Podcards

Anabhisvanga (अनभिष्वङ्ग) is letting go of the the intense attachment you feel for your loved ones and the much beloved things in your life. When you examine such feelings, you see that you have objectified your loved ones and that your attachment is really a way to exercise control over your own fluctuating world. Life gives us the gift of nurturing and caring for our young ones when they are weak and vulnerable. It also necessitates that you exercise that love and affection with discernment. You never stop caring and you must experience the grief of their separation, but you always maintain your objectivity as regards everything in your life.

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Kāma (काम) is sensual pleasure in all its forms, it is also the personification of the god of love—akin to Eros in Greek mythology. Although kāma and artha are the two great evils, the kāma of love and intimacy is an essential need that fulfils a much higher purpose. In 1969, shortly before his death, the psychologist Abraham Maslow amended his seminal thesis on the hierarchy of human motivations. At the pinnacle of his hierarchy of needs, he now placed self-transcendence. Borrowed from Eastern philosophy, Maslow regarded the dissolution of ego to be the highest state of actualisation for people who were fortunate enough to ascend to this level of consciousness. Experientially, you get a glimpse of what this feels like in certain transcendental states in ordinary activities. In acts of intimacy, you can come closer to bridging the gap between your self and not self. In the space between a lover, you feel safe and secure to love, feel loved, and be able to love, feel respected and have self-respect; and you are able to turn your attention away from self-ishness towards more transhumanistic emotions like care for others, sympathy and self-sacrifice, for compassion and self-effacement, and for pure love.

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Mātsarya (मात्सर्य) is the feeling of sadness and incompleteness that overcomes you when you notice particular traits and characteristics in others that you crave, want, or desire. And even though you see their endowments in isolation, you attribute those singular things to the person and begin to see yourself as inferior to them. By and by you see yourself as being disadvantaged and incomplete and this makes you singularly uncharitable to the world around you. Love, kindness, genuine friendship may flow into your life, but you will scorn it, degrade it, and dismiss it because it is a sorry replacement for the things you covet and cannot have. When feelings of jealousy do arise, you can instead separate out the particular quality in the person and appreciate its particular beauty, aura, or charm. Appreciate how it shines through in this particular moment and the confluence of factors that gave it light. See how a generosity of spirit helped these qualities shine through them (for true beauty is an uncovering of the soul) and that the same beauty resides in you if you give it the light it needs to shine through.

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We make a lot out of giving love and loving others unconditionally. Any healthy society teaches its young to love and care for others by making contact, by nurturing an understanding for people who look and sound different from themselves, so that they curb the natural impulses of hostility and egotism. To love then means to be completely open and vulnerable when you reach out to others, which in turn means that you have absolute trust in yourself as you let down your defences in favor of compassion and empathy. When you love somebody deeply and completely, happiness happens in giving them your love and devotion. The more deeply you are able to love someone, the more must you suffer grief at their loss.

But what of your capacity to accept love? People who feel loved are the one who are necessarily able to love, who necessarily feel safe and secure to love, who necessarily feel respected and have self-respect. The psychologist Abraham Maslow says that such people are exceptionally fortunate because they (usually) have lived their lives in the best conditions, having had good reference experiences and plenty of choices along the way. Such people seem to lead happier and more fulfilled lives because they see through the complex intermediate layers of value, which entice and ensnare ordinary people, to the simple truths and needs that activate an eagerness to live: to express themselves without fear; to act with integrity; to love and be loved; to feel like they have a stake in their world and therefore have a vested interest in its care and maintenance. So the path to love then appears to be a heightened development of your awareness, reason, and capacity to love, to such an extent that you transcend your own egocentric self-involvement, leaving yourself absolutely open and vulnerable to the possibility of its devastation and loss.

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Thoughts arise of their own volition depending on the natural ebb and flow of sensations and revived memories of sensations. In one instant your actions are propelled by a thought that has built up in intensity and in the next you condemn the action and the state of mind that thought the thought. This is the natural process of jñeyam (ज्ञेयम्)—of discovering your self. Troubles arise when you believe that your thoughts and actions are an immutable part of your being and must leave an indelible mark on your personality rather than being a mere transitory epiphenomenon, brought on by various influences from within and without. If you treat your mind with the sanctity of a home, you could be more discerning of the thoughts that arrive at your doorstep. You can choose to let thoughts in or keep them out, as you like—or let them just go passing on by. Of course, you can’t deny the bad thoughts away, but you can replace them with good ones. Since you know that your thoughts are not always within your control, you can disassociate from them without feeling any pressing need to try and understand them or assuage them in any way. When these ill-conceived half-thoughts arise, you can let them pass away just as they are.

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It could be said that your world radiates out from some hypothetical centre within you and extends as far as the limits of your senses take you. At some point, your world fades away into the horizon. Within the immediate limits of your world, you must also limit which of your five sense accesses an experience, so what you perceive is never a full representation of an event. This is why the Bhagavad Gita distinguishes between consciousness and the contents of consciousness. Pure consciousness is always refined by factors within ourselves, and no matter how subtle is the tinge, the new experience is automatically transformed within the established lineage and itself becomes one of its contents—another nexus of consciousness that gathers around it the opinions, feelings, and distorted perceptions that support your fabricated personal identity. Most people spend at least half their waking hours simulating their experiences instead of living them. With their inattention to the facts, their purely simulated reality drives their feelings and emotions in unexpected directions. So you really need to pay attention to ordinary things without distorting their facts. Attention is different from concentration. While concentration excludes all else to the object of focus, attention is full and total awareness that excludes nothing. You cease being the observer of things, including yourself and develop greater sensitivity to what is happening in the moment—the note of tension in the voice of a loved one, the source of the feelings of irrational anger, guilt, and loneliness as they arise, or even merely appreciating the sunrise in all its simplicity. Through meditation you learn how to live from moment to moment instead of a reality that is hijacked by your own thoughts. Your intention is simply to let go of your notions of how things “should” be. When you have a worthy intention like this in mind, you don’t need a contraption or method to reign in your focus, instead you develop a sensitivity to the present moment as it unfolds around you.

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Because you believe that you are incomplete, you need to constantly validate the person you purport to be. By throwing yourself into the company of others, especially those easily beguiled by the stories you concoct of yourself, you distract your mind in other directions and avoid the pain of gaining any real knowledge of yourself. Even the distraction of a hobby is a way of getting away from the facts of your life when it serves only as a distraction, a way of passing the time. Vivikta (विविक्त) is the act of separating yourself from others, not as a means of alienating yourself from society, but as a way of separating yourself from worldly things so that you may be free from their influences. The pre-Christian concept of contemplation is what the ancient mystics valued most highly. Aristotle believed that contemplation (theōria) is the ultimate culmination of all thought and action. It is the means to ascertaining truth, and truth may only reveal itself in complete stillness. In the great Eastern traditions, this truth or self-knowledge has an extraordinary meaning. It is the full and total acceptance of yourself and the nature of the world around you. It is the letting go of the need to control and direct things, especially your being itself, and accepting what you actually are from moment to moment—accepting your fragmented self and your utter helplessness within the vast integer of the universe. Therein lies the primacy of contemplation over the vita activa: that all man’s achievements pale in comparison to the perfection of the universe; a magnificent, perpetual clockwork mechanism whose cogs interlock in perfect synchronicity, right down to the escapement beating in his own heart. A perfection that has alone made possible the continuity of life over millions of years and gives living beings the chance to be more than what they were by a continual evolution or mutation or any other myriad ordered changes in their organism. This truth discloses itself only when all movement and activity is at perfect rest. To be humbled by this true knowledge of yourself is then the ultimate revelatory aspect of the solitary life.

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kṣānti (Sanskrit, Pali: क्षांति) is an attitude of equanimity that stems from patient acceptance and tolerance. It is akin to Apatheia (Greek: ἀπάθεια) for the Stoics or wise surrender—a word that got cheapened into an attitude of lethargic torpor over time. Wisdom is knowing that you cannot expect people or events to conform to your expectations and that all planning must inevitably lead to disappointment. So rather than insisting the world behave in ways that you think would be pleasing to you, you can find delight in the actions of others and the serendipitous uncertainty of life.

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There is a certain power in faith—not just a faith in God, or love, or science, but faith in the human spirit—that drives and sustains us. Of the Buddha’s Five Strengths, pañcabalāni (Sanskrit: पञ्चबलानि), a faith or conviction that your actions do matter comes first. And because your actions impact all things around you, you must exercise them with care or you’ll end up creating a lot of suffering for yourself and for those around you. Faith in yourself and others gives you hope and optimism so that you can pursue with eagerness those processes of life that challenge or consternate without falling into the black pit of depression and despair. Faith is what sustains humanity’s progress right from individual accomplishments through to advancements in the sciences. We do not know, we can only guess, and our guesses are guided by faith in laws. Einstein believed in what he called a cosmic religion—to him, less a religion than a "rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." Faith in a benevolent God or universe rather than an authoritarian figure or punitive force actually suppresses your impulse to get angry or frightened by stimulating a tiny area at the front of your brain called the anterior cingulate. When you choose to believe in a loving divinity, kindness, compassion, and understanding prevail in the active centres of your brain. Conversely, the belief in a punitive, vindictive, and authoritarian God evokes feelings of fear and retribution, priming the brain for fighting. So choose to have more faith in humanity and yourself and you’ll find a kinder and more forgiving world around you.

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Māna (Sanskrit: मान) is an attitude of excessive pride in yourself and your abilities. It is conceit that stems from your overrated sense of personal value, based solely on your qualifications, wealth, learning, or any of the other markers of social standing. Study after study has shown that people tend to think that they are better than average, especially when it comes to their abilities and their conduct in issues of morality. As social animals, we need to present ourselves as being beneficial and effective so that we attract as many friends, lovers, or collaborators as we can. The problem is that beneath this thin veneer of public posturing is the vague uncertainty that you are not quite as knowledgeable and efficient as you believe; that your learnings and achievements are not as profound as you believe. It can be no other way—all you have achieved and accomplished is more by dint of luck and circumstance than any innate ability and there is always going to be someone else who will outdo you in favourably presenting themselves to others. Very soon, your world is filled with millions of other challengers, countless numbers of whom will present opportunities, real or imaginary, for games of undignified oneupmanship or other narcissistic pursuits. So instead of constantly vying for social standing, be kinder to yourself. Accept that you are constantly learning and growing and that you do not have to compete to prove your value. You’ll find that you’re more empathetic towards other people; that you nurture others’ ideas and ways of doing things; and that your world, in general, is less caustic.

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