Actions and Gratitude – A Spiritual perspective

 Actions and Gratitude – A Spiritual perspective

This word is often used everywhere, that we should have gratitude towards our parents, friends, our partner, colleagues and others who have played some role in our life which has led to some positivity. But doing this in-reality is altogether a different question that needs lots of introspection.

We have become a creature of greed and selfishness who think of our own comfort disregarding the harm it may cause to others and there by have created a vicious cycle of self-centered actions across everywhere.

Let us understand the implication of such actions from spiritual perspective.

Willful action that is performed by us with an ego that I’m doing these actions, or the result is because of me. Creates an impression in the sub conscious mind, if repeated regularly these impressions will form into Karma (an impression which will manifest itself in the future and the person should undergo the effect of the same without escape).

Hence such actions eventually will come out of the subconscious mind to conscious mind at the right time to make sure the person experiences the effects his actions.

Now when a person does the same action without the sense of doer ship or submitting all actions to the to something bigger than himself or just do it with a no ego attached. Then impressions will not get created in the mind. To do this is very difficult and needs lots of practice

So a simpler solution to this is to have a sense of gratitude towards everything in life, if anyone does anything good to you, be thankful, if you had food today be thankful etc, this thankful feeling should be real and not faked, if it faked this gets recorded as an impression again in our mind, as everything that is repeated will get recorded as an impression in our subconscious mind and thereby eventually we need to bear the consequences of the same.

Right action and Gratitude help in purifying the mind of such bad habits is the simple gist of this article

Ashtavakra Gita - 1

 

Ashtavakra Gita 

 

Verse 1

The Verse starts with a question by Janaka to Ashtavakra, on how one can acquire knowledge? How do I get liberated? and What leads to renunciation?

The verse has three question which needs to be discussed in detail. The first question is to know how to acquire knowledge. But first, what is this Knowledge that is being discussed here?

Knowing about Who am I? What am I? How am I related to the universe around me? Who is God and How am I related to God? Knowing about this is the knowledge that is being discussed here.

The above point comes with two broad categories being Who am I and Who is God? and how these two are interlinked?

Coming to the first part of the question i.e. Who am I? we usually tend associate ourselves to the body mind complex. But we are neither the body nor the mind, but the silent witness of these two. This is what is called as Atma and Paramatma (God) is all pervasive existence, consciousness and Bliss.

The true knowledge here is to know that Atma and Paramatama is one and the same. Realization of this is true knowledge. To acquire this knowledge, we can read various scriptures, like Bhagvat Gita, Upanishads etc.

Atma is our true self which witnesses everything that is happening. When something stings us, the body feels the pain and we say My body is paining. When I say my body is paining, it means that I’m different from my body and it is the body that is in pain and this is observed by me, hence I’m not the body.

Then we think that the I’m the mind, mind and thought go hand in hand and they are the same, mind does not exist if there is no thought and hence when the body gets sting it feels sad and the thoughts comes up that it is suffering. But again here we say that my mind is disturbed due to pain and therefore I’m not the mind, as it is my mind that is disturbed and I’m witnessing it, in-turn I’m the true witness of mind and body or the one who illuminates the this event is the true self or Atma (Consciousness).

This true self is neither afflicted by the pains and pleasures of the body mind complex and remains the same irrespective of the situation that its body and mind undergoes, for this Self the body/mind is just like an illusion that appears in-front of it. Meaning for the Atma the pains of the body and mind appears in it and hence it’s an appearance, pain is either an appearance.

The existence of body and mind is dependent on Atma and Atman is independent of the these two. Atma can exist without these two but mind and body can’t (Imagine existence of anything without consciousness, it is not possible, without consciousness nothing cannot exist, how can one quantify of existence of something without existence itself without consciousness). By this way we can understand the Atman has the quality of Existence, consciousness and Bliss (bliss because there is nothing other than atman when everything is in atman, then it means that everything is perfect, you don’t need anything, as source of pleasure for everything everything is atman, hence it’s bliss, as atman is independent and body mind is an appearance to itself, it is perfect and hence blissful by itself)

God is traditionally described as Existence, consciousness and bliss and by above interpretation of Atman, both are one and the same

The second point touched upon in the verse after Knowledge is Liberation, the logical conclusion of the right knowledge leads to liberation, which freedom from bondage, misery, Liberation completely eradicates misery. A Jeevanmuktha (Liberated while living) does not experience any misery irrespective of any situation that he experience, it is important to note that realization does not take away the Karma that needs to be experienced but rather removes the pain (mind level/ no mind state) associated to it.

Finally, the third point which is spoken here is about renunciation, this is an important quality that one needs to develop for acquiring knowledge about Brahman (God) and obtain Liberation. A person who is attached to world or otherwise enjoyment will never be able to go beyond it as Brahman is beyond all these things, if one wants to attain liberation (beyond all bondages and limitations) can happen only with renunciation and associated qualities