SOME THOUGHTS ON BONDAGE---1

[Guest guest]

Dear friends,Essentially man is what he is ,a confused, confounded entity. At one moment he is kind,soft,and sweet and another moment he is a terrible monster, becuase of the variety of gratifications of his physical demands of lusts, mental demands for emotional satisfactions. Moreover, because of his purturbed intellect,he is tossed by its endless mischievous thoughts. He is definitely aware of all this. Yet he can not get out of it. Does this not amount to bondage? Why this helpless

bondage? All these pernicious sorrows arise/ occur becuse of what? Because he, the Atma , misunderstands himself to be the not-self

(Anatma).

 

Let us assume that in a drunken condition, one misunderstands himself to be his own shadow. What will be the consequences? Terrific suffering must then start for him. He will find that he is lying down on the road, and the traffic is continuously passing over him. His head is sometimes in the filthy, way-side gutter. Somebody or the other coming besides him is trampling him. Thus all the sufferings of the shadow become the sufferings of the man who misunderstands his shadow for himself. Thus a simple misunderstanding that one is his shadow becomes the source of a chain of terrible sufferings.

 

 

Likewise, the misunderstanding,"I am the not-self is the spring-board for all bondages and limitations that are suffered in voiceless agony by our personality. If we end this misunderstanding, it would at once redeem our personality from the encrustations of matter and its tyranny. One who is released from the tyrannies of matter is considered as God-man on earth. He is perfect, free, liberated totally from the weaknesses which characterise a mortal. A question can be raised as to who is to be considered as man. "God, apparently suffering the sorrows of prosecuting matter is man", as Swamy Chinmayanada used to say.

 

 

We forget our real nature in the dream. We identify with the things projected by us in the dream and suffer the consequences. The sufferings of the dream last only till we wake up. The moment we wake up and realise our identity, all the sorrows of the dream end. A mentally-challenged man, because of some psychological changes in him , forgets himself, starts behaving whimsically and quixotically in the world around him. In the same manner, man, who is God, the Paramatma, the pure Self, not understanding himself , by non-apprehending his real nature, starts creating misapprehensions. Then, identifying himself,with the not-self, which he is not, he comes to suffer the pains of existence created by himself for himself.

 

 

In a cinema hall or while watching a TV serial,we identify ourselves with the hero or the heroine on the screen. We feel happy at their happiness and sorrow at their sorrows. The identification with the non-self is the cause of our life`s sufferings. As a result of this bondage, which is nothing other our identification with the not-self, the Atma which is never born nor ever dies, which is ever the same, Eternal, Pure seems to suffer the pangs of apparent birth and death. Such an identification as described above is called Bondage.

 

(to be continued)

G.Balasubramanian