Srimad Maha Bhagavatham : 5.3 - Swami Krishnananda.

Swami Chinmayananda :

We become truly spiritual, not by rotating prayer beads, or reading books, and not by merely singing the glory of the Lord, but by sincerely living in tune with the higher and nobler in ourselves. 

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Thursday, March 09,  2023. 06:00.

Discourse 5: Narada Instructs Yudhisthira on Ashrama Dharma -3.

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It is immaterial whether we marry or not. It depends upon the need that is felt inside. Even in the Himalayas we may feel that we are a Grihastha because of the pressure that we feel inside. The external things, appurtenances, husband, wife, etc., are only symbols of forms of an inner connotation, a need that is felt inside us. What binds us or liberates us is the need that is felt inside. We are the makers of our destiny; we create our bondage, and we are also responsible for our freedom. No external aid can help us in this matter. But external aids are sometimes necessary, just as we require a pen to write a book, a plate on which to eat our meal, a glass for drinking water, a seat to sit on, and a bed to lie on. These are external forms of requirement necessitated by the needs felt inside, which otherwise cannot be expressed properly. If the need can be sublimated, the external appurtenances are not necessary.

There are duties imposed upon a householder, apart from this justification for enjoyment in a controlled manner. The duty is to be of service to people. Social welfare, which is very much emphasised these days, is part and parcel of the requirement of a Grihastha life. A Grihastha is not a libertine who can do whatever he likes. It is, again, a life of austerity. Inasmuch as the duties control the enjoyments of life, all the experiences in that condition become spiritualised. Wherever duty controls experience, that particular experience gets spiritualised. Where we have no duty but only rights, there is an adverse effect produced by our experiences. This is a purely psychological secret into which we have to delve for our own welfare.

But it is not that we have to live this kind of life of social work and family existence forever. There is a time in everyone's life when one feels that the world cannot give more than what it has already given. The wisdom of life acquired during the Grihastha period consummates in a maturity of experience which tells us that we have had enough of this world. The sense of having enough cannot arise unless we have passed through this world and experienced all the layers of provision that the Earth can give us, because a rejection of the world cannot give us an idea of the world. The world has to be conquered and made our own. It has to be befriended, and this can be done only by the experience of passing through the conditions of life.

 the world is made of has to be understood; and we have to pass through all these structural essences of the world. Every experience of the world has to be passed through. There are gifts that the world can give, and it can also give sorrows. It is not that everyone is born only to have a cosy life without any kind of difficulty, as the problems, sufferings, sorrows, and the joys of life are the obverse and reverse of the same coin. No one can have only one side. It is not that we have to be always sorrowing throughout our life, nor also that we have to be enjoying throughout our life. One cannot be without the other; they exist as two sides A time comes when we feel that it is not necessary for us to expect anything from the world. It is not that the world cannot give anything to us, nor that we cannot take; but it is not necessary to take. 

We can become so mature that we are contented within ourselves. The contentment has matured into the ripe fruit of permanent experience, and then we live a life of what is generally called retirement. The life of retirement is not an idle life of sleeping; it is a further advanced state above the Grihastha, where the energy conserved and the potency that is inside is totally oriented towards a higher aspiration. The Grihastha does not have time to always sit in meditation, though he has to do that also for a certain prescribed time.  But now, in a period where we retire from active life of social existence—contact with people of a social or political nature—we do not just lie down and say we are retired and have no work to do. The retirement is only from the distractions of life, not from the duties of life. That is to say, there is a higher duty than the duty of a Brahmacharin or a Grihastha, and this is traditionally designated as the Vanaprastha stage.of a single experience.

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To be continued

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