In celebration of life and living

 

Why would there be sense pleasure in nature? Can you imagine any type of life possible without it on the planet? Is manifestation possible at all without sense-driven gratification? Isn’t sensual pacification the gateway from the unmanifest to the manifest? When a flower blooms isn’t it a result of the black-bee’s sense gratification? When a rishi goes into the caves to launch his war against the senses, isn’t he himself a result of the sense gratification of his parents? When I aim for the ultimate gratification, the much cherished perpetual bliss, isn’t that a super gratification?

Poor sense pacifications, they are such a maligned entity. Their theoretical negation forms the base all the endless stream of words in holy books and scriptures. While the reality is that at the level of life’s manifestation, as it’s on earth, how will you even survive without this faculty? These are merely the faculties that have evolved with us in the game of survival. The key lies in their balanced usage for a wholesome life.

Those on the path of so-called spirituality start with an acute sense of some imbalance, some pain, loss, bitterness. The latter are just results of mismanaged, skewed usage of our natural faculties. I have seen very well-poised and balanced people serving as hawkers and rickshaw pullers in crowded bazaars; almost saintly in demeanor; at so much ease with whatever nature has given them at the level of senses and their use. And I have seen high priests, the careerist spiritualists, unfortunately most of them in fact, who are well decked up in the armor of dharma and holy look, but peace is farthest from their eyes. Many of them take a cute tumble with their lady followers.

It’s only about being at ease with yourself; nothing less, nothing more. One can use any kind of words to describe it. There is no end to words. They are the products of the faculty of our mind only. Sometimes back an old sadhu was ruminating that he got a nightfall which he considered a sin. Well, had you been healthy in your ideas about sex and women, had been balanced in your ideas and usage of this natural sense-born faculty, you won’t have been crying over night falls in old age, I thought. It’s not about negating sense-born desires. It’s not even about getting saturated with them. It’s all about balance. Like when you eat. Not much to give you ache, not too less to starve you. Like Buddha realized when he almost died after starving himself for months.

Learn to be at ease dear brothers and sisters. If you are sitting in a brothel and are at ease with yourself, you are your own saint. If you are occupying the highest seat of a pontiff and itching with restlessness then you are a novice still. So learn the art of being at ease with yourself wherever you are situated. Balance. Balance. Balance. In everything that life offers. Accept. Accept the windfalls of the pleasure of flesh with humility and gratitude and pay back with sincere hard work. It’s a beautiful world because of the teasing interplay of sensory desire seeking, not because of those who preach against it and keep smoldering with desire within.

You dear seeker, you ought to feel obliged to the teasing ways of desires. You have been given this beautiful life by an exciting play of desires between your parents. I am sure they were not meditating while you got launched into the womb. Desire is the force that’s catapulting the forces of creation and generation: at the level of species in mating urge, and huge galaxies expanding at the cosmic level. That’s the force that pulls this cosmos. Those who are running away from life, relationships, needful responsibilities, mundane pleasures need to remember that most of our gods, rishis and munis had beautiful partners, families and children. They are called bhagwan because they used their energies in an optimum way and managed their sensual faculties in the way they wanted. They used them in a balanced way instead of falling imbalanced to one particular impulse.

In balanced amount even poison serves like amrit. In imbalanced amount even amrit turns poison. A judicious mix of what nature has given is nothing short of enlightenment. Why put your fate solely in the pages of holy books? They are mere indicators, just creation of the minds who could write better than you and me. So ease up. Just be. Accept what you are. Why negate? As the component of being at ease builds up, the tendency to go into impulsive, imbalanced use of sense pleasure faculties will get transformed itself. New neurological circuits develop that drive more hormones of wellness through our system. It’s a very simple physiological fact. Why interpret it to mythological proportions?

The ultimate untroubled playfulness is a result of carefully nurtured well-balanced use of our energies and sensorial faculties. We come to a ripening. The impulses lose their meaning and desires drop off without pain like a ripe fruit drops by itself. The senses and their potential for pleasure still remain in the body but their use or no use means the same. They no longer drive our thoughts, actions and emotions. You get a choice and use doesn’t drive you crazy and no-use doesn’t make you suffer. In a way one rises above that dimension. Call it realization or enlightenment. It’s but merely more conscious, aware form of living; just transformation of energies for a bit more refined thoughts and emotions; a shift in perspective.

It doesn’t mean I find people in the so-called worldly dimension as lowly placed. Everything is just same in mother existence. It’s only about a choice to be something extra if our present sense of existence makes us restless and we feel something missing. It’s merely a choice to be at more ease with the self.

Just learn to stay in the present. This is the ultimate meditation. No need to roam in the Himalayas. Do it among the sweet-sour scent of humanity around you. It’s almost always about what we had been or what we would be. Very rarely we are what we are now. And thus dear brothers and sisters, we exit from the portals of life as ignorant of its meaning as when we entered it.

The flower bud opens with a pining majesty. Infantile petals ready to be born for one more fragrant, juicy season. The goddess of beauty opens another eye to see this world with more colors. But the de-juicing black-bee is also around! Things of beauty and joy are almost always accompanied by the greedy swirls of utilitarian air—two aspects of duality. But that doesn’t mean the things of beauty and joy shouldn’t smile and bloom.

I know it disturbs many minds who have accepted the superiority of particular paths in taking them to the exclusive class of refined and holy beings on earth. That also is another form of ego: the desire to be in a state from where the rest of humanity seems a group of meek ignorants who need reformation and enlightenment. So take this slightly bitter pill of information with a glass of water and be at ease. If your mind still feels disturbed then rethink about the utility of gurus and scriptures who haven’t given you equanimity of mind to even digest this. Then reboot. And smile. Then laugh. At yourself. It helps.