What Exactly Is the Root Source of Sorrow/strife?
What Exactly is the Root Source of Sorrow/strife?
Sorrow and pain manifest when we are unaware of certain underlying realities. Maharshi Vasishtha while explaining to Lord Rama the cause of sorrow says that it is spiritual ignorance (Ajnana or Maya). This ignorance can be overcome via attainment of divine wisdom via the path of Yoga of Wisdom (Jnana Yoga). As per the scripture Yoga Vasishtha:
“AAYADHO VYAADHAYASHCHAIVA
DWAYA DUKHASYA KAARANAM.
TANNIVRITIHI SUKHAM VIDYAAT
TATKSHAYO MOKSHA UCHYATAY.”
MEANING: “This material world gives us to types of sorrows i.e. bodily and mental. They can be overcome via wisdom (Jnana) based austerities. Moksha or salvation is nothing but this overcoming of material sorrow in totality.”
Thus it is a spiritual law that salvation is attained only when all sorrows are destroyed lock, stock and barrel. Eternal spiritual bliss means destruction of all sorrows. Thus salvation and divine bliss (Ananda) are synonymous. If material sorrows are overcome totally salvation oriented divine bliss manifests in our psyche eternally. Many a times we see people attaining joy time and again in their life. They laugh, sing, dance, crack jokes etc and thus experience joy. The question asked is that is their inner state liberated? Meaning have they attained Mukti or salvation?
Definitely not! The above inner state of man can never be called salvation or Mukti. The state of salvation is ceaseless, balanced, imperishable and uniform and it does not require an external cause to manifest it. This state does not ‘come’ from anywhere nor does it ‘go’ anywhere. It is not created due to an external factor nor is it destroyed by it. It is self manifesting and causeless. It is attained in totality, experienced in totality and exists eternally. It is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent eternally. After attaining the true bliss of salvation no other bliss remains to be achieved. True salvation or Moksha is devoid of any desire, self fulfilling and infinite bliss in nature.
The previously mentioned material pleasures like watching TV, dancing in discos, drinking alcohol, drug addiction etc do not have the qualities of the true bliss of salvation. Material pleasures require external causes and mediums. It manifests due to a cause and when the cause is removed the pleasure too ends. Many a times even if the cause persists, the pleasure diminishes and leads to aversion. Material pleasures are fleeting because they ultimately lead to sorrow and strife. Today is someone is happy because of a certain cause/medium, later at some point in time he/she will definitely get pain precisely because of this very cause. Even if you get intense material pleasures yet your psyche is never satiated and hence begs for more and more. Material pleasures can never satiate us nor can they lead to complete contentment. How can it e called eternal bliss if it is plagued with discontent and lack of a sense of fulfillment? Even if someone is surrounded with innumerable pleasures, it takes only one undesirable event that makes him/her wallow in sorrow. Such a person’s smile is totally wiped off in a second and so does his previously overjoyed bosom experience pain. THUS IT IS CLEAR THAT THE BLISS OF SALVATION CAN NEVER BE COMPARED TO FLEETING MATERIAL SENSE PLEASURES.
Material pleasures are an exercise in futility because they are false and illusory in nature. Their experience is akin to sighting a mirage in a dessert. This illusory experience is the root cause of labeling material pleasures as lowly. True bliss can only be experienced at the soul level and that too without the influence of any external cause/object/event. It is only the bliss of salvation/liberation/Moksha that is true and eternal in the absolute sense. We are dealing with the subject of the illusory nature of fleeting sense pleasures so as to caution world humanity that we are all wasting our entire life span in amassing material pleasures and clinging on to them as though they are our very lifeline. Since our psyches are immersed in this delusion we fail to first even understand what absolute reality is let alone making sincere efforts to attain it. A deluded mind whose sole aim is to amass fleeting pleasures can never even think about the absolute reality. Thus how will it even think of attaining it? A deer in a dessert chases mirages in search of water to quench its thirst. Time and again it thinks ‘just a few feet of running and the water is mine’. Alas! It results in delusion and nothing but tiring delusion. The deer’s thirst thus remains unquenched. If this deer had only realized that this mirage is not a water pond but an illusion of its eyes, it would have instead endeavored to hunt for a real water area and could have quenched its thirst easily. But no! The lure of the mirage makes it run madly in that direction only to end