Nirvana –The Dead End
I always want to talk about this subject, but people do not want to listen.
Somehow the word Nirvana has acquired a wrong connotation. It just means extinction, extinction of vasanas and karmas. Only when vasanas and karmas die will you start living. As long as they are alive in you they live through you and never let you enjoy life.
Vasana is the hangover of desires or desires not fully lived; samskaras are desires that are lived but those which leave a thread for continued enjoyment of those desires. Karma is fulfillment. Vasana is the seed, samskara is the nourishment and karma is the tree. Nirvana also means moksha, liberation. When all vasanas, samskaras and karmas are finished you reach liberation through their extinction. You see a new kind of space in you, new kind of understanding in you, new kind of living in you.
When you drink or smoke once in a while you enjoy them. As long as you have the freedom to drop them you enjoy them. When you get addicted to them they enjoy you. Addiction is when you do not enjoy the habit but can not do without it. You can get addicted to food, TV, newspaper, gossiping. When you are addicted, food eats you, cigarettes smoke you, and liquor drinks you. When you do not have the freedom you are used.
At a subtler level greed and fear are addictions. Greed, at least you may be able to control, but not fear. Greed or fear work on you, pull you further, pull you down, and overcome you.
You are in a mall and see a shoe. The thought, the vasana takes hold of you to acquire it. You move on. After a week or later you see the shoe again. This time the feeling is stronger. Samskara has logic. It tells you that if you get the shoe you can jog and you will be healthy and so on. Vasana is any seed that falls on ground. Samskara connects the vasana to you with logic. If you are spiritually inclined the samskara will tell you that with healthy jogging you can meditate better. Vasana is blown through samskara into an imprint, deep desires. Then you buy the shoe. This is karma.
For a week you will wear the shoe all the time, perhaps even to bed; after a week, perhaps once a while; after a month rarely. After a few months it will be relegated to your unused cupboard.
In the outside world whatever you thought you would achieve you do not achieve; you do not enjoy. In the inner world you create room for more vasanas, samskaras and karmas. You have created the habit. While losing the capacity to enjoy you have created the habit to desire more. More you have less your sensitivity to enjoy. When you have too many things you can not enjoy these acquisitions. One who has ten clocks will never keep time. Your energies are spent in vasanas, samskaras, and karmas instead of in enjoyment. You have no energy left to enjoy. You take things for granted. You lose the sensitivity to enjoy.
'Mine' is possessiveness. 'I' is capacity to enjoy.
I f 'mine' is too much greater than 'I', power to enjoy will be low. Rich people do not enjoy life. Those who have less have far greater capacity to enjoy. A blind man has more sensitivity in his hands. A poor man enjoys his food far more than any one richer. More the quantity o f your possessions less is the quality of your life. More of possessions lead to a mental set up that asks for more.
Ramana says: The world has enough for every one's needs but not to fulfill even one person's greed. This world is in two groups: one that wants to have, the other that wants to enjoy. You can not do both.
Ramakrishna never blessed any one for material possessions. Once one devotee asked him when he was in deep ecstasy for wealth and Ramakrishna said, yes, you will have wealth, but you will realize what a mistake you have made in asking me for this wealth. The man who asked for wealth was a scrap collector. In ten years after this incident he made enough money to start the first Bengali newspaper, Ananda bazaar Patrika. He however had no children. On his deathbed he said now he understood what Ramakrishna said about his regretting his plea for wealth, which he never enjoyed. He gave away all his wealth to Ramakrishna Ashram.
A young man asked me to give him peace of mind. When I asked him why, he said he wanted a gold medal in his exams and wanted peace of mind to do well. I said: the very idea you want a gold medal is to prove something to society. This it self will never let you have peace. So if you want the gold medal forget about peace of mind. When I asked him when he lost his peace of mind, he said it was when he got obsessed with the idea of the gold medal. I told him: drop the idea of the medal and you will get it.
Someone asked me: you are so young and you do not read. How do you get all this information and how do you remember? If you have the capacity to withdraw from your memory and mind, they work a thousand times more. Unconsciously you know that one day you will disconnect from your mind. Yet you have the urge to connect with your mind. You will live in a dilemma. That's why your memory and mind work on an on off basis. As long as you play a middle game, half and half, you can never enjoy life. You are afraid to engage because you do not know if you can withdraw. Once you realize you can withdraw and relax from you mind, it will become active.
Now your mind is locked into one space, as an engineer, as a Doctor, whatever; you can not touch any other part. All of you are endowed with memory of past life, yet you do not recollect, why; because you are so caught up in this life's memories. If you can come out of, relax from your mind, you can enter all sections of your mind. You can log in and log out. As of now you can only log in partly since you are afraid to log out.
To log out is Nirvana. To log out o f vasanas, samskaras and karmas. Is it possible to log out, walk out? Says Buddha: when you have the capacity to create, don't you have the capacity to walk out?
Mind is the constant inner chatter. It starts as soon as you wake up. If you record all of it you need a tape to record all your waking hours, say 15 hours. All this chatter creates problems unconsciously. You are comparing yourself unfavorably with others. Of these 15 hours tape, all spoken by you, why don't you convert the chatter to give you positivism and freedom? No man is so poor that he can not create words that create bliss. We are not poor in capacity, only in consciousness. This 15 hour tapes are of our karmic system. 10 hours say I can not, only 5 say I can. Reverse it; let at least 10 hours of tape, chatter create freedom in you to start with. When all 15 hours give you freedom you have reached the dead end of Nirvana.
Unconsciously you invite suffering. When everything is right you look for trouble. A guy living by a train track so used to living by the noise wakes up if he can not hear the sound. You are so habituated to the incessant inner chatter of worry that if it stops you miss it. If your worries are reduced you lose your importance. This world runs not because of us, but in spite of us.
Let us be a little more intelligent and use words that liberate us instead of addicting us. Napoleon on his deathbed told his subordinates: place my hands out in the coffin so that people know that even the great Emperor napoleon carried nothing with him when he left this world.
When you drop the cravings they may get fulfilled. When you keep craving even if they get fulfilled you are not content. Choose between filling and fulfillment.
बालस्तावत् क्रीडासक्त: तरुणस्तावत् तरुणीसक्त: वृद्धस्तावत् चिन्तासक्त: परे ब्रह्मणि कोऽपि न सक्त: ॥
balastavat kridasaktaha tarunastávat tarunisaktaha vriddhastavat cintasaktaha pare brahamani koapi na saktaha
When a boy, one is attached to sport; when a youth, one is attached to a young woman; when old, one is attached to anxiety; no one, alas, is attached to the supreme Brahman!
Bhaja Govindam 7