Vipassana and Swadharma

I just returned from a Vipassana retreat of 10 days. It was the third one for me and quite different from the first two. It helped me experience the reality within far more closely.

The first thing I realized was the impossibility of observing inside unless there is a complete awareness of breath. It's easier said than done. As we try to be aware of the breath, within a fraction of a minute, the first attack is from the Buddhi (intellect). The intellect plays its game quite intelligently. It grabs the awareness for building mental concepts of reality, which are mostly just products of imagination reflecting very limited truth. As if that was not enough, our Mana (emotional mind) starts playing it's game. It creates so many fears and anxieties, ambitions and desires to capture almost the whole of the awareness.

If one is able to maintain the awareness of the breath, despite all these pushes and pulls, one can see clearly the inner world of Chitta (unconscious mind) in the form of sensations on the body. When one sees that clearly, one realizes the infinite fast-changing world of cravings/aversions in the form of sensations in one's body. One observes a clear correlation between the cravings/aversions and the sensations.

In that state, one also realizes that there are only two possible ways to live. The first one is to live a life centered around cravings/aversions and the other is to live a life centered around the eternal truth, the breath. Generally, we all live life in the first possible way. In this state of awareness, we do not have much freedom. Generally, we keep reacting to the conditions according to our cravings/aversions. If we have a craving to get good marks in the exam, we automatically become happy by getting good marks and become unhappy if we get below expectations. Every craving/aversion sets in another and this cycle goes on endlessly. We keep making efforts for one craving to the other throughout our lives in an automated manner. Our freedom seems to be very limited to making the efforts to satisfy our cravings or to avoid aversions, and the direction of life seems to be set in auto mode by the aversions/cravings we are fixated on.

In the case of the second way of living, there are no divisions. Everything has a single source and therefore is quite connected. In that state, there appears no difference between one way of living and the other. Tamas, Rajas, and Satva, all can be seen to the part of the same reality. In fact, they can all be seen to be quite interrelated. Satva from one perspective may appear to be Tamas from the other perspective. Harmony in one place may be quite disharmony when seen from a different background. 

While one is centered around the eternal truth, there appears to be complete freedom to choose between infinite possibilities. One chooses a possibility for one's life and that chosen possibility becomes one's Swadharma. Swadharma is not a matter of compulsion. It's a free choice. That is what Krishna told Arjuna at the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Arjuna could have decided to become a Rishi or Yogi and stay away from the battlefield. He chose to become a warrior. Once we choose the infinite possibilities, that becomes our Swadharma. While making this choice, one remains connected to the eternal reality and realizes that all the roles are quite temporary. This or that role makes no difference. It is like choosing to act on a particular role at the stage of life. 

However, once we make a choice of Swadharma, there is no point wavering our minds after reaching the battlefield. That is what Krishna tells Arjuna. Once we reach a stage, there is no point wavering the mind with confusion that some other role would have better suited us. That will just make the role we are playing sub-standard and meaningless. 

There is also a realization that coming back to the world requires a lot of effort to stay in that state of awareness. The Chitta is full of infinite cravings and aversions. Mann is very unstable. It runs very fast and the Buddhi is stuck in divisions of rights and wrongs. With such a state of awareness, there is hardly any freedom. On the other hand, there is complete freedom as soon as we change the state of awareness by centering around eternal truth. 

I am not very sure whether the same intellect, Mann and Chitta which is fixated on cravings/aversions can actually connect to the eternal reality. However, I am sure that the connection with the eternal reality definitely happens when we look internally and observe the interplay of these cravings/aversions with the sensations on different parts of the body while the awareness remains deeply rooted in the breath. I have also observed with experience that the more the moments of choiceless awareness of these body sensations the more our realization of the temporariness of the cravings/aversions. 

So presently the only sensible choice appears to be making conscious efforts to look internally more often so that there is at least some letting go of the tons of cravings and aversions that have been accumulated and are being continuously accumulated.