Page 127 - Wisdom Unfurled

opportunity for cultivating titiksha or endurance; the taunts and rebukes one receives from the family members help a good deal in practicing humility and the feeling of gairat or attributing the wrongdoing to oneself instead of blaming the other and genuinely repenting for the same and craving the Master’s pardon for it. According to the Master, it is only the person who has married knows what it is to love and be loved.
Many feel that it is necessary to go to the forest do penance and undergo severe austerities even as the rishis of yore who thoroughly devoted themselves to it for achieving the aim of a spiritual life. The crises one faces in family life setting are equivalent to a thousand penances if only one is prepared to sacrifice his comforts and privileges to make others happy. It is to be noted that as one grows in spirituality, the family circle expands to include all that is in creation in the entire universe.
Renunciation is actually a frame of mind arising when one contemplates the transitoriness of the things created and gets attached to the unchanging Reality behind all appearance. As it is mentioned in the Isa Upanishad it is by the sacrifice of the feeling of possessiveness alone one can be truly happy. Once the realization is had in the heart that everything in this universe is pervaded by Him, has been created by Him and hence belongs to Him, there is no ground to believe that anything belongs to any person. He has no rights of possession over anything. All things we are associated with have been entrusted to our care by God our Master and we should look after them, enhance their value, work towards their betterment and be prepared to give the same back to God in a better condition than we received them in the spirit of ideal trustees. If we can cultivate the sense of duty and perform action dedicating everything to the Master without any feeling of attraction or repulsion we are in a way away from worldly ties and have renounced the world in true sense. This is Vairagya in the proper sense of the term and once we are stabilized in this state of mind we are free from desires feeling contented with whatever we have. The end of desire means the stopping of the formation of further samskaras. Now it remains to undergo the effect of the previously formed samskaras or impressions which have to be worn out during the course of this life. Nature too helps us in the process by creating the field for bhog or experience in order to remove the impressions of our thoughts and actions from the causal body and when these coverings melt away we begin to assume finer forms of existence.
Balancing the spiritual and worldly aspects of living
None born in this world is free from misery and suffering. Pleasure and pain both contribute to misery; the Buddhist would say that life is only a series of miseries punctuated by fleeting intervals of so called pleasure, though it is