When was there a king, conqueror sultan or emperor who was not a beggar? When every action, thought or deed only expresses a ‘want’, it is abject poverty. It may be the desire for power, money, or jewels, it may be a land, a house, a farm – so long as you think that without that object you are not completely happy – you are a beggar.
Let’s come a little closer to our minds. The desire for recognition, for fame, for applause from fellow creatures whips one into feverish activity. How lasting is this fame and how short and precious your time? Do you want to spend such precious stuff getting that which does not even last a lifetime? How often fame itself turns into the cause of sorrow? Think! Let’s come even closer to our minds. Why does one want anything? So that one may get appreciation and love. Ah! That brilliant, priceless gem that we all seek, an emotional need but a ‘need’ it is. So long as there is a ‘need’ in the mental, intellectual, or physical zones, we remain beggars. Oh yes, we do.
Now let’s get the closest and look at not our minds but ‘ourselves’. The desire for peace, the desire for happiness, which is independent of objects, emotions or thoughts, a state of being where I am naturally joyous, calm, and complete, is what I want. When I look upon all with joy and do not feel the need for ‘a remoter charm by thought supplied’. Let us say that I manage to achieve this measure of independence from the tyranny of object related happiness. Can this last? No disturbances attack this calm from the outer world or even our own minds and thereby arises a new ‘need’ of trying to keep at bay those disturbances that throw stones into the placid lake of my inner poise creating disturbing patterns therein. How subtly does this ‘need’ to guard my peace disturb the very peace that I want to guard. Let go dear friend – let go. We have to learn to embrace the whole – rejection’ is also a ‘need’ and creates beggarliness of the mind. Lakshmi’s true blessing is not in her bestowing upon you the toys of this world, her true blessing is in ‘taking away’ your sense of ‘need’, your ‘incompleteness’, your mental beggary.
The ecstasy of love sublime is in the total embrace, the complete merger with the beloved where the ‘wave’ is no longer a form or a name but understands that it is water. When the limited form of the wave understands that this majestic sweep of the waves, rollers, tides, surf, foam, and bubbles is all me the ocean, what can she ‘desire’ and what ‘reject’?
Prarthna Saran is President, Chinmaya Mission Delhi.
She can be reached at prarthnasaran@ gmail.com