Acharya Mahaprajna
This bhavana is an attack on our mental culture, which looks for outside support. If one thoroughly grasps the fact that there is no refuge outside, one's involvement with the outside material world is naturally relaxed. A man holds on to his fortune, family, wife, son, friend, house, etc. He believes that ultimately someone or the other would provide him support. It is this illusion, which is responsible for accumulation. Religion says: 'There is no refuge; Let go your belief. Why accumulate attachment, delusion and sin for nothing? Just relinquish your hold. That's all. No need to escape from life".
When Valmiki saw this truth, he instantly found salvation.
When Anathi Muni realized that nobody was able to cure him of his disease, that all had failed him, he turned his gaze inwards, and saw that the eternal is beyond all disease, beyond death, and nothing could touch it. Why should he not then make it his refuge? And he went away in search of the eternal. Emperor Shrenik said to him, "I shall be your master." Anathi Muni said, "How can you be my master; you must first become a master of yourself. Right now you are a slave to the very people you call yourself master of. I have found the master - within myself. When you too find the master, all your present estate will dissolve and a new estate shall come into being."
A thinker of Denmark has written:
"You are genuinely worried when you feel that the ground has slipped from under your feet. This is the moment, which decides one's future. But if before that one has had no direct experience of truth, one generally renders one's future darksome. Even in the moment of surrendering one's body to death, one's consciousness hovers like a kite around one's own people and things; consequently, after death, one is reborn in the same old environment".
Mahavir, Buddha, etc. have said,
"Seek refuge in yourself." Seek refuge in nature. Let the sadhak observe the total lack of protection outside, and also observe what lies within. That which lies within is eternal. Salvation lies only in holding on to the eternal. Let not the eternal be forgotten even for a second. This is the yoga of remembrance, of awareness.
Guru Nanak says,
"He who never forgets Him, is really great." That is the only true estate we may carry along with us.
