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From Captivity to Absolute Liberty

Many people do not agree that life is wonderful; they would say that it is ugly and miserable. As time, circumstances, or moods naturally change, the opinions of people also change. There are many common factors in the world; that is the reason why we can live together. There are also factors that may not be too common or that also overlap; that is why we need to adjust. Other factors such as wealth, education, culture, philosophy, and so on make us read the world in different ways. But by far the most important factor is the habit of projecting our mental world outside of ourselves. All these factors make us react differently and distinctly from others. Science also has shown that the world is not absolute but relative. With so much disagreement between individuals, we still believe in the static nature of people, places, and things. This is counter-intuitive and creates friction and difficulties. Our ignorance of the world and its relative nature keeps us, paradoxically, constantly engaged with ourselves. This is the first bondage.

There are moments when we want to reach out and touch the stars. Enthusiasm, hope, and ambition fuel our desires in order to make life meaningful and noticeable, but these moments pass and we sink back to the previous level of mediocrity. Life could be beautiful if it were not tied down to the basic needs of food, sleep, hygiene, and so on. Every satisfaction brings misery, joy brings sorrow, good brings bad. Besides, we feel spent after every emotion and mood that runs through us. Physical and mental fatigue holds us back during any activity. We want to love, but later want to break away; and again want to return. Moreover, we also have diseases tugging at us all along. ‘Each action has an equal and opposite reaction’, this law is so patent and universal that we tend to overlook its importance in how everything is dictated. This is a world of checks and balances of unending conflicts and struggles. This is our second bondage.

We live in an environment in which we influence others and others influence us. A major part of our life is spent in accepting or fighting influences. Swami Vivekananda says: ‘We are caught, though we came to catch. We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time we find that out. And this comes into every detail of our life.’ We want to influence the world but find nothing has changed. We are powerless to do anything and find that masses of people surging around are crushing and imprisoning us. Who and what influences us to what degree is unknown and unknowable. This is our third bondage.

‘You do not see the same river twice’, for the waters have moved on and fresh waters have filled it; yet we have the illusion that things are stable. In reality everything decays, disintegrates, and dies. It is our foolishness that makes us see order in disorder; there is no design or plan in nature, there is only chaos. Time devours everything and everyone, and then spits the whole thing out in quite a different form. There are no stable parameters and nothing about anything can be predicted with certainty—it is all randomness. All the fine theories of free will and determinism are like a chimera. We try and find connections and coherence in order to justify what we see, but this does not satisfy our souls for long. Many seen and unseen factors are like shadows around objects and persons, constantly moulding them. This is the fourth bondage.

This is a world of karma and ‘we reap what we sow’. But this simple rule is very complicated because karma is vyashti, individual, and samashti, collective. My karma affects me as well as the place and people around me. As this collective karma grows, it affects the whole nation, and when this national karma becomes powerful it affects other nations and subsequently the whole world. Sri Ramakrishna gives an example about individual and collective karma: ‘A man was performing the shraddha ceremony at his house. He was feeding many people. Just then a butcher passed by, leading a cow to slaughter. He could not control the animal and became exhausted. He said to himself: “Let me go into that house and enjoy the feast of the shraddha ceremony and strengthen my body, then I shall be able to drag the cow along.” So he carried out his intention. But when he killed the cow, the sin of the slaughter fell also on the performer of the shraddha.’ The Bhagavadgita says that ‘the nature of karma is inscrutable’, and yet we have to work, for that is our nature. This is our fifth bondage.

Over and above are our attachments. As we mature in life, we naturally give up attachments, but the attachment to our bodies is a terrible one. We irrationally cling to it. Even the act of suicide is due to the attachment to a body. Disease, grief, and so on makes us disgusted with our existence, but once these things pass, the old attachments reappear. There is also the most powerful attachment to our existence, which is reflected in the mind. We simply cannot contemplate its extinguishment and are frightened at the loss of our sense of identity. We feel that everything will be lost forever in a void. This is the sixth bondage.

We would be totally wrong to conclude that bondages have just six categories or levels, for every thought, word, and deed binds us to the world. All these bondages swarm around and cling, as it were, to our sense of identity. In this sea of bonds if we can but break the sixth one, the personal identity, then all bondages would disappear. But this sixth cannot be easily broken. We may conclude that it is unfortunate to have a body at all, but the Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi says: ‘My child you have been extremely fortunate in getting this human birth. Have intense devotion to God. One must work hard. How can one achieve anything without effort?’ The effort would be in the form of hauling us up from this whirlpool of bonds unto the solid ground of Reality, then captivity would appear like an illusion. But it is easier said than done. Swamiji says: ‘Superhuman power is not strong enough. Superdivine strength is the only way, the only way out.’ However, we know from metaphysics and from the teachings of great ones that the whole of nature is pushing us on to absolute liberty, to reveal to our captive minds our real identity, which is the Atman. Just like frightened people we are afraid to give up the false identity, so she is beating us into submission. Swamiji describes how: ‘With clenched hands, you want to take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes your hands open.’ The Atman—eternal, infinite, pure, and awakened—is of the very nature of freedom. Captivity is in nature; the Atman is absolute and hence beyond nature. Just as a butterfly develops in a cocoon and eventually breaks it to emerge free, so we develop the understanding of our absolute nature amidst a harsh captivity to finally break free.

~ Excerpt taken from 'Prabuddha Bharata'

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Essence of Happy Life: Love, Beauty, Truth 

The earth is beautiful because it teems with life. The universe looks beautiful because it is perceived by humans. Beauty is the nature of life, and whatever is devoid of it becomes ugly and loathsome. Beauty is one of life’s higher dimensions. If we are alive to this dimension, life with all its myriad manifestations will become beautiful. Alas, we run after skin-deep beauty because our conception of life is skindeep. Those who can understand this law of life are lifted from sordidness and loneliness and become capable of connecting to beauty all around. Even what is labelled, according to contemporary ideas, as disagreeable and nasty will, due to its fact of being alive, become beautiful. And this happens due to the underlying sublime order. When life becomes narrow and selfish the world correspondingly transforms into a nauseating place. Such a life becomes a long-drawn trial.

Above beauty there is still a higher law: Love. Love nurtures life and seeks its continuity binding us to other forms of life. Without love and beauty everything in the world would be insipid and meaningless. People who do not experience life’s essence are miserable and psychologically dead, and the extremely miserable commit suicide. Life bereft of beauty and love remains merely on the biological level, driven by selfish genetic impulses. No progress in civilization and knowledge is possible without love. Every living being is subject to this glorious law.

Still higher and most evident than love is the law of truth. Life never thrives without truth, and that is the reason why nature does not create anything that is untrue. One needs no special training to detect truth from untruth, as truth is innate in every being. In individual lives whatever is false and counterfeit is opposite to the laws of life, and those who live by falsehood are most sorrowful. The whole of nature works against such lives by crippling and destroying them. Many learn to hide falsehood from others, but their bodies react violently against this, proving that falsehood is not consonant with nature. The mind that harbours untruth is a conflagration destroying peace, prosperity, and finally the personality. Sanity, fortitude, courage, altruism, fearlessness, and all the other virtues that make life worth living are derived from truth.

We wrongly believe that the little consciousness we know through our brains and bodies is the only thing there is to life, and if that little consciousness goes, everything goes. In reality, the domain of consciousness is immeasurable and the science of experiencing its full range is called ‘Yoga’. With the consciousness of real beauty, deep love, and unfading truth, life indeed becomes meaningful at all moments. We just have to expand our horizons of heart, say ‘Yes’ more than ‘No’, practise forgiveness and gratitude more regularly, forbear during tough times, speak the truth more readily, practise fearlessness under every practical situation, build ourselves as courageous and more happy humans.

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Embodiment of Strength

The life and message of Swami Vivekananda are a source of great inspiration to many in their individual as well as collective life. His words give courage to a drooping soul, his message brings new hope for a sinking nation. Swami Vivekananda was the embodiment of strength, and if all his teachings were to be summed up in one word, that word would be STRENGTH - a dynamic strength. It is for the want of strength that individuals fail in life, nations suffer, and the world is in torment. As such, the number of persons who are likely to be benefited by his message is huge.

The future Swami Vivekananda was born in the famous Datta family of Simla, in Calcutta. His family name was Narendra Nath Datta. Vishwanath Datta, father of Swami Vivekananda, was also endowed with many qualities of head and heart, for which he commanded great respect from one and all. He was a man of deep compassion and great sympathy, and his charity very often knew no discrimination. Vishwanath was a great lover of music and had a very good voice. Vishwanath was blessed with a wife who was his peer in all respects. She was exceptionally intelligent and possessed royal dignity and fire of one born, as it were, to regal estate. Calm resignation to the will of God in all circumstances, strength, and reserve characterized this Hindu woman. The poor and the helpless were the special objects of her solicitude. She was noted for her unusual memory and knew by heart long passages from the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which she read daily. 

Of such parents was born, on Monday the 12th January 1863, Narendra Nath, who afterwards as Swami Vivekananda shook the world, and ushered in a new age of glory and splendour for India. The influence of the mother in the formation of the character and the development of the mind of a child is always very great. Naren - as he was now called - liked to play at meditation. Though it was play, sometimes it awakened in him deep spiritual emotions which made him unconscious of the outer world. One day he lost himself so much in this mimic meditation in a secluded corner of the house that his relatives had to force open the door and shake him to bring him back to normal consciousness. 

A Story is told of him showing how dauntless in spirit and impatient of superstition he was: Narendra Nath was in the habit of climbing a tree in the compound of one of his friends, not only to gather flowers, but to get rid of his superfluous energy by swinging to and fro, head downward, and then somersaulting to the ground. These antics annoyed the old, half-blind grandfather of the house, and he thought to stop them by telling Naren that the tree was haunted by an evil spirit that broke the necks of those who climbed the tree. Naren listened politely; but when the old man was out of sight, he again began to climb the tree. His friend who had taken the words of the old man seriously remonstrated. But Naren laughed at his seriousness and said, “What an ass you are! Why, my neck would have been off long before this if the old grandfather’s ghost story was true!”

Though the boy was full of wild pranks, he had no evil associate. His instinct kept him away from the dubious ways of the world. Truthfulness was the backbone of his life. Occupied during the day in games and various amusements, he was beginning to mediate during the night and soon was blessed with some wonderful vision. As Naren grew older, a definite change in his temperament was noticeable. He had a preference for intellectual pursuits, and he began to read books and newspapers, and to attend public lectures regularly. He was able to repeat the substance of these to his friends with such original criticism that they were astonished, and he developed an argumentative power which none could compete.
 
Swami Vivekananda founded Belur Math in 1898. Besides being the home to the headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, the Belur Math is well known for its architecture elegance, clean environs, sacred associations and its spiritual atmosphere. Located on the western bank of the Ganga, it is a haven of peace, drawing thousands of people to it every day from all over the world.