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🌺 ASHTAVAKRA GITA🌺
🌿Chapter - 31🌿
~ Free Of Wanting ~
🌱 Day - 180 🌱
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So when the different gunas arose, Janaka said that he saw them as rising and then subsiding. He said that he was continuously aware of his hollow and empty nature, because it was his very nature.
निद्रिनो बोधित इव क्षीणसंस्मरणो हि सः । He said that he slept as though he was awake. Even sleep has taken on a dimension of continued awareness, though his body was resting. He felt a continuum of awareness, even in sleep. With his mind in such a state, there was nothing. There was no conflict, and his mind was hollow and empty. Now, what can distract such a fulfilled state? What can distract such a joyful existence and state of being? क्व धनानि । Can money tempt and change him? क्व मित्राणि । Can friendship change him? Can any friends change my state of awareness,tempt me. क्व धनानि क्व मित्राणि क्व मे विषयदस्यवः । क्व शास्त्रं क्व च विज्ञानं यदा मे गलिता स्पृहा ॥ It is very beautiful! What can pull you out of yourself? Look at the things that can pull you out of yourself. Can money pull you out of joy? You may be happily enjoying when someone says that they will give you two lakhs of rupees. Immediately the mind goes begins to plan. What will you do when you get two lakhs? So your mind is no longer hollow and empty. It has become busy now. Money can pull you out. Isn't it? But Janaka wondered how could money pull him out? That it could no longer pull him out or distress him.
What else can pull you out - friends and friendship! People wait to see their friends. They long to be with them. But,as time goes in, the more they are with their friends, they turn into enemies. Some people are your enemies. You had too much friendship and too soon with them, too much, too soon. You never allowed their friendship to mature and develop on its own. You went off your center. This is not the fault of the friendship. In friendship, you have lost your Self, your center, you went away from your center. The friend became an enemy because you were not in your center. If you remain centered, you friendship simply grows.
क्व मे विषयदस्यवः । The third thing he talks about are the cravings and habits. What can take you off? You can be happy in a place, while somebody with a smoking habit cannot. He has cigarettes and needs to go somewhere to have a puff. It is the same with a coffee or a drinking habit. You sit for long, while I talk and the same thing happens. You might like to have some ice cream for a change. You may be bored of doing the same satsang. You may want to do something different and see a movie. विषयदस्यवः । Attraction through the five senses (ears, eyes, nose, tongue, smell or touch) can take you off fulfilment. If none of these does it, then it could be a craving for scriptures, क्व शास्त्रं, a desire to go to a yagya or to hear the reading of religious texts. People go and listen to the same old story of Ramayana and Mahabharata again and again! Everybody in this country knows about them, but people will go again and again to hear the same discourses. Big crowds go to places where recitations of Ramayana or Bhagavatam, etc are going on. Sometimes they also start speaking while the speaker is speaking! In fact, they go a step ahead! The listeners are a step ahead! This whole country is immersed in this all the time. Have they ever gained anything by listening to Ramayana all the time? Half of the crowd will be asleep at such gatherings! It's only another form of entertainment for them.
But the mind feels as though it did a very religious act by going to the temple. It will feel that it did not go to a movie or to a disreputable place but went to a temple to listen to Ramayana. The mind gets false satisfaction thinking that it is a religious act, a holy thing, a holy person, a holy yajna.
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