Acharya Mahaprajna
- Only that muni can pursue his path who looks at the world of sensual pleasures and himsa (injury) with a discerning eye and not with a worldly attitude.
- Awakening of self-consciousness is a great responsibility.
- We find fault with others only until we have become spiritually enlightened. Enlightenment makes us fully conscious of our responsibility.
- Spiritual exertion develops insight. Insight removes misunderstanding and achieves the truth.
- There is joy within us and it is more valuable.
- There is health also within us.
- You are capable of longevity.
Awareness Of Responsibility
One who takes to self-exertion and endeavours to attain full consciousness and awakening has to take great responsibilities. These responsibilities are the greatest responsibilities in the world. They are greater than those of a monarch who rules and administers a vast empire. How does a practitioner who leads the life of a recluse and looks within himself only shoulder such responsibilities? This appears to be unbelievable and strange.
The life of sadhana is not a life of thinking and reasoning. It is a life of experiences and a life of practising perception and knowledge. Let me elaborate this point.
We always make others responsible for the joys and sorrows we experience. It is natural for us to shift our responsibilities on others. We would never try to find fault with ourselves. We always try to save our own skin. But the practitioner who has achieved an awakened state of mind holds himself responsible for all the acts he has done. He holds that it is because of his own fault that others have become his enemies. This is a great thing. He alone who has experienced the world of the spirit can have this courage. Generally people do not do so. When a political regime changes, its successor finds all kinds of faults with its predecessor. This is because man's life has always been confined to the external world. The spiritual practitioner's life, on the other hand, is a life of the spirit; he dwells within himself. That is why he never finds fault with others. The first achievement of self-exertion is the courage to find fault with one's own self rather than with others.
The first and the foremost thing, which a spiritual practitioner does, is to remove his own misunderstandings and doubts.
It is ordinarily believed that to close one's eyes is to refuse to see or to be engulfed in darkness. It is as good as to go to sleep. Closing the eyes has a different meaning for the spiritual practitioner. It means to remain wakeful. It means looking within or into the depths of his being.
Ordinarily we believe that the source of joy lies in the external world. The spiritual practitioner has no such misunderstanding. He believes that the source of joy lies within himself. Those who have never experienced the inner world run after the external world. Once you have started looking within, you come to feel that the joy, which the inner world gives, cannot be found elsewhere. The inner joy is self-absorbing and the spiritual practitioner cuts himself off from the external world. He becomes so much self-absorbed that he forgets his empirical self.
One who has never endeavoured to enter into himself will never know what is happening there. That which happens within cannot be logically explained. It can only be experienced. It is better to keep silent before those who are ignorant of the spiritual world than to argue with them.
The second consequence of self-exertion is the removal of misunderstandings and illusions. Like the physician, the spiritual practitioner employs the method of elimination also. He first discerns and then renounces. Discernment means analysis and renunciation means giving up. Renunciation brings in its wake the awareness of self-discipline. Self-discipline means to live within i.e. to speak as little as possible, to walk and do as little as possible. This encourages the concentration of the mind of the practitioner. He who commands the power of concentration does not come under the influence of external things. He becomes more or less immune to external influences. He develops a resistance to them as well as to evil influences coming from within.
