Why the study of one’s own
nature is required. If one observes the source of all experiences are this body
and more importantly the mind. So whatever we feel is based on our thoughts and
actions which invariably convert into reactions as our thoughts and actions are
not controlled. When we enquire the nature of this thought and to whom this
arises. We start our journey to understand ourselves.
Since all the experiences arise only in the arena of the
mind it becomes very important now for us to understand what is it that makes
us happy or sad and more importantly we enjoying or disliking things. From the
day we are born our mind starts consuming information from external sources and
stores it as memory. It is these memories which are the source of our miseries.
When a person looks at the other when dealing with an issue, this if it is
important for him will get embedded in the mind and when faced with similar
problem he will try to replicate the response based on his
memory.
Since most of these reactions happen unconsciously the
person would not know why he reacted to a situation in this manner. Because of
this he suffers from the problems that arise because of such reactions.
So the point where one starts to react to various memories
in his mind would be collectively called Samskara's (mental impression,
recollection, psychological imprint). So it here that it becomes very important
for a person to develop good Samskara's. To put it in simple terms developing
good habits is the key to avoid such repercussions. What is trying to be
conveyed here is that if a person starts nurturing good thoughts in his mind
eventually the good thoughts will take over his subconscious mind and when is
faced with a situation he is likely to respond positively. Giving rise to good
karma, otherwise no karma.
Now continuing further we will briefly try to understand,
what is Karma? Karma is the sum total of actions (both mental and physical) of a
person that has been recorded in his mind. The samskaras that it embedded in
our mind makes us to do things in a certain way and samskaras that come from
our previous birth forms karma in this birth most of the time. What does this
mean? Say you have an experience and this experience is recorded in you sub
conscious mind at the time at the time of the experience itself and this
creates a certain tendency (vasanas) and these tendency with imprints usually
come out of sub conscious mind it becomes as an action which is nothing but
karma.
In simple words you experience something, which creates memory
and minds works on these thoughts and creates desire/inclinations etc, there by
an action is performed based on these imprints and inclinations which is
nothing but Karma.
After a brief understanding on this aspect, let us get back
to study of self and why this is important from the above perspective.
Now let us try to understand why our body is not the true
Self. There are two or three ways we can say that body is not the self.
Firstly when we are in deep sleep there is no awareness on
the body and mind, at this state we are in a state where nothing exists
including our body and mind and yet Self exists (meaning you exist even though
body does not exist)
Alternatively we can only be aware of objects and cannot
identify our self with it. Meaning when I see a bag, I can only say that I
perceive the bag or I’m aware of the bag but I cannot go and say that I’m the
bag. So similarly the self only perceives the body and therefore is not the
body. The self is aware of the body but it is not the body.
Then what makes a person to wrongly identify himself with
the body? It is nothing but his ignorance.
Third way of looking at it is like this, we are born and we
grow, become old and finally die. Here if you observe that, the Self within the
body is the same when you were a baby, adult and old person.Here the body kept
changing and yet you remain the same. Hence you are not the body
