Geeta Darshan #17

Attachment (raga) is the road on which one travels through the world; vairagya is turning your back on the world and returning to your own home. If raga is morning—when birds leave their nests for outward journeys—then vairagya is evening, when the birds return to their nests.

First understand vairagya, because without it one does not move into practice. Only when there is vairagya will there be abhyasa. Only then will we seek a method—a path, a technique—for how to reach back to our own home, how to return, how to be reunited with that from which we have become separated—through whose loss the music of life has been stolen, the peace gone; that bliss we seek much but do not find—by what method can it be found? That question arises only when the gaze begins to turn toward vairagya. So first, understand vairagya; then we will understand abhyasa.

Vairagya means disenchantment with the world of attachments, a deep frustration with it. Wherever there is raga, wherever there is attraction, there arises a counter-pull, a repulsion. That which used to draw no longer draws; rather, it pushes you away. That which used to beckon no longer beckons; its door closes, and you know you have refused entry.

We all experience repulsion. You may be surprised if I say we all attain to moments of vairagya every day. But though we touch vairagya, we do not move toward practice. Old attachments fall, and we begin building new ones.

Every day, with every attachment, we come to a valley of melancholy behind it; behind each attachment, repentance deepens. Yet we do not turn toward real dispassion; we simply set off in search of another attachment.

Vairagya is not a new experience. Becoming disenchanted with one woman is common; becoming disenchanted with womanhood is rare. Seeing the futility of a particular pleasure is common; seeing the futility of pleasure as such is rare. It is rare because we hold only one pleasure at a time. When one fails, the mind immediately says, “Build another; seek the next. Don’t stop; keep journeying. This one failed—why must all fail?”

There is an ancient story of Yayati. He reached a hundred years; death came. Emperor, beautiful wives, wealth, fame, power, prestige. Death knocked. Yayati said, “So soon? I have not tasted any real joy yet. I haven’t even begun! I need a hundred more years.” Death said, “I must take you.” Yayati pleaded, “Find a way; give me a hundred years more. I still have hope.” Death said, “In a hundred years you did not understand—hope still persists?” Yayati said, “Who can say there isn’t some pleasure I haven’t yet known, which, once gained, will make me happy?”

Death offered: “You have ten sons. If one gives his life in your place, you can take his years.” The elder sons refused: “You at a hundred are unwilling to go; I am forty—I’ve barely lived!” The youngest agreed. Yayati was astonished: “All nine refused; you consent? Don’t you see—even at a hundred I’m unwilling to die, and you are only twelve!” The boy replied, “Precisely: if in a hundred years you found nothing, why should I run in this futile race? If one must die anyway, and even at a hundred death brings this pain, I will die at twelve—at least I’ll be spared the long sorrow.”

Even so, Yayati did not gain wisdom; the flavor of the mind is such. He let the boy go, lived another hundred years. Death returned—again he pleaded for time. New sons were born; the old had died. Again the youngest agreed. Ten times this happened; Yayati lived a thousand years.

I say, this is not a historical fact but a truth. Given the chance, we would do no differently. When death comes and offers, “Take a hundred years if someone agrees,” you will try to persuade someone—won’t you? And when death comes again, will you have become wise by then? Don’t be quick to say yes; Yayati was no fool.

After a thousand years, when death knocked, Yayati stood where he had always stood. Death said, “Enough; everything has a limit.” Yayati said, “Perhaps some unknown joy still remains. Give me one more tomorrow!”

This can go on for eternity. So vairagya will not arise if, when one attachment fails, you immediately desire another. One object of desire will break, another will be built; this can continue endlessly. When does vairagya happen? It happens when, in the futility of one attachment, you see the futility of all attachments; when in the collapse of one pleasure you perceive the collapse of all pleasures; when any frustration, any sorrow, becomes ultimate for you—when you quickly catch the trick of the mind: yesterday’s “pleasure” becomes today’s pain; today’s “pleasure” will become tomorrow’s pain; tomorrow’s “pleasure” the day after’s pain. One who sees this so intensely, so deeply—

When the mind next proposes an object of attachment, ask it: What has your past experience been? Aren’t you creating a new mischief?

A man went to a psychologist. His first wife had died. The psychologist knew how things had been between them; the husband had already forgotten. He asked, “Should I marry again?” The psychologist asked, “Does the thought arise?” “It does.” “Then I conclude: hope has triumphed over experience.”

Hope victorious over experience! He hasn’t even emerged from the quarrels and misery of the first marriage, yet he rushes to find another wife. The mind says: “It didn’t work with this woman; that doesn’t mean it can’t work with any woman. There are many women in the world.” Another car, another house, another position, another town; if not here, somewhere else—though before coming here you thought the same. And in that town they are also thinking, “Somewhere else we will find happiness!”

I have heard: A man rushed to the asylum early morning, pounding on the gate. “Has anyone escaped from here?” “No,” said the superintendent. “Why?” The man said, “My wife has eloped with someone. I cannot believe anyone in his senses would run away with my wife—so I came to check if a madman escaped!” The superintendent said, “Forgive me, brother; I’ve seen you walking with your wife—she is very beautiful. Many times I myself felt like running away with her.” The man said, “It was that visible beauty that trapped me; behind it, hell!”

What faces life shows us are not the reality. Thus Buddha told his monks: when a face looks beautiful, close your eyes and contemplate—what lies under the skin? Flesh. Under flesh? Bone. Under bone? See it clearly—an X-ray meditation, one could call it. When the skin looks so pleasing, look deep within; what appears there can be unsettling.

I once stayed in a village. A shooting occurred; four men were autopsied. A friend of mine—a great lover of skin. The Upanishads call such people chamar—not the cobbler, but the lover of skin! I took him to the post-mortem room. The stench was terrible; he covered his nose. The doctor had opened a stomach; intestinal contents were spilled. My friend tried to flee, eyes shut, saying, “Don’t show me—my life will be ruined. I’ll never be able to love a body again; I’ll always see this!”

Buddha would say: when a body seems attractive, look within—see what it is. The charm may break; vairagya arises.

The most precious event that gave rise to Buddha’s dispassion I will recount. His father filled the palace with the kingdom’s most beautiful women. Nights of wine, song, dance; they danced him to sleep. One night, at four, Buddha woke. Full moon; the room filled with moonlight. The women he loved were strewn about asleep; one half-naked, another’s garment displaced, another snoring, someone’s nose running, another’s eyes rheumy with crust. Buddha went face to face; that very night he left home. He had seen these faces before, but not like this—these were closer to reality. The made-up faces were not.

As with the body’s reality, so with all pleasures. If you X-ray each pleasure with the rays of awareness, examine it closely, in the end nothing remains in your hand but pain. When, in the futility of one pleasure, you see the futility of all; when the disillusionment of one evaporates the very desire for all—your state then is called vairagya.

Vairagya means: now nothing attracts me. There is nothing for which I want to live for a tomorrow. There is nothing without which my life would be pointless.

Vairagya means: if any attraction remains, it is not toward objects or others; it is toward the self. Now I want to know the one who wants to enjoy. For from all those I tried to get happiness I got only misery. One direction remains: to seek the seeker himself—perhaps there, joy may be found. I searched everywhere and did not find; now I will search the one who was searching.

Vairagya means freedom from objects and a journey toward oneself.

The mind can travel two ways: from you toward objects—this current is raga; from objects back toward you—this returning consciousness is vairagya.

Have you ever felt consciousness returning from objects back toward you? Everyone gets small tastes of vairagya, but it does not become steady. It does not, because we do no practice of it. We practice raga. Even when a moment of dispassion comes, since there is no practice, it slips away.

Like pigeon-fanciers who place a small canopy for pigeons to alight—many times the pigeon of vairagya comes to us, but we have no canopy, no place for it to sit; so it flies away. Abhyasa is the building of that canopy, so that when the bird of dispassion flies back toward us, it finds a place to settle.

Abhyasa is the way to make vairagya stable. Vairagya arises in everyone; practice makes it endure. It comes over all; practice is the way to catch it, to let it soak into the breath.

As we are now, we practice raga. Each attachment fails, yet the practice continues. Vairagya sometimes comes from the failure of raga, but with no practice it cannot stay; it passes.

Therefore Krishna says: abhyasa and vairagya.

What is abhyasa? Vairagya is the clear seeing that no happiness is possible outside, in the world; that happiness there is structurally impossible; that no peace is possible from the other; that all expectations from the other are vain. Coming to this realization is vairagya.

But we all come to this realization—this may surprise you. We all touch vairagya daily.

Desire catches the mind. But notice what happens after sexual gratification: you just turn over, spent—vairagya seizes you. After every gratification there is a melancholy, a frustration: “Again the same—nothing.” Guilt shadows the mind—“What am I doing?” But you simply turn and sleep. Within twenty-four hours, desire arises again.

You did nothing to stabilize that vairagya. When lust proved empty, did you get up to meditate? Did you do any practice to deepen that moment? No—you slept.

But for lust you train constantly: walking on the road, at the cinema, radio, books, chatting with friends, joking—if one honestly audits one’s day, one will be shocked at how much of it practices sex in some form.

Ninety-nine percent of jokes are sexual. The way one looks, walks, dresses, speaks—if you pay attention, you’ll find it related to lust.

Notice: if ten men are talking and a woman enters, their tone instantly changes—soft, sweet, polite. What happened? Practice—so ingrained it is unconscious. Like riding a bicycle: you don’t have to consciously steer home; the hands turn, the feet pedal, and you arrive, humming a tune, doing sums—practice has sunk below awareness.

The practice of lust is so unconscious that you don’t even notice when facing the mirror: are you seeing how you look to yourself, or how you will look to others? If a man looks, “others” are women; if a woman looks, “others” can be both men and women—women’s sexuality is entwined with envy: men so that someone will be pleased, women so that some woman will burn! But both are forms of lust.

This practice runs twenty-four hours. So when the bird of dispassion visits, it finds no place to perch; it flies off. The house you have built is designed for the bird of desire; invitations to it are everywhere.

Life gives you both: raga and vairagya. But you practice raga, so it sticks; you do not practice vairagya, so it does not.

Life offers darkness and light; anger and repentance. You have a full machinery ready for anger; none for repentance. It comes and goes, leaves no deep hold.

Life gives all opportunities. But you can use only what you practice. Suppose you are walking and find a perfect car by the road. If you have never learned to drive, you will go on walking; worse, you may tie a rope to your neck and to the car and try to drag it, getting into more trouble.

You can only do what you have practiced. Hence Krishna mentions abhyasa first and vairagya second. I deliberately explained vairagya to you first. In his aphorism, abhyasa first and vairagya after. Why did he place vairagya second? Vairagya is primary—without it abhyasa is impossible. But he puts it second because vairagya comes daily, and without practice it cannot hold. So what is abhyasa of vairagya?

Exactly as you practice lust, you must practice dispassion. As you practice attachment, you must practice detachment. As you think of the pleasurable, you must contemplate the desireless. You must walk the same road back. The path of raga and the path of vairagya are the same; only your face is turned the other way. In all the things you savored, now taste their insipidity; where you were mad, see the futility; where you ran forward, journey backward.

In whatever you have taken relish, look at its reality—reality itself generates its tastelessness. What attracts you? A beloved’s hand feels so pleasing to hold—so hold it, but don’t forget: as you hold, observe—what is the juice? Beyond sweat, nothing. In a few minutes you’ll want to let go; dispassion arises by itself! But promises made in the heat of attachment trouble you: “If I once hold your hand, no power in the world can make me let go.” After five or seven minutes, every power in the world cannot keep the hands together—sweat and smell remain; you find an excuse to separate.

Notice: at the moment of letting go, there is a flash of vairagya. That instant needs to be deepened and recognized; otherwise tomorrow the longing to hold hands returns. In the moment of vairagya, practice. Linger two minutes more and watch: will the mind truly long to take this hand again? If it will, then keep the hand forever—why hurry? Give the mind a chance to recognize dispassion. Don’t be quick—hurry is dangerous; dispassion won’t stabilize.

Food tastes wonderful—then eat to your fill; do not stop until life is in danger! See where this tasting culminates. When the relish is complete—there are many types: some can renounce everything but food; some everything but sex; some care for neither, only for ego and fame. They can starve, go to jail—but give them a seat of power! They can leave wife and children, undergo great austerities—only ensure a chair at the end. Often they themselves do not know they are going to jail for the chair; the mind works unconsciously. When they emerge, all will see why they went.

Even those who look renunciant—out of a hundred, hardly one attains dispassion. Renunciation often works like investment: here they sacrifice, there they covet.

The mind is such that when a moment of vairagya comes, you must pause in that interval. Practice begins there. As the ocean rises and falls, so does raga rise and fall in the mind. When raga rises, you make great arrangements; when it falls, you do nothing to help the dispassion endure. Use the falling tide. How? Just as you used the rising—how much relish you took!

See a lover hurrying to meet his beloved, a rich man going to a profit-making deal, a politician hunting votes—look at their drooling zeal, their faces glowing. That descends on all of us in attachment. But when the moment of disillusion comes, we want it to pass quickly.

A woman came to me—her husband had died. “We lived together; so much happiness. Now great sorrow; please console me.” I said, “You’ve come to the wrong place. I won’t console you. You enjoyed the happiness; I must soothe the sorrow? What is my fault?” She said, “Many saints give solace.” “Did you get any?” “Many gave it.” “Then why have you come?” “Because it does not last.” “It won’t. If you enjoyed raga, who will enjoy the viraga that follows? You want a trick to forget this descending current—there is no such thing.”

I said, “Do one thing; it will be precious. The husband’s death can be more valuable than his life was—because with his company, what did you truly get? Tell me honestly—was there real happiness?” She grew restless: “No—so-so.” “Look more honestly. Perhaps you now imagine you were happy—this imagination will waste the moment of vairagya. Did you sometimes feel that it would have been better never to have married him?” She said, “What are you saying!” “Let me tell you a story.”

In a church, a pastor said one evening: “Let any couple who has never quarreled come forward.” Out of five hundred, a few couples came. The pastor said to God, “Bless these damned liars!” The couples protested: “You call us liars?” He said, “I only wanted to see how many liars were present. You have all come separately to confess your troubles.” He too was married; he knew.

I told the woman: “Look carefully; perhaps your happiness is a lie.” We fabricate false happiness in the future and in the past. We are astonishing: pleasures we never had, we think we had. Because if we can imagine past happiness, future hope becomes easier. Practice of desire works like that.

To practice vairagya, look closely at past pleasures so they reveal their pain. If the past proves to be pain, then hope for future pleasure withers—because the future is only the projection of the past. Our imaginations are new shapes of our memories. Plans for the future are failed plans of the past re-polished.

Desire’s practice makes us think, “How wonderful that meal was!”—though it wasn’t; but thinking so today allows the feet to go again tomorrow.

I told the woman to look honestly. She gathered courage: “No, there was no true happiness.” “Did it ever occur to you that either he should die or I should?” She said, “Now you go too far!” Slowly she admitted: “Yes, that thought did arise.” As soon as she said it, a burden fell. Then she said, “I’m amazed: with one by whom I found no happiness, with whom I often thought one of us should end—why am I grieving now at his death?”

“And,” I said, “you are also trying to escape this grief. Don’t. Live it fully—beat your breast, weep, scream. Just as you danced at the wedding, now roll on the ground in sorrow. Live it and watch it carefully, so this moment of dispassion settles and tomorrow the old hopes and nets do not rise again.”

Lao Tzu wrote: A man was near death. His wife often told Lao Tzu, “Save my husband; without him I cannot live.” Lao Tzu said, “I cannot save him; and don’t trust your claim you cannot live without him. I’ve seen many say this; all lived.” She said, “They are others; I am different.” Everyone thinks they are the exception. Lao Tzu said, “When the time comes, I’ll visit.”

The man died. In those days in China, they put wet clay on the grave and sowed grass; until it dried and the grass took, the widow should not remarry. A week later Lao Tzu saw the woman at the grave, fanning it! He thought, “Indeed she is exceptional—fanning her dead husband’s grave!” He said, “I bow—no one fans a dead husband.” She said, “I’m not fanning him; I’m fanning the grave so it dries quickly. A man is after me; I’ve fallen in love. These clouds threaten rain!” Such is the mind of man. Don’t think of others; if you do, you practice raga. If you know it is so in me too, you practice vairagya. Let me repeat: to think it is others is practice of attachment; to see it is mine is practice of dispassion.

A few more points about practice.

Some think no practice is needed to attain God. In Japan, some Zen masters say no practice is needed—though they practice fully. They call it practice without practice, effortless effort.

They have a point. If you quote the Gita, they’ll say: God is not attained by practice; practice gives habits, not nature. Nature needs no practice; it is already there. Breath flows without practice; blood runs. God is one’s nature, not a habit to be learned.

Zen says: you are practicing only the loss of God. Stop practicing the loss, and you will find Him. But to stop practicing the loss is itself a great practice; it demands complete vairagya and methods.

They are consistent; they emphasize that when God is found, do not think it came from your practice. When God is realized, it is clear He was always there; it was our wrong practices that blocked Him. Think of a spring blocked by a stone; remove the stone and it bursts forth. The spring needs no practice; removing the stone does. Our habits are the stones.

Or you are in a room with the door shut. If I say, “Practice bringing the sun inside,” you will reply, “Impossible.” Zen says: no practice to bring the sun in—just stop the practice of closing the door. Open it; the sun will enter. You can, by practice, keep yourself deprived of God, and, by undoing practice, you can find Him. But leaving practice is no easier than practicing. Hence Zen still uses methods.

Krishnamurti goes a step further: even the practice of leaving practice is unnecessary. If in this century there is a statement against the Gita’s line, it is Krishnamurti’s: no method, no practice. Yet whoever understands him sees he has spoken all his life of one method—awareness. Call it a no-method if you like; still, one must practice awareness. If I say, “Wake up,” I am telling you to do something—however subtle. “Break sleep,” “end raga,” “stop trance,” “bring awareness”—it all implies something must be done, or undone—which is itself a doing. As we are, we cannot enter as-is.

Practice means only this: man cannot enter the divine as he is; he must be transformed. How that is done is secondary; there are a thousand ways. Like climbing a mountain—many paths. You may even make your own path; but even then, once made, it is a path. From wherever you climb, you reach the same summit.

Every religion has used different methods—and then fought, sadly. Each method has a necessary condition: the one using it should hold it as absolute. Why? Because we are weak. If we know there are side paths, we may walk two steps on one, two on another, and spend life changing paths, never reaching.

Hence each religion makes dogmatic assertions. The Quran must declare: this is the way; Muhammad the only messenger. Not because Muhammad is madly dogmatic, but out of compassion for the listener; the confused man, hearing “all paths are right,” suspects none are. Mahavira spoke non-dogmatically—therefore his path did not spread. He used the doctrine of sevenfold predication; if you ask for one answer, he gives seven. He tried to speak truth as fully as possible—and by that very fullness, it became unusable; better he had stayed silent. Therefore his followers remain few.

Any method, if it is to work for you, will have to be insisted on as “this is it.” That insistence is compassion for you—so conviction can arise, so you can take the medicine wholeheartedly. If a doctor says, “Any medicine is fine,” even if he is right, his prescription will go into the trash.

Therefore I do not like “Allah-Ishwar tere naam”—a confusing mix. Allah has his own use; Ram has his own. If you use both together deeply, you may go mad. This mixing is by those ignorant of the science of religion. Each is complete in itself; but do not say both doors are one. One must enter through one door; two-boat travel is impossible.

Method is essential—because what we have already built must be cut. A small story, and we will continue in the morning.

Ramakrishna long worshiped the divine with form—the image of Kali. He had realized Her living form within; but still he was not fulfilled—for mind can never bring fulfillment; beyond mind lies fulfillment. He yearned for a push into the formless. Totapuri, a naked monk, felt for two days that someone needed him, reached Dakshineswar, found Ramakrishna, and saw he needed the shock into the formless.

Totapuri said, “It will be hard: what you have so lovingly built, you must break.” Ramakrishna pleaded, “Let my Kali remain; let me also enter the formless.” Totapuri said, “Then I’ll go. Both cannot be together. You must break the inner image.” Ramakrishna said, “I cannot; there is no tool.” Totapuri said, “Close your eyes and try. When you close them, you become blissful, you dance—stop that. I did not tell you to close your eyes for that.” Ramakrishna said, “When the image appears, how can I break? I myself vanish in ecstasy.” Totapuri said, “Then be content with that ecstasy.” “I am not; I seek a greater bliss.” “Then break the image.” “How? No chisel, no hammer.” Totapuri said, “With the same chisel you built it—with the mind. I will cut your forehead with a shard of glass; when you feel your forehead is bleeding, summon a sword and cleave the image into two.” “A sword?” “If you could create the image, can you not create a sword?” Ramakrishna, weeping, apologizing—went inward. Totapuri cut his forehead. He gathered courage, lifted the mental sword, and split the image. Ramakrishna fell into deep samadhi for six days. When he returned he said, “The last barrier has fallen.” That image, too, had become the final obstacle.

What we build we must also dismantle. We have built images of raga; we must raise the sword of vairagya. Otherwise Krishnamurti is right—for one who has built nothing, no sword is needed. But such a one does not go to hear Krishnamurti. The one who has built listens—and he is told, “Do nothing, practice is useless.” The mind, however, continues practicing attachment; only the practice of dispassion never begins.

Krishna speaks as a guide to seekers: you must break raga by practice. He will speak of methods; we will unfold them gradually—and understanding will be complete only when you take up one method and experiment. Apart from experiment there is no understanding.

Now we will also use a method here; watch it carefully. This too is a method: if in kirtan you become so absorbed that you no longer know who is dancing, who is watching; whose hands are moving—mine or someone else’s; whose voice is singing—mine or someone else’s—if such totality comes, you will taste a state of vairagya here and now.

So our sannyasins will go for sankirtan. No one should get up and leave. Those who would have to leave should not have come. I work so that some method may occur to you; don’t be among those who hear everything, and when the method begins, they run away. Sit where you are; no one will get up. Kirtan will go on for five minutes; then you may go.

Don’t just listen to the kirtan—join it. If so many sing with vigor, the whole atmosphere will be purified and its rays will reach far. Clap your hands. Repeat the song. Sway where you are.