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Tag: gunas

Live in the moment (really?)

Here’s something we hear often. And it is linked to spirituality too. “Live in the present”, “Live in this moment alone”, “Don’t live in the past or in the future”, “the present is a gift” and so on and so forth. There are many variations of these. And they all sound amazing. Liberating too. Marry these words with some spectacular visuals on Instagram or Facebook and that is enough to make even a corpse feel all charged up and alive.

Feeling charged up and alive is indeed a good thing. But ‘living in the present’ needs to be understood well. It is ultimately dependent on the internal qualities or gunas of a person.

If people are sattvik by nature, they are likely to work for others and for a greater cause. Therefore their focus while working – in the true sense – will not be focused on the results of their actions.

For tamasik people however, this is not so obvious. They too may appear to not care about the result. But this apparent lack of caring comes from a deep rooted centre of laziness, inertia and selfishness which precludes them from calling a spade a spade. Their very success comes from denying the truth, and from seeking to avoid the consequences of their actions.

In that sense, the rajasik folks may be better off – as they at least know there is a gap which they need to bridge.

And thus, it is important to understand well what it takes to live in the moment. If we are thinking only about ourselves, jumping from one desire to the next, we may already be many moments ahead, and certainly not in the present.

If one has transcended the ego however, and is working solely for the benefit of the greater good, then living in the moment will come automatically. It is a state of ‘flow’. Nothing needs to be done to achieve it.

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Spirituality doubts

Here are two simple questions (and answers of course) that can sometimes occur to anyone on the spiritual path.

  1. On the one hand, I’m expected to be spiritual, attain liberation etc. On the other, I’m expected to carry on my duties in my materialistic life? How can I reconcile both of these?

    As my Guru says, we are all filled with so much of rajasik guna that we cannot just relinquish everything, don ochre robes and sit in meditation forever. Instead, we are so much in love with the world around us (maya though it may be) that we leave ourselves no choice but to play in it. The way out (as Krishna told Arjuna as well) is to channelize that rajas in the use of greater good, maximum benefit for maximum people. This will break the cycle of selfish desires and actions, and eventually convert rajasik to sattvik. To summarize, doing one’s duty in life selflessly, will lead to spiritual evolution.
  2. The world is fleeting. Can I really make any changes to it? I’m anyway going to die. How does it matter?

    It is very easy to be fatalistic. But all our scriptures caution against exactly this. Just like a honeybee is not wired to roar like a lion, we too are not wired to be in this world without acting or doing something, i.e. we are not 100% sattvik and meditative by nature. Since we any way have to act in the world, why not do a good job of it, helping the greatest number of people? Certainly possible.
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