| Canto 9: Liberation Chapter 5: Durvāsā Muni's Life Spared |
[From - http://vedabase.net/sb/9/5/26/en ]
TRANSLATION
Thereafter, because of his advanced position in devotional life, Mahārāja Ambarīṣa, who no longer desired to live with material things, retired from active family life. He divided his property among his sons, who were equally as qualified, and he himself took the order of vānaprastha and went to the forest to concentrate his mind fully upon Lord Vāsudeva.
S'rî S'uka said: 'Thus did Ambarîsha, as the wisest dividing his kingdom among his equally qualified sons, enter the forest setting his mind to the True Self that is Vâsudeva and vanquished he the waves [the gunas] of the material ocean.
S'rî S'uka said: 'Thus entered Ambarîsha, as the wisest dividing his kingdom among his equally qualified sons, the forest setting his mind to the True Self that is Vâsudeva and vanquished he the waves [the gunas] of the material ocean.
[From - http://www.srimadbhagavatam.org/canto9/chapter5.html#Text 26 ]
An attempt to understand - by Bharat Bhushan
How does it feel to wait for a situation to develop and play out by itself? It is indeed very difficult. You are tempted to try out some options. First, you want to plan and prevent it from happening. You think you will have the power. There is the old adage, "Prevention is the best cure." I wonder if it is true. I heard about a technique that instructed that one should write away one's worries on a clean sheet of paper. Does that work? Will it be sufficient to just write down your worries and hope they will go away?
It's like allowing troubles to collect in the front like a dam, and delay their release, and not allowing them to float away. Yet, the waters keep coming in, and collecting more mass, speed, velocity and momentum. The backwaters of the dam are also equally dangerous as much as the headwaters are. The backwaters usually hit the most vulnerable with the most force and cause the most destruction. The headwaters can be controlled, regulated and managed. The backwaters cannot be managed.
They require management and control at places far away from the dam. That is the power of Shiva. Like the taming of the Ganges. The most powerful of forces can be controlled and regulated for the good of many. This is similar to the manner in which we tend to face our problems. We tend to try and shout them down. We tend to divert our attention from our problems.
So, how does one face up to problems that are going to come up and try to change our lives? If it is going to blow up in our faces, we should act fast and work upon the situations. The displaced volume of water from a vessel can be seen in a different manner, e.g., the displaced volume can be used for refilling.
It is thus, also within the perspective that one needs to unlearn everything before having to start learning new stuff. Can one learn something where the mind is overflowing with assumptions about knowledge? No. We need to start with a clean mind. The mind is indeed a strange and funny place.
January 4, 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment