The Glory of Contentment
When one is pure in mind, pure
in speech and pure in body, there is a contentment arising from oneself. There
is Santosha. It is very essential that one should be happy under any
circumstance. This is very important. If a person is weighed down heavily with
some grief or sorrow, and he becomes melancholy and moody, and gets into a
state of weeping and crying, and is not able to sleep because of the sorrow
that is eating into his vitals, how could he do any meditation? How is it
possible for him to practise Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara? Though it is well
said and easily said that one has to be happy, it is not easy for people to be
always happy. But, there is a way whereby we can keep ourselves happy. That way
is to keep the goal before our eyes. Finally, in the end, in the last resort,
we shall succeed. We may now appear to be suffering, sorrow-ridden, and feeling
helpless in every manner, but a day must come in the life of every one of us
when we must succeed. Failure is not the goal of any person. The ultimate goal
of life is success only. The whole universe is moving towards a great Cosmic
Success. Any individual is a part of this cosmos, and therefore, he is also
moving towards the achievement of a success par excellence, though it may
appear that he may have to bear the brunt of tentatively confronting sorrows,
and those sorrows have to be taken in their true spirit and judged against
their true worth.
There is a story recounted by
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa in a humorous way. Narada was passing one day by
the side of a garden, and the gardener asked the sage Narada: "Master,
where are you going?" The great sage said, "I am going to Vaikuntha,
the Lord's Heaven, to have His Darshan". "Oh! You are going to have
Darshan of the Lord! Please ask Him when I shall attain liberation." He
was a gardener planting various fruit trees. Narada said, "I shall
certainly ask the Lord, and when I come back, I shall let you know what His
answer is". So, Narada proceeded further and on the way, he met a farmer.
The farmer put the same question: "Lord, O great sage, master, where are
you going?" The sage said, "I am going to Vaikuntha, the Lord's
abode". And the farmer also made a request similar to the gardener's:
"Please ask the Lord when I shall attain liberation". Narada gave the
same reply as before: "Yes. I shall come back to you with the Lord's
answer". So, after several days or so Narada returned from Vaikuntha and
he met this farmer. Immediately, the farmer asked very eagerly. "Did you
meet the Lord?" "Yes, I met the Lord" replied Narada. "Did
you ask Him about my liberation?" "Yes, I asked." "Did He
give you the reply?" "Yes, He gave the reply." "What was
the reply?" "You will take another fifty years to attain
liberation." The farmer was very sorry to hear this. "I have been
chanting God's Name, I have been doing prayer, I have been meditating, I have
been practising Yoga, day and night I am absorbed in God's thought. Still I
have to wait for fifty years! What a wretched thing!" He cursed himself.
Narada passed on and met the gardener. The gardener asked, "What is the
reply from the Lord?" "You will take as many thousands of years to
reach God as there are leaves in this tree." And Narada pointed to a
nearby tree. The gardener's joy knew no bounds. He was so happy. He jumped in
ecstasy. "So, after all, I am fit!" His way of thinking was quite
different from that of the farmer's. The farmer cried because he had to wait
for fifty years more, and this gardener was in joy, in ecstasy, was bursting
with the love of God, because he got the reply from the great Master, the
Supreme Being, that he was after all fit to gain salvation even if that
salvation was to come after as many thousands of years as there were leaves in
the nearby tree. The story goes that his ecstasy of joy was such that it burnt
all his sins in an instant, and he had divine vision at that very moment,
whereas that poor farmer with fifty years' sorrows had no experience of the
kind.
This is just an illustration
given by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa to explain the human situation in general
in regard to the love of God, practice of Yoga, and the way in which one can be
contented even under conditions which may appear to be very poor, unsatisfying
and terrific. Truth triumphs – Satyameva jayate.
And if we tread the path of truth even in a minute measure, to the extent that
we do so, we are bound to succeed in this world. And if there be anyone who has
a little bit of honest devotion directed to God-realisation, and the practice
of Yoga in its essentiality, surely he is treading the path of truth, and
therefore, he is bound to succeed to that extent. Nobody is destined to go to
hell for ever and ever. Everybody is destined to reach the Supreme Absolute
finally. The little sorrows, the pin-pricks, the skirmishes through which we
pass in life, are the effects of our previous actions. We have done something
in the past, and the reactions come as thorns under our feet when we walk on
the ground today. So, we should not be unnecessarily worrying over the little
difficulties that we have in our life. They shall pass away, because they are
reactions to our own actions. And when they exhaust themselves in their
momentum, we will be free. So, we have reason to be happy, to be content, to be
satisfied. Yadrischa-labha-santushtah, as the
Bhagavad Gita puts it. Let us be satisfied with whatever circumstances we are
in. Let us be happy under any condition. Otherwise, we will be brooding over
unnecessary things; the mind will be distracted, and we cannot concentrate.
Yoga will not be for us afterwards. Inasmuch as one is a student of Yoga,
contentment is necessary; one must be satisfied inside and one should not be a
complaint-master. The Yoga student must not complain about anything. This is
another Niyama or discipline, an observance which is enjoined upon all students
of Yoga, by Patanjali in his system.
Continue to read:
Yoga as a Universal Science by Swami Krishnananda
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