Athmopadesha Shathakam (One Hundred verses of Self-Instruction)
Translation & explanation of Verse-37
The other is replete with difficulty;
And it is hard to win over without the power to discriminate the unbroken;
Having won over the difficult,
Attain to that discrimination which is opposed to sense interests.
(“Vishamathayaarnnezhumanya vennu kolvaan
Vishamamakhanda viveka shakthiyennye
Vishamaye vennathinaal vivekamaakum
Vishaya virodhiniyotananjitenam”)
Key message:-
We cannot go to sleep by deliberation. Sleep has to come from within us as a spontaneous
fading out of our consciousness. Of course, we can put our bodies into an inert state by taking
sleeping pills, but that is like committing temporary suicide. We cannot force ourselves to love
anyone. Love is a tender emotion that comes naturally from our innermost self. All we can do
is create a situation in which love can be nurtured. When a deep interest is stimulated in us,
concentration comes as a natural consequence. Mind becomes peaceful only when its
modulations slowly cease.
It is not easy to free the mind from its entanglements and so that it can feel its oneness with
the universal ground of consciousness. It is not natural for the mind to transcend its affectivity
so as to always remain established in the blissful state of the universal Self.
Word meanings of the verse:-
Vishamathayaarnnezhumanya = ‘Anya’, the other is full of difficulty
Vennu kolvaan vishamam = it is hard to win over
Akhanda viveka shakthi yennye = unifying discrimination which makes something also you or
you also that. i.e. a thing which makes not different from you.
Vishamaye vennathinaal = thus having won over the difficult,
Vishaya virodhini = that which is opposed to sensual orientation
Vivekamaakum = Attain to that give insight
Ananjitenam = such Bliss to be attained
Explanation of the verse:-
Peace is also a natural thing that has to come by itself. Concentration is a natural thing. You
cannot concentrate just by straining your eyes. For a meditation, the person may be asked to
look at a candle kept on a stand in front of him at eye level and stare at it. Or the person may
be asked to breathe in a certain way. But the person gets exhausted from breathing hard, and
not gaining anything. Such is the world of trickery finding out a way to trick your nervous
system. But there is nothing spiritual about any of these things.
The real issue here is how to win over ‘anya’. Anya means the tendency of increasing
otherness. We are disturbed only because of this ‘anya’, this otherness. Wherever otherness
comes, it interacts with the ‘I’ in us, affecting our balance. If the ‘other’ is not there, our ‘I’ has
nothing to fight with. The cancellation of the ‘other’ and the ego brings peace.
And how can we cancel out the effect of the ‘other’? The ‘I’ and the ‘other’ must be unified. By
knowing what constitutes the ‘I’ is the same reality as that which constitutes the ‘other’ brings
unification. We can also know that this ‘I’ is a fantasised modification of consciousness. Both
are false. Once we know that neither the ‘I’ nor the ‘other’ exist, there is no trouble. But it is
not as easy as it sounds.
We have a body, and the body is equipped with its senses. Each sense organ brings a different
kind of stimulus which acts upon our system. Many chain reactions come from just looking at a
thing, say, or hearing a word. Thus we are bombarded from all sides with stimuli. In that
bombardment, it is next to impossible to sit quiet and calm.
Let us briefly catalogue the difficulties we have with this. It begins with this exposure to stimuli
which create a number of reactions in us. Each stimulus brings with it a specific form of pain
and pleasure. Secondly, our mind gets into certain whirlpools; these mental whirlpools are
called worries. We are exposed to two main kinds of worries. One is retrospective regret, and
the other is prospective anxiety. Retrospective regret comes in the form of guilt. “I have done
such and such a bad thing, now what can I do? My self-image or my social image is tarnished. I
am no longer the same honored person any more. I have lost something precious in my life. I
am deceived, cheated, defeated.” We become bitter over our sorrowful remembrances of the
past and we feel worthless, annoyed, angry or vulnerable.
Another category of difficulty is the deep urges and passions in us that create various kinds of
hungers. The hunger of the body itself is a great problem for the world. There are so many
countries where the hunger for food is a daily experience. The hunger of the mind and of
physical passions can be even worse than physical hunger in the sense that it can dive you to
act inappropriately, to be a victim of your own drives. There are also others who have a hunger
to be intellectually or spiritually nourished. They feel, as if they are in an arid desert land where
there are no worthwhile values.
We could go on multiplying this catalogue of the blues of life. But what we need to know is the
way out. Even a small pinprick in one of your toes is enough to affect you totally, taking you
out of your mental and physical balance for at least a little while. Your body can develop so
many kinds of diseases. It is actually a great wonder that most of us at least seem to be sane. It
is easy to go insane in this world, yet there is still a fair amount of sanity left.
‘Anya’, this differentiating factor, is always running amuck and creating problems for us. In fact,
the whole world is in an eternal state of strife because of otherness. The Guru says that
somehow we have to triumph over this great fear of the other and bring all to sameness. He
gives us a key idea here, “vishaya virodhini”, that which is opposed to a sensual orientation.
“Vishaya” means projecting the source of your happiness onto a thing and thinking it is the
thing that makes you happy. Therein lies the crux of the problem. Once you think, “Without
this thing, I can never be happy”, you have already alienated your happiness. By default, you
have decided that at this moment, you are not at all happy; you can be so, only in the future.
You feel that somehow you have to move away from the present to the future, and you won’t
be happy till then. You worry that you might miss this thing in the future in which your
happiness is invested, and that your search will be a total failure and an absolute
disappointment for you. Thus we alienate our happiness and postpone it via the ‘vishaya’ of
the object of happiness.
On the other hand, if you know that you are the source of all happiness and there is nothing to
seek on the outside, the outer thing becomes associated with happiness only because you allow
it to participate in your happiness. Discrimination is the key to making this happen. What kind
of discrimination? The Guru says “akhanda viveka shakthi”, it is not a discrimination which
makes a thing different from you, but a discrimination which makes something also you or you
also that. It is a unifying discrimination, not a separating one. If various ‘this’ factors can all be
brought under unifying ‘This’ factor, and then ‘This’ and ‘I’ are brought together as one, then
you get it.
This is the reason Sree Narayana Guru asked us in the very first verse to see the common link
between the outer world and the inner world, which he described as ‘Karu’, a universal
consciousness which is the Divine manifestor of everything. He said we should withhold our
senses and prostrate before ‘That’ again and again. He asked us to look at the unlit light which
shines within us. All that we see may look different, but it is the same light. When we turn to
that light and allow it to guide us, we get ‘akhanda viveka shakthi’ an unbroken sense of
discrimination.
Concluding message:
The ultimate thing is to become ‘saumya’ which means finding the quietness within you. It is by
attaining ‘sama’, the sameness that you become quite inside. This is to be cultivated
throughout. Each day begins a new series of encounters. Each encounter is to be taken as a
challenge to re-establish your inner serenity, inner quietness, inner sense of sameness through
an act of adoration, an attitude of worship and a sense of the inspiration.
There is no need for you to win all the time. Your greater victory lies in your acceptance of
defeat, allowing the other to win. You may be in an argument. What does it matter if you win
or not? Give the other person the change to win. Even if he uses some falsehood, when you
allow him to win, he re-thinks the situation. In his heart of hearts, he knows he did not deserve
the victory. He knows the truth of your silence. You do not become egoistic and you don’t
make the other person egoistic either. It will chastise him, as well as purify him.
Thus, through the cultivation of silence, sameness and serenity, you come to a unitive
understanding from within. This brings peace and harmony. Where there is peace and
harmony, love spontaneously comes. When you give yourself into the hands of grace, the
hands of the Divine, things which are difficult to attain become abundantly possible. Then you
can say you have attained the discrimination of the unbroken, by which every ‘this’ is brought
under the spell of the universal sameness. |