Chapter 10 - Life Is A Play
Day 52
The self is a dancer. The same said in reverse, "Nartaka atma" means the dancer is the soul. The inner self is the stage. The self is like an actor or a dancer in a play.
One who dances or acts in a play uses all sorts of gestures to express the navarasa, the 9 flavors of emotion. Have you noticed how a dancer expresses feeling?
He expresses it so completely, with skill and art. If he needs to express anger, he will even use the red of his eyes to express it. A good dancer has good expressions.
He does not require much time to change from one feeling to another, but can switch in a moment. Isn't it? Similarly, in your life, when you get angry, how long does it take you to cool down and return to normal?
How much time passes before you laugh again? But a dancer does not need any time. From moment to moment, in an instant he changes his feelings and expressions.
This is very subtle. Look at this with an open mind. The self is just like a dancer. A good dancer does not replay yesterday's expressions today. Yesterday he expressed yesterday's feelings, and today he expresses new feelings.
New feelings emerge in everyone's mind, but what do we do? We mix yesterday's old feelings with today's new feelings. Payasam, a sweet drink has been prepared fresh, but old, spoiled beans have been added to it.
It would be fine if it were just from yesterday, but you add in what is a year old. When we studied in Kannada medium school, our Bhagavad Gita teacher also taught English.
In those days, children thought that they should take something every day to offer to the teacher. So any sweet prepared in the house was taken to her. How much could this lady who lived alone eat?
So she stored all the treats in a box and distributed them after 15-20 days, when an odour had started to come from them. These sweets had been given to her, and she did not feel like throwing them away.
And how could she give away the sweets the same day that she received them, since she still had a pile of old sweets to give away, which were lying in the box. So whatever we gave her, the same thing we received back as old stuff.
We laughed about it and made jokes, saying that the teacher gave us antique sweets. The sweets actually came from our house, but when they came back they had an extra smell. She would thrust them in our hands and insist that we eat them.
We took them in our hands, stuffed them in our pockets and threw them away after class. We carry around old feelings and do not observe new feelings and ideas that come today.
The feelings that an actor expresses today only have a place today. This is his specialty. That when you are established in the self new feelings and ideas come up and are expressed at each moment.
We mistakenly think that one who is established in the self or is enlightened has to sit still like a doll. This is because we have seen images of Buddha and Mahavir sitting, always with the same expression.
Although nobody has actually seen Buddha or Mahavir, still we make their statues and statues of Adi Shankara. We feel that we have to sit like those statues, so we sit with serious, long faces.
We think that smiling is an offence because the scriptures say that the enlightened should have only one feeling or flavour. We have misunderstood this saying.
One self expresses itself in various ways. The self expresses itself as a play. The actor who is angry in a play is not really angry. Similarly any feelings that the self expresses do not affect the self by even a fraction.
The self remains untouched, this is such a precious sutra. The whole world is a drama, the situations that happen in your life are a play. We cry when we're in love, in anger, our eyes turn red and we bite our lip, we clench our fists either to fight or from misery, in rage, we shout.
These are part of our day to day life, all of which are later forgotten. All will disappear with the passage of time. As time passes, our worries change, and we find new worries.
With a little awakening, if you carefully observe, you will see that no desire lasts forever. Then, immediately, dispassion will come. Even if we are attached, as time passes, the attachment fades. We only lose time, that is all.
