Activities Blog

Swami Vivekanand Ji advised us to:

“Strike off thy fetters! Bonds that bind thee down,
Of shining gold, or darker baser ore–
Love, hate; good, bad; and all the dual throng.
Know slave is slave, caressed or whipped, not free;
For fetters, though of gold, are not less strong to bind.
Then off with them, sannyâsin bold! Say,
“Om Tat Sat, Om!”

In this sea of suffering, man is considered to be a tiny boat in a tempest raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow, and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions – a powerless and helpless wreck in an ever – raging, ever rushing and uncompromising event of cause and effect, a little moth placed under the wheel of causation which rolls on crushing everything in his way and waits not for the widow’s tears or the orphan’s cry. The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of nature.

“Is there no hope?  Is there no escape?” – was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair.  It reached the Throne of Mercy and words of hope and inspiration came down and inspired a Vedic sage who proclaimed, “Hear ye children of Bliss, I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion and all limitations.  By knowing Him alone, you will be saved from death again. He is omnificent, omnipresent and omniscient.  By whose command, the wind blows, fire burns, the clouds rain and death stalks upon earth.”

In order to break the bondage, pray to Him from the bottom of your heart where He resides, “Thou art my father, thou art my brother, and thou art my Beloved friend.  Thou art the source of all strength.  Thou art He that bears the burden of universe. Help me to bear the burden of this life.  Through love, He is to be worshipped as the one Beloved, dearer than everything in the world.  Remember Him always. Put your hands to work and give your heart to Him.  Live in the world like a lotus leaf which grows in water but is never moistened by water.   So a man ought to live in the world, his heart to God and his hands to work. 

It is the great adamantine wall of mind which is the great cause of all bondage.  Bondage is symptom only and disease is mind.   The mind starts a film on its screen which has a beginning but no ending.  The mind creates desires, imaginations, thoughts, dreams, ambitions, anxieties, worries and dual throng of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, sun and shade which are the source of bondage.  More we try to break the bondage, more we get involved.  In Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore asked: “Prisoner, tell me who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?”  “It was I”, said the prisoner, “who forged this chain very carefully.  I thought my invisible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed.  Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes, when at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.”

Here with us, the unbreakable chain which has bound us is the staunch unbridled mind which has robbed us of our mastership and made us slaves.  We are at its mercy – it makes us cheerful, it makes us gloomy.  More we try to control it, more aggressive it becomes.  Through regular and persistent Vishvas Meditation, we shall gain our lost mastership by watching the mind continuously without any effort.  Watching is not an effort.  Effort is something we have to do but watching is something which we don’t have to do.  Watching is our natural capacity.  Through Vishvas Meditation, we go beyond mind and come face to face with Reality and a voice comes:-

ये सैर क्या है अजब अनोखा , कि राम मुझमे मैं राम में हूँ

बगैर सूरत गज़ब है जलवा , कि राम मुझमे मैं राम में हूँ

Controlled mind is like a snake made harmless or even apparently dead with cold and starvation.  Once provided heat and feed, it starts hissing, comes to life and even bites. Once fangs are taken out of it, it becomes harmless.  Then it does not matter whether snake is alive or dead.  So when we go beyond mind and gain our mastership through Vishvas Meditation, we break the bondage.

Meditation is watchfulness, wakefulness, awareness, alertness and a state of thoughtlessness.  It is an effortless effort.  All the efforts are of mind.  It is a non-doing state.  Without any tension, any stress or strain, any anguish, silently, peacefully without any hurry, move into your Centre within instantly.  It is urgent.  Unless meditation is made urgent, it does not happen, you will die before it. Put the meditation on the top of your laundry list but it comes at the end of the list which becomes bigger and bigger and is never finished.  Time for meditation does not come. You don’t have to do anything in meditation.  You are to look within yourself.  Just turn the eyes 180 ° inside and you are in your Centre.  You are not to take any step.  You are already there where you ought to be but you are not aware.

No argument, no discussion and no knowledge is needed, only Prem, Bhav, Pyaas is needed, which will surface on its own when thoughts disappear, mind becomes no mind and bondage breaks.  Knowledge is critical and makes a great fuss over everything but love out of meditation says, “God will show His real nature to me and accepts all.”

Rabbia, sick upon her bed,
By two saints was visited —
Holy Malik, Hassan wise —
Men of mark in Moslem eyes.

Hassan said, “Whose prayer is pure
Will God’s chastisements endure.”
Malik, from a deeper sense
uttered his experience:
“He who loves his master’s choice
will in chastisement rejoice.”

Rabbia saw some selfish will
In their maxims lingering still,
And replied “O men of grace,
He who sees his Master’s face,
Will not in his prayers recall
That he is chastised at all !”

–Excerpts from Inspired talks of Swami Vivekanand.

So the meditator will not recall that he was ever in bondage.  The idea of bondage was only hallucination for him.  He is ever free, blest and eternal soul.