Are we ready to Pay

Are we ready to Pay -Anant Sri

Though I have always said that howsoever your life be, you can always continue your journey in spirituality, but when it comes to actual doing you feel that how can one go into spirituality being in the main stream. Great Masters have been seen to disengage from the main stream for walking this path. You feel that even Buddha had to leave his house to go into the search for truth.

You have not looked at it carefully. In fact there are more people who attain to realization being in the family than those who leave everything for it. Kabir did not leave his wife, he did not leave his son, he continued with his job and amidst all that he got realized. There have been many such examples in the past when people have continued living their normal life and were realized.  You don’t come to know them because you don’t see them as Masters. But all are not assigned the role of a Master. Such people live their lives in their natural awakening and may not even be in the limelight, yet their fragrance is felt all around and their presence makes the difference.

And what do you mean by the main stream? Do you think that not marrying or not being in family or not involved in certain things is deviating from the main stream? These are individual preferences and choices. When you are talking about realization you are taking into account only those who have to play the role of a Master. May be for the role they are playing they may prefer certain lifestyles but that is not running away from the world.

And then spirituality is not different from life, away from the world. You don’t have to leave anything but it is quite likely that for some people a lot many things might gradually glide away from them as they may not be required and they might be living a contented life even without them. But that does not take them away from the world. They are very much into the world. And even if one leaves where would he go?

Those who leave forcefully are the ones who favor and propagate this view of leaving the house etc. But most likely they might be doing so to convince themselves that they have done the right thing as dissatisfaction of not letting them mature and then these missing things keep haunting them all their life. But when you allow things to move normally, they attain ripeness and drop away as no longer needed.

People target Buddha for leaving the house and family and believe that if things were possible in living with the family then why would he have had left everything. They have not got him right. Buddha left everything to show the importance of Bodh in life? Bodh for him was so precious, so priceless that for Bodh, he was ready to pay with his life, sacrifice everything.

We want realization but we don’t want to pay? Anything which is so valuable will ask for its price. Are we ready to pay?

With realization many a times we take it to be having everything, all desires getting fulfilled, and a life of luxury, extravagance, gratification and what not. We sacrifice now to get everything in future. And realizing this condition of the human mind, the concept of heaven might have been given. It could have been given out of compassion so that at least people aspire for that and get motivated to walk. To free them from their present dungeon towards a life of heaven was thought of but the next concern would be as to how to free them from heaven.

Realization is not heaven. Realization does not promise you any imaginary colorful life, but it makes you see the way things are, the reality. On the contrary it may even take away what you have.

Realization is easy, it can happen any moment but we are not ready. We have a never ending list of desires and in that horde is squeezed one more desire to get realized. Desire for realization is not foremost.

Realization is not a desire; it is to be free from all the desires including the desire to be realized. Desires arise in the mind out of limitation and in limitation we can never conceive the unlimited. So finally the desire for realization is also to be done away with.

Realization is when your mind becomes devoid of all waves. It becomes wave-less when you see the unchangeable underlying all change. Then you don’t want to change anything, you accept everything because now you know where the change takes place and what remains untouched, undisturbed. As no change is desired now, the mind is also not required so there are no waves rising. And in this stillness descends the truth.

A Master has no aspiration for any change; he lives in total acceptance of all that is.

Describing realization, the Zen Masters say that before realization, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains, jungles are jungles, houses are houses and bazaars are bazaars. Then during the process, while seeking the rivers are not rivers, mountains are not mountains, forests are not forests, houses are not houses and bazaars are not bazaars. Then again when a person is realized, once again the rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains, jungles are jungles, houses are houses and bazaars are bazaars. They mean that during the seeking period for a short while, when you are concentrating on your quest you somewhat disassociate with the world, but once realized you are back into the world and everything is seen as they are and yet you are detached and free from them.

Therefore again I shall repeat what all Masters have been saying that realization is easy and it can happen any moment, it can happen now. But are you ready? Are you ready to pay? Are you ready to welcome it?

Once someone asked Buddha that if it was so easy and can happen any moment, then why does it not happen? He also gave the simple response that who wants realization. Realization is not a priority for people, it can wait, it is just one of the many desires.