Acharya Mahaprajna
The Northlines
Why are people moody? This happens because they have no control over their passions. The first step in preksha meditation is to learn how to control emotions. After a session, in general, people would say that they got peace of mind, happiness and goodness. This happens, but these are mere formal truths.
We need to focus on overcoming our emotions and passions if practice of preksha meditation is to be worthwhile. Physical stress can be removed with simple practices. Practice should ensure that mental tension is not created at all. By hearing some words, if tension is created, we should develop the right perspective to prevent tension. Three paths have been enumerated for attaining moksha or liberation. Acharya Umaswati has written, there is only one path leading towards emancipation.
It has three constituents:
a) Right perspective,
b) Right knowledge, and
c) Right conduct.
Tension occurs in the absence of right knowledge. By adding right speech to knowledge, our perspective would leave no scope for tension. Acharya Bikshu's Chaturmas - a period of four months' stay in one place during the rainy season - was held in Pali, Rajasthan.
With the owner's permission they stayed in a shop. Some mischievous people told the owner that these monks may never leave. So it would be better to ask them to leave before they settled down. The owner did as he was told. Acharya Bikshu left the shop. Although there was good reason to react, Acharya's enlightened perspective was so strong that he did not fly into a temper.
It was the rainy season. The shop collapsed due to heavy rains. Acharya Bikshu said, “Such a kind person he was! He told us to leave before the shop collapsed. Had we been there today, what would have happened to us?!” How did he gain such complete acceptance? It happened because of right perspective.
Let's not blame any one for anything. If we see the incident in the right way, tension will never arise. Otherwise, there is enough frivolous talk around us to cause agitation without any concrete reason. Man gets overwhelmed by his emotions. It is not by facts, but only by sheer imagination, that man gets filled with stress.
When someone says 'So-and-so is speaking such-and-such about you' we do not know for a fact if that person did say those things. But we get swayed by emotions that result from such an exchange.
Through analysis we will come to know that many tension-filled situations are created by imagination and unreal doubts. We can escape tension through right perspective. A person with right perspective, right knowledge and right conduct does not experience tension.
Until he breathed his last, Acharya Tulsi kept saying, "I do not know what tension is". A man of 83 says he didn't have tension throughout his life! It means either he did not live his life, or perhaps there is some secret. We need to discover that secret.
A person gets tense only when he is buffeted by his emotions. Through the practice of preksha meditation, we can master the special technique of pacifying our emotions. We can see that they are not provoked. This, in itself, is adequate spiritual practice or sadhana. If someone asks you for the essence of preksha meditation, your answer should be, "Subsiding of emotions". This is the core of preksha meditation, the formula for a stress-free life.