Living In Complete Freedom

So, I was pretty happy, elated and in a jovial mood when I started today’s day, not to say that I am not jovial now, but at that point in time, it was as if something great had happened to me. And it did actually, which was a YouTube session by Swami Sarvapriyananda where he mentioned living in complete freedom and being free while living. 

Now, the entire lecture lasted for around an hour and a half, but here are some points that I feel must be mentioned here. Among them, the first one that I would want to highlight would be the place where Swamiji said that the Buddhists say that everything in this world - good or bad, pleasure or pain is just temporary. He mentioned as humans we want to be able to hold on and just cling onto the pleasurable experiences and want them to last forever, failing to understand that this ain’t possible. 

While in his speech he also talked about a wandering monk that passed through a huge kingdom where the king said that nothing went well in his kingdom, the prince was unwilling to learn the affairs of the kingdom, the ministers were corrupt and so forth. The sage smiled and said “Don’t worry, o sir. This too shall pass.”

Then it was years later when the sage, now an old one, was passing by the kingdom again. The king called him and said that by his grace everything was running perfectly well. The prince turned out to be a responsible young man, the ministers had become decent and the kingdom was running fine unlike before. Hearing this, the sage released a deep sigh and said, “This too shall pass.”

Perhaps that’s what is the reality of our very selves, where we need to establish ourselves into a deeper reality and understand that pleasure and pain operate at their own level, they’ll come and go, and we shouldn’t bother ourselves too much with it. Swamiji then referred to Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita where Arjuna asks about the nature of the enlightened person - the Sthitapragnya. He asked how does he carry on transacting with the world? 

Swamiji referred to the Bhagavad Gita where Shri Krishna said that the one who is already enlightened - the Sthitapragnya experiences and interacts with the world just like any of us, but the difference is that he is able to pull himself backwards and doesn’t care about reaping any benefits from any of his transactions in the world. 

When I do think and ponder about that myself, I feel that whether living such a life is at all possible, and the scriptures and Swamiji say yes. He also mentioned that just merely living a life of demands, wants and fulfilments shouldn’t be the goal. Even for spiritual seekers, achieving salvation shouldn’t be the ultimate goal, they must ensure that all of the realisations reach every soul here on earth. 

Swamiji concluded the discussion where he said that he prayed heart and soul and wished that everybody around him becomes enlightened in this life itself. 

Image courtesy: Fuu J on Unsplash