With repeated practise, awareness comes up, that all the senses and their umpteen objects, mind and body , are a manifestation of absolute consciousness. The mind then gives up craving, it reflects this one consciousness and stays in perfect balance.
