Do You Understand?
When we embark on our spiritual journey, we unearth deep-seated questions. Our habitual behaviour tests our resoluteness, while our conditioned doubt-ridden mind urges us to go back to something more familiar. To succeed against such formidable obstacles, you must have courage. Your mind will go on fluctuating. So be it. With correct understanding and practice, and by the grace of God and guru, your firm determination will enable you to move through all your doubts with a calm and loving disposition.
Once, a disciple asked his guru, “Why can’t I engage my mind in meditation? Though I try day and night, this wretched mind wanders from one place to the next. I grab hold of it and pull it back, but no sooner have I done so, than it has gone off again!” The guru smiled compassionately at his disciple but uttered no words in response. The disciple was puzzled. He considered his question to be a pivotal one — how could he progress without an answer?
After a few days, the guru called the disciple to join him on his morning walk through the forest. It was not long before the guru paused under a tree. Pointing to some excreta that lay on the forest floor, he said, “Do you see those worms crawling over this filth?” “Yes guruji,” replied the disciple. “I want you to pick one of them up and gently place it on that fragrant flower.” The disciple did what was asked and within seconds, the worm slithered off the flower, through the moist grass of the forest floor and back onto the faeces.
“Now do you understand?” inquired the guru. “Understand?” “You asked me why your mind cannot meditate on God, and this little fellow has given you the answer.” With palms joined and feeling a little red-faced, the disciple humbly requested his Guru to explain. “Just as this worm is conditioned to loving excrement, believing there is nothing better, bound by maya your mind is accustomed to loving the hollow, illusionary pleasures of this mayic world. You cannot sustain meditation on your Beloved because your mind is still attached to the world, believing there is pleasure in it.”
If an insect that lives and breeds in a dirty drain is placed inside a bottle of perfume, it will die. If a drunkard lying in the gutter is asked why he does not go home, he will reply that this is his home. Similarly, we habitually think due to our continuous practice over infinite lives that this world is a source of happiness. Until you forcibly convince your intellect using the cudgel of spiritual knowledge, strengthened by correct spiritual practice, your mind will go on thinking that there is pleasure in what is, in comparison to the infinite, ever increasing bliss of God’s divine love, the filth of this material world.
Spirituality in Daily Living, Vol. 2, p.49–52
Kripalu Bhaktiyoga Tattvadarshan, Vedic knowledge revealed by Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj and presented in English by Dr Vishakha Tripathi, president of Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat.
https://www.jkpliterature.org.in/
https://www.jkpliterature.org.in/spirituality-in-daily-living
