by Acharya Shri Mahaprajna
There is a coconut tree in front of me with a straight trunk, a few leaves and fruit. Is what I see only a tree or something else? I cannot see the seed that produced the tree. I cannot see the vital force keeping the tree alive, which enables it to produce sustenance and to breathe.
Our sense organs cannot go beyond the visible world. They cannot tell us anything about the invisible world because they cannot establish any kind of contact with it. They cannot even reject it because it has not been known.
Visibility and invisibility are relative terms. If there had been a wall between me and the tree, my eyes would have failed to see through it. Even without the obstruction of a wall, I would not be able to see the tree from a distance. Distance obliterates vision with the result that the otherwise visible world becomes invisible. What we can see with the help of the microscope, we cannot see with bare eyes. We can see only the gross material world. The eyes are also gross. Reality is subtle. So it can be grasped with only the intuitional vision that is developed after the karma particles eclipsing consciousness have been removed.
Consciousness is formless. We cannot see it as we see the tree. There may be an obstruction between us and the tree, or the tree may be at a distance from us, but consciousness is neither hidden nor at a distance from me. The ego is the manifestation of consciousness and a bridge between it and the world.
Neither consciousness nor the atoms feel hunger, but I do, because I exist between the two. Consciousness and the atoms do not speak, only I do. The world that we perceive with the help of the sense organs stands on the borderline between the world of consciousness and the atoms. Pleasure and pain are experienced only on this borderline. Pure consciousness feels neither. On the plane of pure consciousness we experience nothing but our existence. We may call this a state of bliss if we like.
In a state of pure consciousness there is neither bondage nor freedom. Here we feel nothing else except our existence. We may call it a state of liberation if we like.
Feelings of pleasure and pain, bondage and liberation are experienced by the ego, which stands between pure consciousness and the material world. It is from the relative point of view that we call the state of pure consciousness a state of bliss and freedom or liberation. This state exists in its own perfection in limitlessness or infinity and boundless bliss. It is a state higher than the state of sense experience, and therefore, one who has achieved the right vision raises himself from a lower state to a higher state.
The desire to renounce present pleasure in anticipation of pleasures we are likely to get in the future is just like climbing out of one ditch and falling into another.
Indra said to the royal sage Nami, "I wonder why you are prepared to relinquish present pleasures in the hope of enjoying better pleasures in the future. You seem to be running after a mirage." The royal sage replied, "Indra, you do not have the right vision. Sensual pleasures are like a canker. The wounds caused by them will never heal. One who runs after sensual pleasures becomes lost in the labyrinth of desire. I am relinquishing these pleasures in order to get out of the labyrinth."
Bhrigu said to his sons, "Why do you propose to renounce the pleasures that grandeur, high family, wife, and objects pleasing to the senses have given you to attain what people expect to obtain through penance?" The sons replied, "Father we want to renounce them in order to obtain that which these cannot give us."
Physical pleasures are so easy, natural and attractive to get; no one wants to relinquish them. Only he who has a strong longing for attaining a state of pure existence of his soul can resign himself from them.
Those who had attained bliss classified pleasures in an ascending order. Physical pleasures as compared with bliss occupy a lower position. There are three reasons for this:
1. Physical pleasures are relative.
2. They are fraught with obstructions.
3. They are finite.
Bliss on the other hand is absolute, free and infinite, and therefore, more reliable. As physical pleasures are related to material things, they appear to be easily attainable. Bliss, on the other hand, is connected with inner vision, and therefore, in spite of its being easily available, it appears to be difficult to attain. We can change our conception of pleasure only if we do not confuse what is real with what is not and vice versa.
Live life King Size
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Raj Salecha
rsalecha@gmail.com
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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. - Isaac Asimov
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