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by Jayaram V
Spiritual life is not easy to follow because on the spiritual path you have
to wage a constant struggle against nature, against your mind and body,
against
the established traditions of society and against the clinging and the lures of
life, which constantly try to wean you away from your chosen path. With a lot of
negativity and discouragement coming from all directions, for neophytes it is a
challenge to remain focused on their practice and stick to their spiritual
beliefs. In the early stages of your practice, a part of your personality still
remains caught up in worldly desires, because of which you experience a lot of
resistance and inner turmoil when you try to divert your mind’s attention to
spiritual subjects. It is where many people feel discouraged and drop out of the
path. In the Buddhist tradition we come across ten great reflections, suggested
by the Buddha, which are immensely helpful to spiritual aspirants to overcome
distractions and difficulties and stay firmly on the path of liberation. The
Buddha mentioned them in one of his discourses, in response to a question,
when he was staying at a monastery near Sravasthi in northern India. The ten
reflections are collectively known as the dasa dharma sutra (dasa dhamma sutta)
or the Ten Aphorisms of Dharma. They are so generic in nature that both
Buddhists and non-Buddhists can use them to remain on the chosen spiritual path
and continue their journey. They are particularly useful to overcome
distractions, negativity and the old habits of the mind and the body. They are
explained below.
1. I am now a different person and lead a different life
Spiritual life is much different from the worldly life. What you do out of
desire, what you seek and what you aim for in worldly life, you renounce in
spiritual life. For the new initiates this poses a great problem. When they
begin to control their desires and habitual thought patterns, it creates pain
and suffering and stirs up a lot of discontentment and misery in their
consciousness. By nature we are pleasure loving. We try to avoid pain by all
means. Spiritual people are expected to be indifferent to both. They may be even
asked by their tradition to embrace pain and suffering rather than pleasure and
happiness as a part of their practice to cultivate tolerance and patience. In
worldly life when you are confronted with an unpleasant situation you will not
remain calm. You will do something about it, reacting either negatively or
positively. You will take some action to protect yourself or your will confront
it, according to the situation and your judgment. On the spiritual path you do
not have the compulsion of fighting your problems with an egoistic mindset. If
you want to use the opportunity to change your thinking and attitude, you have
to deal with them in a different manner. Here you will not take any action that
gives your ego a sense of comfort or a feeling of pride. You will invite them
into your life with an open mind and learn to accept them and appreciate them
for their value and importance in shaping your consciousness and your behavior.
A spiritual person seeking liberation from the cycle of births and deaths
embraces difficulties in order to overcome old attachments and preferences. His
ultimate purpose is to cultivate equanimity or sameness towards all pairs of
opposites.
Spiritual life therefore demands a demands a patient and
perceptive towards the problems and
challenges on the path. This affirmation is useful to cultivate
such an attitude and meet with the demands spiritual life
imposes upon you. It gives you the courage and the
conviction to control your habitual thought patterns and
overcome your deep rooted desires. It prepares you mentally and
spiritually to deal with the uncertainties, humiliation, doubt
and the emptiness which arise from renunciation and detachment.
Use this reflection to put yourself in a right frame of mind,
whenever you feel that you are getting involved with worldly
life or your old thoughts about life and enjoyment are
resurfacing in your consciousness. Reflect upon it whenever you
find your mind is straying into old memories and smoldering
passions or whenever your ego rears its head and you feel the
urge to defend or assert yourself and your opinions.
2. I am dependent upon others
There is a great deal of interdependence in the world. We do
not usually recognize it or feel grateful about it. We think
that every success that we achieve is because of our individual
merits or some chance events. But from the time you are born you
receive help from innumerable sources, without which it would
not be possible for you to live at all. Whether you are worldly
or spiritual, you cannot exist without interacting with the
world or without depending upon others for your survival and
sustenance. Every living being is connected with life’s
innumerable streams in mysterious ways. Whether you are aware of
it or not and whether you give them the permission or not,
numerous people make possible your life and your experiences.
The world is your great teacher. It is also your benefactor. You
learn from it valuable lessons. You depend upon it to perform
your actions and also exhaust your karma. Countless people have
helped you in the past to be what you are today. You may not
even know most of them personally, but without their help, you
would not have come this far or become what you are today. Think
of your parents, your teachers, your relations, your friends,
your enemies, total strangers, plants and animals,
elements, nature and gods, who served you and helped you from
the time you were born till now. Most of them might have
disappeared from your life and you may not even care to remember
them. But they all played certain roles in shaping your life and
your personality. They taught you lessons. They gave you
experiences. They showed you the ways of the world. They taught
you about friendship, betrayal, pain, suffering, enmity, love,
generosity and humanity. They expanded your consciousness in
their own individual ways. However independent you may think you
are, you are indebted to the world and the people who help you
in their own little or significant ways to create your identity
and your awareness, which you proudly claim as yours.
It is a misconception to believe that if you renounce the
world, you become independent of it. In fact you become more
dependent upon it as you renounce your desire to promote
yourself or live for yourself. As a spiritual person you may
live in isolation and practice your meditation in secluded
places or in the comforts of a monastery or an ashram. But
someone needs to feed you and take care of your daily needs to
ensure that your spiritual practice continues without
interruption. You have to be grateful to them, who love you, who
hate you, who venerate you, who make fun of you, who cook your
food, who clean the floor, who keep the lamps burning and who
keeps a watch on you or the place when you are in meditation or
asleep or sick. As a spiritual person you may renounce your
relationships and your worldly desires. But it should not make
you feel indifferent to the world or the people around you.
However isolated you may be from the world and the people, you
cannot exist without them. The world may be an illusion or a
difficult place to live, but you depend upon it and have a much
deeper connection with it than you imagine. This reflection is
useful to remember this fundamental truth and live in a state of
gratitude and compassion towards others. It also helps you
cultivate a balanced attitude and friendliness (mitrata) towards
others, without being judgmental and without assuming moral or
spiritual superiority over them.
3. I should now live a different life and behave differently
This affirmation is very useful in the early stages of
spiritual practice, when one begins to adapt oneself to a new
way of life. When you are in Rome you have to live like a Roman.
This is very true in case of spiritual life. When you are on the
spiritual path, you have to live and act like a spiritual
person. You have to learn a new routine, a new mindset, new ways
of thinking and responding. You have to follow the rules and the
code of conduct that is prescribed for you. You have to respect
the authority of your masters and the scriptures, curbing your
egoistic thoughts and rebellious nature. You have to do it
without losing your balance and your mind, and you have to do it
day after day, without the compulsion to seek the approval of
others or win their appreciation. Till your mind is settled, you
have to be your own guard and your own guide. You have to keep a
constant watch on yourself and bring your mind and thoughts back
to the life that you have agreed to lead as a promise to
yourself that you would work for your salvation and free
yourself from the life that you found least comforting. This
affirmation reminds you of that promise and helps to stay in
control and in balance.
In the early stages of practice, when spiritual aspirants are
not yet completely ready, they go through a stormy period,
dealing with the old habits of their minds and self-preservation
instinct. They have to bear heat and cold with composure and
live a frugal life, denying themselves the usual comforts to
which they were accustomed before. They have to overcome their
passion for things and their desire for even such simple things
as tasty food, a nice dress or a comfortable bed. They have to
spend hours sitting and meditating, alone or in groups. They
have to practice silence for days together to become familiar
with the movements of their consciousness. They have to become
mindful, merciful, careful, sensitive, dispassionate and patient
as they subject themselves to self-denial and self-discipline.
They have to practice virtue in word and deed, controlling their
desires and cultivating non-violence, contentment, truthfulness,
cleanliness and forgiveness. They also need to review their
priorities, shun the company of their friends and relations and
gradually reorient themselves form a seeking and striving
attitude to that of contentment and introspection. The
restrictions they have to impose upon themselves are part of the
package. They are meant to prepare them for facing more serious
difficulties and demons of defilement which they face at a later
stage. This affirmation gives them the fortitude to adapt
themselves to the new way of life, as they walk on the edge of
worldliness, overcoming their likes and dislikes and their
habitual responses, and respond to the problems and
opportunities according to the standards established for them by
their tradition. It is especially useful to control their
thoughts and desires and keep their composure and inner balance,
when they have to deal with worldly people on a regular basis or
when their minds are caught between the pairs of opposites and
their likes and dislikes. If they keep reflecting upon it
frequently, the idea becomes entrenched deeply in the
consciousness and becomes their second nature.
4. Can I find fault with my virtues and my personal conduct?
However good and ornamental it may be, if a water carrying
pitcher has one tiny crack, it fails to hold the water. However
pious and good spiritual people may be, if they have even minor
faults, they fail to reach the state of liberation. On the
spiritual path, there are no shortcuts. You have to work
assiduously to perfect your mind and body and make yourself fit
for the journey. You have to review your progress to make sure
that you are not leaving out anything that may give you trouble
at a later stage. This affirmation can be used to check the
various virtues that you are supposed to cultivate and the rules
and regulations that you have exemplify through your behavior as
prescribed by your tradition.
There is no place for laxity and self-deception on the
spiritual path. Moral purity and right conduct are the
foundation upon which rests the possibility of your liberation.
People have to remain on guard, even after they spend years in
contemplation and self-transformation, without falling into the
trap of complacency. They have to keep a watch on themselves,
even when they are engaged in the most ordinary tasks, such as
eating food or taking bath. In worldly life you may take certain
liberties with your virtues and your behavior. But in spiritual
life you cannot go far unless you address all your weaknesses
and vulnerabilities. If you don’t, your mind will bring out all
your sleeping demons and subject you to moral and mental crisis.
If you leave gaping holes in your consciousness, negative
thoughts will enter into it and create problems. This
affirmation is useful to review one’s progress everyday and look
for tiny opportunities to improve one’s behavior and thinking.
5. Will the masters approve my virtues and conduct?
On the spiritual path you should not only subject yourself to
critical self-evaluation but also test yourself against the highest
standards of morality and virtue that are available to you. To know
about one’s conduct and behavior, critical self-evaluation alone
is not sufficient. One should also review one’s progress using the
standards applied by spiritual masters whom society accepts and
reveres as role models and perfect beings. People’s judgment usually
comes from their attachments, their likes and dislikes or from their
personal convictions and prejudices. Sometimes they also evaluate
others out of anger, fear, envy, pride or love. Their opinions and
judgment are also not reliable because they are fickle and they
keep changing their opinions frequently for one reason or the other.
Ignorance is another important factor. If you are not well informed
or if do not have the complete picture, very likely your opinions
and decision may be imperfect and even incorrect. So it is difficult
to rely upon other people to know about ourselves, especially when
they have their axes to grind and when they are not sincere, impartial
and perfect.
The masters of wisdom are enlightened beings, who are committed
to truth and who are free from the impurities of the mind. They
have an insightful ability to discern truth and know the right from
the wrong. They have the wisdom to clarify our doubts and interpret
our scriptures. We can learn a great deal about right living
and right conduct from them by observing them and measuring ourselves
against them. So, if you want to know about your progress truly,
use this question to know how they will evaluate you and where you
stand from their perspective. The masters may not be actually interested
in finding fault with you because of their forgiveness and compassion.
But you need to know whether you are moving in the right direction
and making the right effort. Think of the masters with whom you
are familiar either directly or through their teachings. Use your
guru or his guru as your standard. When you put up this question,
your heart knows the answers instantaneously.
6. One day I will be separated from all that I love dearly
This reflection is useful to cultivate detachment and free yourself
from you entanglements and involvement with the material world.
Attachment is one of the most difficult obstacles on the path. It
is not easy to overcome it, because it comes to you in many guises.
You kill one of them and several others raise their hoods in its
place. The world is a transient place. What we have today will not
be there someday. Outwardly life may look routine and somewhat predictable,
especially if you happen to be a monk living in a monastery. But
none can foretell the sudden twists and turns of life. Although
we develop attachment with many things in our lives, finally we
can take nothing with us, except our deeds and a few strong memories.
Yet we cling and crave for things. We live and act as if things
will last forever. In spiritual life you have to be constantly aware
of the transience of life and the emotional disturbances which may
arise because of the attachment and the expectations we cultivate.
This does not mean you have to live life pessimistically or with
despair and dejection. You have to live with wisdom and awareness
about the transience of life and accept things as they are, without
subjecting yourself to emotional disturbances and personal suffering.
If you focus on the transience of life and reflect upon it, it will
help you cultivate dispassion, detachment and sameness towards the
pairs of opposites. You will be eventually free from all bonds and
entanglements and achieve liberation.
7. I create my experiences and I am responsible for my actions
This reflection puts you on the center stage of your life and gives
you an opportunity to redeem yourself, not egoistically but responsibly,
through your thoughts, actions and decisions. It makes you responsible
and accountable for your actions and your experiences and look into
yourself rather than at others for solutions to the problems in
your life. It makes you independent, self-aware and responsive to
the pain and suffering you experience when you make mistakes and
go through the self-cleansing process. The law of karma is inexorable.
We may temporarily rationalize our actions, but our karma will ultimately
catch up with us and demands its price. We cannot escape from our
past unless we know how to set it right and stop the roots of karma
spreading further and deeper into our lives. Once we are born into
this world, we have to face the consequences of our actions and
decisions and accept the rewards and punishments that are part of
the package. However hard you may try to resist the temptations
of life, when you are in a seeking mode, you will continue to push
the boundaries of your life, taking chances and finding opportunities,
till you realize how your actions and habits are putting you in
a bind and how you are the cause and effect of your experiences.
We are responsible for what happens to us here as well as hereafter.
We may hold God and others responsible for our pain and suffering
or our success and happiness, but what shapes them is the law of
karma. You create your life largely through your deeds and misdeeds.
You precipitate the reality of your life through your mental and
physical actions. Even the so called fate is shaped largely by your
past deeds. Others may play a role in your life. But they can do
so only with your permission and your involvement. You attract them
because of your past or present karma and you give them a chance
to mess with your life.
When you are too deeply involved with the world, you may think
that this is the only life you have got and the only chance to live
happily and you may not concern yourself with the consequences of
your actions beyond your death. But death is not the end of it all.
There is life beyond death that stretches into eternity. When you
leave this world, you carry the seed of your next life with you.
If the seed is not of good quality, when it eventually germinates
and becomes a tree, it will bear bitter fruit and becomes a source
of unpleasantness for you and others. It is therefore necessary
that you view life from a wider perspective, in the larger context
of your eternal self and the consequences that may arise on account
of your current actions and lifestyle, paying close attention to
your habitual thought patterns and your dominant desires because
they are the seeds of your future life and they prepare you for
your next life.
Living with responsibility is an important step on the spiritual
path. Learning from your experience and using it to perfect yourself
is another one. Accepting your pain, probing its causes within yourself
gives you an opportunity to locate its source and find some lasting
remedies. Look at every experience in your life as a chain of events
that start from somewhere deep within your consciousness, either
as a desire or as a thought, and culminate into a reality. Locate
that original cause, if it possible, through regression or meditation,
to understand how your own thoughts, desires and actions precipitate
your life’s experiences and give rise to different mental states.
Once you realize your responsibility and your involvement in your
life’s chain of events, you will live and act more responsibly and
sensitively, with compassion for yourself and others whom you might
have dragged into the circle of your life through your thoughts
and actions.
8. Am I doing the right things?
This is an extension of the previous thought process. On the
spiritual path you have to evaluate your actions constantly to know
whether you are making the right decisions and progressing in the
right direction. There are no certainties on the spiritual path.
You cannot entirely bank upon other people’s accounts and experiences.
What worked for them may not work for you. Eventually you have to
find your own path that leads to stability and inner balance. Walking
on the spiritual path is like ascending a steep incline. When you
make mistakes, you will slip and fall, sometimes all the way down
to the starting point. Staying on the right course, performing right
actions, analyzing them carefully and avoiding the mistakes and
pitfalls, is therefore crucial. It is however not as easy
as it seems because it is not always possible to know what is right
and what is wrong in a given situation. Our judgments and morals
are relative because our consciousness is clouded by ignorance and
attachments. We cannot therefore not rely upon our judgment alone
entirely to know the right from the wrong. Sometimes we may have
to look for answers in the scriptures or in the teachings of our
wise masters. We may also seek the counsel of others who are on
the path or who are more experienced than us.
It is true that on the spiritual path you should not perform
actions with a desire to be right or correct. You should not bring
your ego into the evaluation process. The ego wants to be right
and it does so for different reasons, as a part of its self-promoting
and self-seeking behavior to gain something, win the approval of
others or seek the attention of the world. The ego wants to be right
at any cost and if necessary by rationalizing its actions. But as
a spiritual person you should not let your ego rear its head. You
should not allow yourself to feel concerned about the outcome of
your actions or the desire to be always right. So it necessary that
when you analyze your actions, you remain detached and in control
of your ego. Evaluate them with detachment, as a corrective process,
to move in the right direction, without judging your actions and
treating your successes and failures with equanimity.
9. Am I comfortable with my emptiness?
In worldly life we are comfortable with completeness, with the
sense of perfection and with an identity of being someone, who has
a name, status and a distinct image. We usually try to increase
our value and our esteem in society by accumulating wealth, power
and prestige. We like to be praised appreciated. We like to have
some weight in society so that we can extend our authority and influence
upon people and get things done. We are afraid of being lonely or
empty or the feeling of being nothing because we do not want to
be treated as failures. Our society does not forgive those who lag
behind. It does not forgive those who give up and who leave the
ring. It promotes individuality and upholds those who prove their
worth through sheer determination and hard work. We admire winners.
We worship them. We love to fill our lives with color and action.
As a result we become competitive and overly active, and fill our
lives and our minds with the excess clutter, hoping that it would
eventually compensate for our insecurities and feelings of inadequacy.
The truth is, however hard you may try, what you accomplish in your
worldly life will not fill the emptiness and the craving that exists
in you. Whatever may be your level of accomplishment, your craving
for things never ceases. You may silence it temporarily with things,
but not permanently. What you pour into it through your physical
and mental effort will only intensify your craving even more. Your
material possessions and your accomplishments do not cure your insecurity
and your feelings of helplessness against the uncertainties and
unpredictability of life. The solution therefore does not lie in
filling your emptiness with material things or escaping from it
through frivolous activity, but accepting it and embracing it. It
is possible only when you shift your focus from having to being
and by gradually withdrawing from the clutter of life. You have
to empty all that from your consciousness which creates and perpetuates
your hunger and thirst for things.
When you become reflective, the first thing that strikes you
most about your life is the emptiness and the meaninglessness of
it all. There is no apparent reason why we are here and why we have
to do what we usually do to keep ourselves active, busy, successful,
attractive, acceptable, friendly, useful, rich, famous, successful
or simply human. Such awareness would either drive you crazy or
push you gradually into depths of despair, as it did in case of
the Buddha, and into the depths of your own consciousness to understand
what life is all about and how may deal with it. The layers of consciousness,
awareness, desires, thoughts, opinions, beliefs, judgment and all
the learning and conditioning to which you were subject from the
day you were born, actually stand between you and your liberation.
The knowledge and awareness, the intellect and the reasoning power,
which you thought were hugely responsible for your success in the
worldly life, now actually become major problems in your search
for liberation. You can resolve them only by becoming empty through
a long and arduous process of unlearning and unconditioning your
mind and body and freeing them from the shackles of authority and
conformity.
In worldly life your success is measured by your achievements
and your accumulation of material things. In spiritual life your
progress is measured by the things you leave behind and the void
that you experience within. In material life you aim to achieve
success through goal oriented actions. In spiritual life you set
aside all seeking and striving and lead an aimless, effortless and
unencumbered life. In material life you seek people and relationships
as a part of your self-preservation instinct. In spiritual life
you shun the company of people and live in seclusion to understand
the meaninglessness and the purposelessness of seeking and striving
lifestyle. Since the two worlds are so different, when you withdraw
from the worldly life and turn to spiritualism, you may experience
a great void and a great resistance. This reflection helps you probe
your own consciousness to understand how comfortable you are with
your new way of life and with the transformation that you are working
on. If you are really unhappy, it also gives you an opportunity
to understand the underlying causes and address them.
10. Have I attained the superior wisdom that will set me free?
The ultimate purpose of spiritual practice is to gain right knowledge
so that you will overcome your ignorance and delusion and realize
who you truly are. By gaining right knowledge you will also be able
to discern truth from falsehood and live life the right way, without
making costly mistakes that may lead to unhappy karmic consequences.
But at what stage will you know that you attained the right knowledge?
How do you know that you have gained the right knowledge and attained
perfection on the path? There are no hard and fast answers for this.
Only you will know, when and if it happens. Perhaps you may also
seek the help of the masters who have treaded the path before you
and who have the ability to know your situation intuitively or who
can provide you an insight into your behavior through sheer power
of observation. This reflection helps you in two ways, one is by
letting you know where you stand on the path and secondly by enabling
you to refocus your mind on your path in case you have been distracted
by some powerful events in your life. In spiritual life as in material
life, sometimes you may find yourself moving in circles, indulging
in frivolous activities and losing sight of the very purpose for
which you began your journey. With the help of this reflection,
you can reset your mind and refocus on your path. Equally important
is what knowledge and wisdom you seek on the path. Our scriptures
recognize two types of knowledge, outer knowledge and inner knowledge.
Outer knowledge is the knowledge of the world and the inner knowledge
is the knowledge of the self. The first one is acquired through
the senses and the study of the world. The second one not acquired
because it cannot be pursued actively. It arises when the mind is
stable, the desires are annihilated and the senses are asleep. There
is also another classification mentioned by the scriptures, the
lower knowledge and the higher knowledge. Lower knowledge comes
from the study of scriptures and the experience of others and higher
knowledge arises in the depths of one’s own consciousness, in moments
of profound silence after years of practice, through purification,
attentive observation and self-sacrifice. The only test of true
knowledge is whether it has set you free and created the right awareness
in you.
If you are committed to becoming a spiritual person and want
to lead an intensely spiritual life, you can use these ten reflections
to cultivate the right attitude and remain focused on your practice.
As we have discussed earlier, spiritual life is an uphill battle,
where you are tested constantly by your primitive instincts, selfish
desires, habitual thought patterns and your intrinsic desire for
self-preservation. These ten great reflections are very helpful
to remain balanced and focused.
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