Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
24 March 2020
Conviction (4)
“Belief”
Life goes on and on and on. Yet you do not have a clear understanding of your mind, a clear understanding of life, a clear understanding of destiny, a clear understanding of duality and a clear understanding of yourself.
Look at yourself. You are not happy with your own self. No matter how spiritual you may be, no man is happy with himself. You have not seen and observed that mind goes one way and the body goes the other way.
Understand that life is common to the mind and to man. To get out of the agony of the mind, life and individual, you are happy if people listen to you, you are happy if people behave according to your convictions.
When it happens, you are relaxed, you are fine, you are happy and you say you are in bliss. But, if things do not go according to your convictions, it appears that life is against you.
Understand that when life is against you, you have a desire for going to satsang and doing meditation. Is it not so? In the hope that at least God will listen to you. This is the conviction of humanity, is it not?
Understand that everyone wants life to listen to what they say. Is it not so? Everybody wants life to be the way they expect it to be. How many people are there in this world who life is going to please?
If life pleases everybody - it has the potential - the paradox is that, if everybody is pleased, there is no sign of unpleasantness in this world. Everybody is happy. The problem is that nobody will know that they are happy.
Understand that you require duality to recognise that you are happy. So, to maintain the duality, somebody has got to be unhappy. It is just the case that sometimes you are the one in duality and sometimes not.
Understand that you are the one who is going to be unpleasant so that another can know what pleasantness is. And life gives you a relief from duality. Every day life gives you sleep. Sleep is a temporary relief from the turmoil of the mind.
Understand that temporarily you forget duality during sleep. But the mind will come back with renewed vigour because you are not thinking of your problems during sleep. The problems have gained strength to come back after resting in sleep.
Similarly, spirituality is your conviction for relief from problems. Understand that temporarily you forget problems in spirituality. But the mind will come back with renewed vigour because you are not thinking of your problems during spirituality. The problems have gained strength to come back to you with big force after resting in spirituality.
The wise have a clear understanding that duality cannot be rejected and it will happen the way it is meant to happen, albeit illusory. This is irrefutable conviction of the wise.
The enlightened live life’s duality that is in every moment.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2020
Editor’s Note:
Facing up to what is front of you, which cannot possibly be missed, for it is right in front of you, is the gift of life itself. It may entertain you, it may horrify you. You did not create it for man is not the doer. Therefore, you are unable, quite unable to push it away, wish it away or even to sleep it away. Its going is guaranteed in its coming – this is the conviction of the wise. Understanding that is so ushers in patience and acceptance. This is the way of the wise, the awareness of who you really are moment by moment.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator‘s Note:
The desire to escape the duality of mind, to have only the good not the bad, drives man to spirituality or religion. But what is considered spirituality or religion is nothing more than duality. There is no escape from it. Dr. Shankar shows in this article that only clarity about the illusory nature of duality in the mind allows one to live in peace with the inevitable duality of the mind, albeit illusory. Thus the choosy ego evolves as an impartial witnesser, if that is how it is meant to be.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.