Devdas
Menon
(Text
of an invited article that appeared
in the February 2005 edition of
the magazine Life Positive)
"Less
luggage, more comfort" is
something that all travellers
know to be true. It is particularly
true when we deal with the journey
of life. Not just in a physical
sense (we know only too well what
it means to be trim and fit),
but in a much deeper psychological
sense. In that sense, we are always
travelling, and each of us carries
a fair amount of baggage. It is
only rarely that we feel freed
of all mental baggage, and are
able to glide about freely and
joyfully, like birds in the sky.
Travelling
light sounds great, but aren’t
we supposed to carry the burden
of our responsibilities? And,
instead of reducing our mental
baggage, should we not be shouldering
more responsibilities and achieving
greater things in life? This is
how most people are conditioned
to react. “Success”
is all about adding more weight
to who we think we are, or more
accurately, to what others think
of us.
Indeed,
the individual sense of who I
am is often entirely governed
by my relative importance in the
prevailing value system of society.
That is why we often end up doing,
acquiring and becoming things
that are viewed as being desirable
and respectable by people around
us. The sense of “who I
am” is, for the vast majority
of us, derived from the total
value of my possessions, as assigned
by society. My psychological baggage
is centred on that notion, and
along with it, all my remembered
past and imagined future. In fact,
I am that baggage. From
that perspective, travelling light
does not sound all that great,
for who wants to be a “nobody”?
The
spiritually awakened person is
one who knows that he or she truly
is a “nobody”, and
is willing to be so. Such a person
knows that the only real hindrance
to enlightened living is precisely
this false notion of oneself,
this narrow and total identification
with the ego-self, and its appendages.
Let go of the baggage of the ego-self,
and be free!
Let
go, and be free! How simple! Yet,
how difficult it is in actual
practice! Especially when we cling
to the baggage so tenaciously,
and so unconsciously. Dropping
the baggage of one’s ego-self
and thereby discovering real freedom
is the most absorbing errand that
a spiritual aspirant can have
in life. All that is required
is continual awareness, awareness
of the clinging, and a letting
go of the attachments
that bind one…
People
have serious difficulty in understanding
that attachments are the root
cause of human suffering. Until
that understanding dawns, clearly
and sharply, the clinging will
continue, and so will suffering.
The understanding can be initially
painful, but it is a passing pain,
as in a surgical operation. Truth
can be very bitter, when one has
been deluding oneself all of one’s
life.
The
way of awareness may appear to
be radically different from conventional
religious pursuits, such as the
path of devotion or of selfless
action. However, the dropping
of the baggage of the ego-self
is common to all spiritual paths.
This is why the essence of all
religions is said to be the same.
Without the surrender of the ego-self,
bhakthi is a far cry
from bhakthi-yoga, and
without the dissolution of the
notion of “doership”,
karma is a far cry from
karma-yoga.
People
are afraid of “letting go”.
This is understandable; until
one discovers the liberation that
follows the “letting go”,
one will resist surrender. Indeed,
all of us have glimpsed this liberating
experience at some point or other
in our lives, especially in our
early childhood. It is an experience
of joy, a sense of oneness and
affinity towards everything. It
is characterised by an absence
of resistance to the natural “flow”
of life. It is a state of peace
and harmony, bereft of distraction
and worry. In it, there is no
sense of time. It is, in summary,
a truly wonderful state, accessible
to all who are able to “let
go”.
The
underlying nature of consciousness
seems to be a state of quiet joy
that does not have an opposite.
It is qualitatively quite different
from the happiness derived from
the activity of the ego-self,
such as winning an award. The
ego-pleasure that emanates from
an enhanced sense of self-importance
(more baggage) is what most of
us crave for, but it is an outcome
of delusion, and will inevitably
bring in its wake its painful
opposite, ego-pain.
The
joyous experience of the "flow"
state, unencumbered by baggage,
can be felt not only when one
is in a state of “meditation”,
apparently doing no work, but
also in the thick of apparently
intense activity. Any skilled
worker or talented artiste or
sportsman will testify to this.
Such activity turns out to be
“perfect” when one
is fully focussed on the task
at hand, with a relaxed concentration
and without any distraction. One
allows the universal energy to
express itself through one’s
medium, without interference,
and without any motive of profit
or worry about the outcome. In
fact, interferences by the ego-self
only serve to contaminate the
perfection in the work. This truth
is wonderfully captured in the
following verse by Chuang Tzu,
the great Taoist sage.
When
an archer shoots for nothing,
he has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle,
he is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold,
he goes blind,
Or sees two targets – he
is out of his mind!
His
skill has not changed, but the
prize divides him.
He thinks more of winning than
of shooting,
And the need to win drains him
of power.
In
summary, the first thing that
needs to be clearly understood
is that the baggage of the ego-self
is the only obstruction to true
freedom and joyous living. Driven
by the ways of the world, our
normal tendency is to add to that
baggage, rather than to lighten
the load. The problem stems not
from “successes” in
life, but from the false notion
that “I am the doer”
that accompanies these achievements,
and from clinging to attachments.
Through continual awareness and
meditative practice, however,
we discover the art of travelling
light, and becoming one with the
flow of life. We discover a sense
of joyous freedom and connectedness
with the universe. Bon voyage!
