Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
10 December 2019
Fifth Season (2)
“Mind”
What you observe in a season, for example, in a particular season when it rains, is that the rains will vary. One day it may pour for a day or for many days, one day it may trickle for a day or for many days, one day it may just drizzle for a day or for many days.
You can never pinpoint a certain type of rain to be the rainy season. When you observe summer you cannot say it should be thirty-two degrees every day of summer. Can you? The summer season is varied as well.
Similarly, when the husband or wife gets angry, it is a certain degree. It is the season of anger in the mind. The anger cannot be other than what it is in the moment. You cannot change anger to be love, just as you cannot change summer to be spring.
Every season varies. Every anger varies. Every season cannot be other than what it is. You cannot control any season, because you cannot control the moment in which the season is or make the moment in which the season is.
Similarly, understand that, though you want to control anger, you cannot control anger because you cannot control the moment in which anger is. Neither can you make the moment in which anger is.
What do you do with any season? You accept it as it is, do you not? What does life tell you? Life tells you that just as every season will vary in type and intensity, similarly, in your mind the thoughts keep varying in type and intensity.
Life tells you repeatedly that the type and intensity of weather in any season cannot be replaced by the type and intensity of weather which you like, neither by life nor by your mind. Similarly, the thoughts too in the mind which are in any moment cannot be replaced by life or by your mind.
You cannot say, hey, speak to me only in this manner, because this is how love is. You can never say to anybody, this is how you should speak; this is how our relationship will be maintained only if you speak to me this way.
No. You cannot dictate to the mind how it should speak. The mind is the fifth season of life. Mind is a season which starts from birth, just as every season starts from birth.
The enlightened embrace any season as it is and any mind as it is and do not expect them to be other than what they are in any moment in life.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2019
Editor’s Note:
The description of the mind as being a season, the fifth season, clarifies the nature both of season and of mind. The four seasons express themselves as an outer phenomenon displaying the whole panoply of nature; the mind may express itself as an inner experience of emotion and thought or it may express itself as an outer phenomenon of speech and sound. Each experience or expression happens within a moment. The moment is by the intelligence of life, not by man or by any other agency. Every word and every revelation in this and every article, in every book and in every interview with the wise is distinctly clear and precise. It is so.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator‘s Note:
"How are you?" and "How's the weather?" are popular questions in small talk. While the first question, about the well-being of the other person, also appears in deep, personal conversations and emphatically deals with the worries and needs of the other person, the question about the weather, if it is not life-threatening extremes, is rather banal. But in both cases the connection between the two questions is unclear to the human being, as Dr. Shankar explains it here profoundly and wisely. If man understands that the weather outside and the weather inside is not in his hands, he will talk less about both and be less impressed by the stories his own mind has to tell about them. This is not the end of compassion for the sorrows and hardships of others, but compassion shifts through a deep understanding of the four outer seasons and the fifth, inner season, mind, from the question of what one has done wrong when one is miserable and what one should do about it, to patience that clarity about the true nature of one's mind happens to the other as illusory.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.