Shoonya!

Soul searching, for me, has always been more than just a hobby. Understanding philosophies has been even bigger an effort. Somehow recently I made up my mind to finally touch upon Swami Vivekanada's teaching and thus began my affair with one of Swami Vivekananda's book, "Karma Yoga." From the time I began to read it I made special effort to make notes and relate it directly to my day to day life and my past experiences. To get a deeper understanding I invited one of my good friends/cousins over the weekend to discuss about the teachings in the book.

With consensus we began discussing about the basics of karma yoga. As per the teachings a sanyasin is not a karma yogin. In the sense as humans doing our duty or karma makes each one of us karma yogin or yogini. For example a woman or a man perform their duties as per thier respective roles in different areas and eventually reach a stage of renunciation which then leads them towards enlightenment. In other words a sanyasin has to be a person who can resist the temptations of the world. Or a man or a woman can always experience life and then if their will permits take up a life of seclusion. However the question here is when does a person reach a point of renounciation? According to Swami a person reaches the stage of renunciation either at an early or later stage. A typical exampple is growth in a career. Some advance at an early stage and some later or maybe never. Now why does that happen.

Per swami what we are today is a sum total result of our past actions. And what we want to become in future will also be a result of our current actions. Because karma is not only work, duty or deeds it is also an energy that each one of us emits to the universe and the universe does its duty of taking the energy, transforming it into what is asked for and then emits it back to the person. How soon the energy reaches the individual is directly related to how soon the person will reach the renunciation stage.

This part brought me hope and my cousin agreed with me too. He gave a simple example of how he would go round and round the temple and pray to god to help him go to the US. He took all the necessary steps in that particular direction and as a result today he is here. So is my case. With absolutely no or very little monetary support or luxuries I went ahead and managed to get the kind of education I wanted. Maybe not everything happened per my will but if I do the right thing and keep trying it will happen. There is no way that the energy I emit to achieve one particular goal will ever go wasted in the universe. The universe will have to emit my energy back.

A valid point. But we also argued about the part where the teachings talk about selflessness. My cousin is cute but he can also be terribly opinionated. Of course I like him for that one reason and more because he reads everything possible and is always up for discussions and the best quality in him is that he is open for reasoning, pays heed to others perspectives, acknowledges his mistakes or ignorance about a given subject matter and of course best of all he knows to disagree respectfully.

Ok praise and criticisms apart. Problem came when he brought Ayn Rand into discussion. I agree with Ayn to some extent but not all. For a simple reason that if everyone on this earth became selfish then probably she would not be in existence. Of course her arguments are deeper than that and not easily comprehensible for dimwits of the likes of me. Anyways when Ayn Rand mentions that every human is entitled to his/her own happiness I totally agree with her. Not all sacrifises are called for. In fact some only create trouble. For example a mother in law-daughter in law relationship. Having suffered as a daughter in law a reasearch shows that in India mother in laws expect the same for their son's wife. Why did this happen? Probably because of the uncalled sacrifises of a woman in the role of a wife. Or for that matter elders in general do not approve of younger generations freedom in all respect.

Sacrifises do come with a lot of baggage but again if karma yoga is to be followed then what ever happens is right only if the situation calls for the kind of karma that is executed. For instance Arjuna in Mahabharata fought against his own relatives. Had it not been in the case of a war then an action of this magnitude would have had been considered as blasphemy. But the situation Arjuna was in was that of sacrifise. He sacrifised his love for his relatives in order to restore goodness/dharma in the world.

Thus is the reasoning in the book of Karma Yoga. When reading it in the begining it seems insane. But evenatually every single philosophy is so very well defined and reasoned that the logical mind agress to it and finally surrenders. I am so fascinated with this revelation that every chance I get I try to connect dots together and understand the philosophy better. My cousin too after some time started agreeing with the science behind belief. An atheist such as him is not easy to convince but Swami Vivekananda's lessons mesmerize and impress the likes of him.

Its interesting to see how Swami has used certain instances to create gender equality and reduce male ego in India using Karma Yoga. Of course I do not agree with those teachnigs at this age and if Swami were alive I am sure that he would have changed it to suit the current needs. But the book in itself has gripped my attention so very much that I have decided to read the rest of his teachings too. Of course the bigger goal is to read Bhagavadgita and understand it as much as I can. It is said that it takes many a birth to read a single line of Bhagavadgita and as a minute dot in this vast universe I hope that I have done more than my share of work in all my past births to not only read the entire Bhagavadgita but also understand its meaning.

As a Karma Yogini I plan to gather as much knowledge as I can. I plan to understand the intricasies of the teachings of intellectual. Absorb as much as I can so that once I am done with my mortal body then my sould can take with it all the good karma I ever did and most importantly the knowledge I gathered because I agree with what Krishna once said to Arjuna--
A human is born to do his duty and gather not pearls, or kingdom but to seek and gain knowldge so that when his soul at the end of his life departs for the heavenly abode it takes with itseld good karma and knowledge there by making every other achievement in life equal to zero or Shoonya........!!!!

Amen!