Ishavasya meaning ‘enveloped by the Lord’. Every bit of this creation, living or non-living, known or unknown, visible or invisible, potential or manifest, whatever be the nature of existence, is linked, is permeated by God, divinity, energy, call it what you will.
God is not a tall, bearded man sitting high up in the sky, out of your reach, rewarding you for so-called good deeds and punishing you for the so-called sins. The Isha tells you what it is. The energy that is present in the cosmos is an intelligent entity.
It is alive and pulsating. It is the life force that can feel you without your skin, can convey to you without words. That life force is Isha, Ishwara. What then is the password that will let you tap into this eternal source of life? Let go. What will happen if you let go?
When you hold on the things, people or situations you’re limiting yourself, you’re closing your fists. Enjoy the world but don’t cling to it. You’ll enjoy the world more if you don’t cling to it. When you let go you learn to give, you learn to do for others, you learn to contribute.
The Isha says do things selflessly and wish to live for a 100 years is the secret to satisfaction. Unless we move from the joy of grabbing to the joy of contributing contentment will not come our way. Dissatisfaction will rule the roost and take away from us the sheer joy of living.
So goes the Isavasya, one of the smallest Upanishad. In pithy, precise statements it gives us the whole philosophy of life. How should we to live in this world? By neither shunning action and the world, nor attaching ourselves to action and the world, by blending action with knowledge and the cosmos with the Divine.
