A worldly sage

 

I don’t want to be too good or too great to be finally get burdened under the weight of my own goodness. Conceptual sense of goodness and purity turns an obligation in the long run and one has to put up masks to keep it. I don’t want that divinity that would uproot me from the pains and pleasures of earthly humanity. I don’t aspire to attain too lofty a character to finally become someone who has to take up falsehoods as customs and rituals to maintain my persona. I don’t want to be completely detached, perfectly moral, neutral and aloof so as not to even hear the panicked notes of a little bird being pursued by an eagle and watch the game of ‘the stronger eating the weaker’ unfold with a saintly muse. I want to retain enough humanity to allow my kindness to respond and throw a clod at the hunting bird. Even if it hits the bird of prey I would take the chance. I don’t want enlightenment or liberation that takes me away from the sweet, common scent of humanity with its mundane pains and pleasures.

Even Buddha kept quiet when his wife questioned him about the necessity of renouncing everything to get supreme joy for himself. He had abandoned a wife and a little son; severed his ties right in the middle of the night. That to me is causing pain to others for individual salvation. When he returned as a revered spiritual king, his wife requested to be granted a meeting with the great teacher. ‘It’s my right to be allowed a meeting with him in privacy as his wife,’ she said. And the great master agreed. ‘O great spiritual master and dear husband, you abandoned me and your child and the entire family for individual salvation. Tell me whether what you have attained could not have been attained without abandoning us?’ she asked. She spoke as an aggrieved wife with feminine authority and worldly conviction. The great master kept quiet. For the first time he had no answer to this. He knew all this could have been attained even without causing pain to his family. But it would have been a bigger challenge to attain all this, which he had availed as a sanyasi, while staying in worldliness.

So isn’t renunciation the easier way? Isn’t running away—even if it means to attain the salvation of humanity later—an easier path? It’s very easy to shut out disturbing mental situations from going rampant while sitting in a cave. The real challenge is to be a yogi within while moving on the worldly stage with all the earthly bearings of duties, roles, relationships, karma, dharma, everything. Like Krishna did. Like Rama did. They forged their saintliness ‘within’ right there on the stage of this drama.

I would prefer to run into situations instead of running away. To try to be stable on a shaking platform is the real challenge. It’s so easy to get poise and balance on a stable platform. The entire essence of being a spiritual person to me is just to remind myself of my core truths even while I’m walking across the illustrious, blinding bazaars of fakery and falsehood surrounding me; to be stable within even while walking in a noisy bazaar; to do my duties on the worldly stage with a perfect detachment and understanding that I’m playing this role in this drama and I have to perform it really well.

The saints are as much part of this existence as the common people like you and me are. If the God had been too partial towards the saints, they would have outnumbered the commoners by now. The real saints are joyful with the minimum that supports their life. The common people suppose that the drama on the stage will get them happiness. Not much difference, I think. To some super-galactic consciousness, taking itself to be a separate super-entity, all this would be just the same—the saints and the commoners. So don’t harbor vanity for being a saint; and don’t feel the guilt of being common. Mother existence stands equally distant or close to both the categories. Further, God certainly must be in love with his common children because He has so many of them.

If my sympathetic tears alleviate the pain of a fellow human being, I’m ready to cry. If my smile lights up someone’s life, I’m there to offer it. I don’t want to be an idol that turns liberated, impassive, heavenly and mute to all the fluctuations of fate and fortunes around me. I love being just like anyone around.