DEIVATHIN KURAL # 97 (Vol #4) Dated 06 Nov 2010

DEIVATHIN KURAL # 97 (Vol #4) Dated 06 Nov 2010

(These e-mails are translations of talks given by Periyaval of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, over a period of some 60 years while he was the pontiff in the earlier part of the last century. These have been published by Vanadi Padippagam, Chennai, in seven volumes of a thousand pages each as Deivathin Kural. Today we are proceeding from the last para on page number 541 of Vol 4 of the Tamil original. The readers may note that here in 'man/he' includes 'woman/she' too mostly. These e-mails are all available at http://Advaitham.blogspot.com updated constantly)
42. Dharma Medicine for Bad Karma Disease. If you let your mind run hither and thither, you are likely to develop so many compulsions that you will be choking! You will be bound by so many ifs and butts, must and should and shouldn’t do’s. To reduce the strangle hold you will have to tie yourselves up in a different type of imperatives of Dharma Saastra Karma Anushtaanaas. They will not be to your liking and put you under quite a bit of a strain! But they are not eternal compulsions. Though they will seemingly tie you up in knots, they will not be irresolvable! As you mature, the ties will keep loosening and completely vanish as your maturity fruitions into ripeness of total freedom. For a person who has become self realized, there are no rules, regulations and restrictions of VarNa or Ashrama or of any sort! He is above all this as having risen above and gone beyond! That is the reason for his being known as ‘Ati VarNaashramee’!
43. But, we cannot say that in this matter, the example that I gave about the disease, its diagnosis and prognosis are completely apt! There are some differences. For a short period if the medicines are administered along with some control of diet, stomach troubles may be cured. But the problems of the diseases related to the innumerable ties of errant Karmas are not so easily cured! Because of certain predispositions, some people have greater production of digestive juices in the stomach requiring them to take medicines against flatulence to control acid and gases in the stomach. (It is again possible that even this may be due to carry over of Karma effect from past lives!) Similar are the physical ailments related to Blood Pressure, Diabetes, heart conditions and so on, requiring regular and constant administrations of medicines. Similarly, the Karma Disease obtained by repeated trespassing escapades against rules of the Saastraas can only be cured by the medicine of strict adherence to the medicines of Swadharma! Just to encourage you if I say that, “You will be cured in a jiffy by following the rules of the Saastraas”, I will not be very correct! That is the reason for my insisting that the corrective period may well be longer.
44. There is one aspect of positive encouragement in this, which I should not forget telling you! There is a marked difference between partaking the bitter medicines and practicing of Karma Anushtaana! When you take the bitter medicines compulsorily, it can never be done willingly. It will always be taken reluctantly with flinching and making of faces! You can never come to start liking consuming them! Practicing Karma Anushtaanaas is not exactly like that. Though you may start reluctantly doing your Sandya Vandanam or chanting of Gayatri Mantra, let us say, after some time, you will start liking doing it! With inexorable logic after some practice, you will develop a liking for doing it. For long you might have ignored your physical fitness and avoided doing exercises. But once you start doing that, you will start liking the physical fitness, mental alertness and feeling of being good that you will know that you have changed for the better! Exactly similarly in observing the Karma Anushtaanas, instead of doing something as though under duress, we will develop a feeling of doing the right thing and being on the right lines! Thus we will get fit into the groove completely! We often see that someone who had gone totally astray, adding all the forbidden habits of going to the club, drinking alcohol, eating meat, gambling, betting on horses and so on; suddenly turns a corner like a pendulum swinging in the opposite direction!
45. There is no turning back after that! These people become more clearly defined and progress in the right direction not under any compulsion but, on their own volition willingly! This is the greatness of the rules of the Saastraas! They are not like the bitter medecines. Like Kooshmanda Lehiyam, Unani and Homeopathy medicines, they are sweet to the taste. Those who are affected by bile and or poisoning by snake or scorpion, find nice dishes tasting bitter. Similarly by the quirks of our own mind, what we are required to do as per the Saastraas and Dharma are not very pleasant. At the end of the spectrum is the truth that for someone bitten by snake and affected by its’ venom, (the snake’s venom is called ‘Visham’), we are told that the otherwise unpalatable ‘Seekkakaai’ tastes very pleasant! (KTSV adds: Then with a pun on the word ‘Visham’, PeriyavaaL continues with the word ‘Vishaya Vaasanaa’, i.e., over involvement in material pleasures!) For those who are affected by the ‘Visham’ of ‘Vishaya Vaasanaa’, the detestable wrong things seem very pleasant! For them this medicine of Saastra once started, will start getting hold of them by its’ pleasant effects. No more cribbing and whining! They will follow the rules and regulations of the Saastraas quite willingly! What is initially started as a treatment will be taken as an acceptable way of life, without any fretting and or belly aching!
46. Having said that, I must however tell you also that doing ‘Swadharma Karma’ is not an end in itself. It will not relieve you from the tyrannical hold of the mind. We have to successively progress from being a slave of the mind, to a modicum of control of the mind, to ‘Mano Layaha’ to ‘Mano Naasaha’. That is from trying to control the mind, we have to go on to destruction of the mind to its’ total erasure, for which we have to graduate from ‘Swadharma Karma’ to doing one’s duty without any expectation of personal aggrandisement! That is, ‘Nish Kaamya Karma’! Even that is not a one way ticket to Moksha. Moksha is a state in which there is no mind, no thoughts no duties and so no set of action through which it has to be attained!
47. Dharma Karma is Not Enough Even for Fulfilment of the Mind. For us human beings, the first binding knot is action or duty. Next knot is one of the thoughts. To loosen that knot is the work of ‘Karma Yoga’, as thoughts lead to actions both good and bad. So, to loosen that knot is through dispassionate doing of one’s allotted work without looking for ‘Karma Phala’! The basis for this Yoga being the right attitude, to a large extent cleansing of the mind happens by ‘Nish Kaamya Karma’. It stops at only vacuum cleaning of the mind. After cleaning up the house, you have to decorate, dress up, place the furniture, whitewash the walls and paint the windows, light up incense for some sweet fragrance, do some Rangoli of decorative finishing! This cannot be done only by Karma Yoga!
48. Finally since the mind has to go, vanish, vamoose, disappear and conquered, the mind has to be won over by the mind itself. It is not just enough to clean it up. Ask anybody, they will tell you that this mind is a monkey! Ask people who have studied the ways of the mind. They know of the intricacies of the subterfuge and scheming that this mind is capable of. So, it is not enough to clean up and decorate this mind of ours. Similar to the requirement that bad Karma has to be got rid of by doing good ‘Swadharma Karma’, we have committed many wrong acts and have accumulated a massive negative balance in the accounts, over generations of existence. The universe is not going to cancel out our debit balances without our doing it ourselves! Science itself says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction! So the only way that the negative balances have to be cancelled out is by equal positive inputs. To remove the bad thoughts it is not enough to do wishful thinking! That is, simply doing ‘Karma Yoga’ is not enough. Other than cleansing, the mind has to be matured in to ripeness with sweet thoughts of universal tolerance, acceptance, humaneness and unconditional love!
49. What Saastraas have worked out as Swadharma Anushtaana in the form of Karma Yoga, can only cancel out the effect of the errors of indulgence that the individual’s mind has done over its’ life time. That is not enough to completely cure and correct the mind, which is the one responsible for the errors of commission and omission! All the action so done through Karma Yoga will still not be capable of controlling the mind and minds’ thought processes. Here is the need for universal unconditional Love and Bakti!
(To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.