2019.06.25; Tuesday June 25th, 2019: Make liberation your highest ideal

Published by DB, June 26th, 2019

Make liberation your highest ideal

June 25, 2019, 2:03 am IST Speaking Tree in TOI Edit Page | Edit Page, India, Spirituality | TOI

By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

The monthly report card in school would make some children gloat and others weep. I did neither. I just took it home and gave it to my father. I never opened it because i saw it as a transaction between my teacher and my father! Reading it always made my father blow up. The teacher must have said something not so nice. But i was unconcerned. I had too much else going on that interested me.

The alarming increase in student suicides today is because we have created a society founded on the premise that life is a race. So you rush to the finishing line! Is it any wonder that so many choose to end their lives? This is the self-destructive model we have created for ourselves.

If our joy is about being better than someone else, it is not success; it is sickness. To reap the benefits of someone else’s failure is a tragic way to live.

Each individual is born with a particular kind of genius. Education should create the right atmosphere to allow that genius to flower to its optimal potential.

A student asked, how to live in an increasingly competitive and ambitious world. I told him, whether you are pursuing grades, wealth, knowledge, power, love or fame, you are essentially trying to experience a little more of life than you have now. The man going to the bar and the man going to the temple are seeking the same thing! They are looking for fulfilment, but through different means. Both want an experience of life that is a little more intense and pleasurable than it is currently.

At present, the stimuli are outside. But once you know that the source of both pleasure and pain, agony and ecstasy are within you, why would you outsource it? Why would you export it to alcohol or heaven or to some authority figure? It is good to study for your examinations, but why must your life be ruled by the result? Instead of seeking external validation, why not simply take charge of your own joy? Once you do, you can consciously create any experience you want. This is the incredible power human beings have been born with.

This is why the Indian spiritual traditions spoke not of heaven, but mukti – liberation – as the highest ideal. Heaven is just another place – perhaps with better lodgings, but still just geography. Besides, do you have any proof that you are not already in heaven and making a mess of it? If i make you the king of this planet, will it settle you? No. You will start looking for other planets, other galaxies, to rule. This means that even heaven cannot settle you. There is something within you that wants to expand limitlessly. You are seeking boundless expansion, unlimited freedom.

The problem with our world is not too much ambition, but too little of it. People are stingy even with their greed! Why not extend the desire you have for yourself to every other life on this planet? Perhaps you cannot ensure the fulfilment of everyone’s desires. Your action may be limited, but your intention is not. Just make your intention all-encompassing. Make your greed limitless, your ambition boundless, and watch your inner genius flower.

Follow Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of Isha Foundation at speakingtree.in

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/make-liberation-your-highest-ideal/