Day 38
The who is not worried about what people tell them or talk about them can be free. You don’t worry about what people think about you. They may think good about you, they may think bad about you. Why sit and worry all the time about what others think about you?
It may not be true at all. One who is free from this bondage of the surroundings, of society. One who is beyond all the three gunas - the satva, rajas and tamas. Satva guna - knowledge, Rajo gunadesire, ambition, restlessness and
Tamo gunadullness and sleep. The three gunas bring different tendencies in you and you are not attached to any one of them. Know that it is easy to be detached from negative qualities, but you get attached to positive qualities. You think you are the only righteous person and then you get upset about everybody else who is not righteous.
Feeling that you are the only right one, the only honest one, the only correct person, others, naturally, become bad. That is attachment to the positive qualities. One needs to be free from attachment to the positive qualities, also. Then you will really be free. One who is free from acquiring and maintaining whatever has come in life.
There are two worries-one is to get what one doesn't have and the other is to maintain what one has. These two worries eat you up. And one who does not worry about them, really crosses this ocean of misery, of maya. Who brought the ocean of conflict in life?
One who is not after attaining what he does not have, achieving what he has not achieved, is not feverish about holding on to what he has. One who is free, light, easy. In the next sutra, he explains - When we act, behind every action there is a motivation. And the motivation is to get a specific result.
There is no action that we do intentionally without an eye on a specific goal. That achievement affects our process of action. Are you getting what I am saying? Okay, let us see it from this angle.
There are some actions which you do as an expression of joy in which you are not bothered about the result of the action. There are some other actions which you do expecting to get a certain result out of it, a joy out of it. The expectation of joy in an action makes the action inferior.
But an action which happens as an expression of joy has no fruit of action, no result that you are looking for. When you are happy, you want to spread that happiness, and if you are keenly observing whether the other person has become happy or not, you get entangled in their vicious circle.
When you are in conflict, what can you do? There is a Chinese saying, “Take a pillow and go to bed.” Narada says a similar thing, with a little difference. He says you rest. Take a break from the action. Take a break from the activity. Not just the activity, but the fruit of the activity, the result of the activity.
The concern about the outcome of your activity is what pulls you down, what bothers you. Suppose you want to take up a project, want to do some work. Now whether it will happen or not, if you start putting your mind on all these concerns, then your whole enthusiasm gets dampened.
When you are aware of your potential and you want to do an action, just jump into it. Go into it, is what Narada says, without having a concern about the outcome.
