Dear friends,

Today's thought-for-the-day is an especial favourite of mine. It
describes the great but very hard-to-practice quality which in
Vedanta is called "vairAgya" -- the human trait that voluntarily
gives up what it has long desired and pursued, at exactly the moment
when the thing is easy of grasping.

Such human quality is very rare indeed. Great saints and "AchAryA-s"
cultivated it. It is also known as cheerful renunciation or self-
abnegation. One cannot know real personal freedom
without "vairAgya". The great SriVaishnavite "AchAryA" of the 14th
CE, Swami Venkatanathan, was an epitome of this human virtue and
came to be hailed in his time as "vairAgya bhUshanam" -- the
renunciate par excellence...

Hope you will like what you read below. Sri Eknath Eswaran explains
it all with the aid of a quote from Meister Eckhart, illustrated by
a commonplace yet telling analogy.

Regards,
dAsan,

Sudarshan


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Page 186 (June 27):

"It is permissible to take life's blessings with both hands provided
you know yourself to be prepared to take opposite events just as
gladly. This applies to food and friends and kindred, to anything
that God may give or take away... As long as God is satisfied you
should rest content. If he be pleased to want something of you,
still should you rest content".
--- Meister Eckhart

In order to live in freedom, we must learn to accept temporary
disappointment, if necessary, when it is for our permanent well-
being. Sometimes, when we want to eat a particular dainty that
appeals to us, or when we want to eat a little more than is
necessary, we can't help feeling a tug at the heart as we push away
from the table. We cannot help thinking that we could as well have
stayed on for five more minutes of pleasure, forgetting that it
would probably be followed by five hours of stomach-ache at night.
The right time to get up from the meal is when we want just a little
more. This is real artistry, real gourmet judgment: when we find
that everything is so good that we would like to have one more
helping, we should be able to get up and walk away.

--- Eknath Eswaran