The routine of everyone is different. For some, days begin early, for some they begin late. For some, from the moment they wake up they become active because their day begins early. If we consider that our ‘day’ is always of twelve hours, whether it begins at ten or at six, then it is these twelve hours of the waking period which we need to adjust properly, so we can derive the maximum from life in terms of physical health, mental well being, and also have an opportunity to nurture ourselves spiritually.
Even if you wake up at twelve, no problem as long as you consider that you are awake for twelve hours. You adjust your practice accordingly in those twelve hours. If you wake up at six, then the twelve-hour period ends at six. In that period, you organize yourself. If you wake up at twelve noon, your day will finish at midnight. In that period, you organize yourself. This adjustment and understanding is necessary to live a balanced life and incorporate the practices in your routine. Other aspects of yoga have to play a part in the management of lifestyle, major components are jnana yoga and karma yoga.
Jnana yoga is cultivation of self-awareness. A properly guided awareness develops into knowledge, understanding, knowing. Without awareness, the process of knowing is not complete and therefore the basic foundation of jnana yoga is awareness. You can translate jnana yoga as the yoga of knowledge, or the yoga of self-enquiry, yet they are just labels to understand jnana yoga. The process of jnana yoga begins with the first rung which is awareness, knowing, the beginning of knowing, observation, self-awareness.
Try to have the component of awareness in as many moments of the day as humanly possible. Begin with that understanding. It can be a few minutes as our span of awareness is limited. You will notice that if you think you are being aware, you will also realize that you are being distracted. There is a fine line between awareness and distraction. Distraction and awareness go hand-in-hand and you have to think of awareness. There is a fine line, a fine understanding and you should be able to differentiate between developing focused awareness and awareness converting into distraction. That is where the understanding of each individual comes into play, it is the cultivation of awareness but staying away from distraction.
Then through self-observation and self-perception, identify the SWAN principles of your life. What are your strengths, what are your weaknesses and do you need to convert any weakness into strength or you can just ignore those things? Many times when we make a list of our strengths and weaknesses, we think, ‘This weakness, I will try to overcome.’ Is that really necessary for you? Rethink about it for there are many areas where we can divert our attention that may not be necessary for our growth and development.
Just because we seem to be attracted to something does not mean that it is important in the long run. In the short term, infatuation can make you take any decision and generally in life that is where problems begin. When our vision is only short term, we can’t see beyond certain moments of our life. Similarly, when we look at our own nature, if you want to search for gold you have to remove tons and tons of dirt in order to discover one tiny nugget. It is one thing to make a list of strengths and weaknesses, but it is another thing to identify, ‘This is what I am going to be.’ You cannot be all-encompassing. That is impossible. Throughout human history nobody in this life has had everything, no. Out of one thousand, maybe we can acquire ten, fifteen, twenty qualities. Maybe we can acquire twenty-five, thirty, forty, fifty, even one hundred but never one thousand. Life is not long enough to acquire all the thousand qualities.
Whatever we can acquire, even if it is five items, that is our gain, our achievement and fulfilment in life. We come to the limit of evolution in this life. There is a limit to evolution in this life. After all, when you die, evolution stops. Maybe something else happens, but the perceivable, physical, material evolution stops after you die; you don’t exist. If you don’t exist, then what is perceivable, material evolution? It doesn’t exist. So you have to have an awareness of how you wish to see yourself five years down the line, ten years, fifteen years down the line. What you wish to become in fifteen, twenty years is the practical aim of your life.
After all, a student decides to become a doctor or engineer only after passing certain grades. Then the training and preparation to become excellent in the chosen profession begins, and that takes time. You don’t become a doctor in one day. You have to first go through the general training, then the common medical training, then specialized medical training and education and then into other specializations. You only become a general practitioner, after you complete a certain number of years of basic medical education. If it takes you ten years to become a specialist, even after receiving your degree you do not immediately become a qualified, experienced practitioner.
The experience which you gain through your involvement in your profession ultimately makes you known and recognized. It is not just the degree, but the experience. You can have a degree in surgery and never operate on anyone. Even though the degree is from Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard, will you be successful? However, if you work on a thousand patients and cultivate that skill, you will be recognized as an authority. It is not the degree which is final. It is the experience, your participation and involvement which makes you become what you want to become.
You have to apply the same principle in lifestyle too. Begin by discovering how your nature, how your personality functions and what the shortcomings and the strengths are. What qualities do you need to cultivate? What skills do you need to cultivate? What understanding do you need to cultivate to become what you want to become in ten, fifteen, in twenty years’ time? The SWAN principle should help you to analyse and understand this directional focus of life. After cultivating awareness, this is the beginning of self-observation and self-regulation.
You will not reach anywhere by thinking, ‘I am one with the transcendental.’ To cultivate that mentality, you have to start with personal discovery. If you have a car and you don’t know how a car functions, when there is a breakdown you have had it. If you have a car and you have a basic understanding of the radiator, brake, clutch, brake fluid, spark plugs and all that, when anything happens you can take care of it. In the same manner you have to know the nuts and bolts of your personality before you try to discover how petrol is converted into power and propulsion. That is a highly technical subject. You don’t have to worry about how petrol is converted into propulsion by burning it, yet anyone can know about the mechanics. You have to know how to look after your brake and clutch, spark plugs and steering wheel, hand brake and gears, that is more important. In jnana yoga, this component of self-observation and self-tuning comes with the application of the SWAN principle.
So first is awareness, then self-observation and self-regulation, then is attitudinal change. Is the glass half empty or half full? You decide. In my opinion, if I say half empty then I am aware of the absence of water, whereas if I say it is half full then I am aware of the presence of water. Even though it may be half or a quarter, I am aware of the presence of water and not the absence of water. If there is awareness of absence that will lead to personal suffering and if there is awareness of presence it will lead to contentment and acceptance. So attitudinal change has to come in our regular interactions of day-to-day life.
To bring about this attitudinal change in our normal life situations and to assist the process of jnana yoga, we practise karma yoga. What is karma yoga? Is it normal involvement in our job? How can the normal job become karma yoga? If you think that whatever you are doing, you are doing it for the first time and the last time in your life; it is the only time that you are going to do it and you give it your best shot, then that is karma yoga.
I have lived in this ashram since my birth. Am I bored of the routine here? Many people after sometime say, ‘Oh, every day it is the same thing. Waking up in the morning, doing this, doing that, having your breakfast, having your lunch. After some time, it becomes boring and to overcome the boredom I need to have a change.’
Many times I ask myself, ‘Have I ever demanded or needed change?’ No, for me each day is a new day and what I do today has no relation with what I did yesterday. What I do tomorrow will have no connection with what I do today. Even if I am sweeping the same corner in the ashram, every day it is being done for the first time in my life. I may be familiar with every nook and cranny of my space, yet when I look there, I am seeing everything for the first time, always. Even today. When I get up, when I go here, when I go there, I am always going there for the first time in my life. Therefore, my involvement, my participation is total and I don’t feel bored. It is something that has been cultivated. I have never seen a moment in my life when I can say I was bored, no. No matter how deeply I analyse it. When we live this principle of karma yoga – that every day is a new day, our involvement is always unique for that moment and it does not repeat again.
This is the concept which says, ‘Live in the present’. There are a lot of head-trips about how to live in the present. I don’t consider myself to be in that category. I have never thought about how to live in the present, I live, right or wrong. The wrong today will become right tomorrow by my own efforts and the right today will improve tomorrow by my own efforts. I am telling you what I have experienced because I started from scratch. I did not drop from heaven, perfect. I have gone through that process. Today I can say with conviction that yes, it is possible, I have experienced it, I am that person today.
Therefore, karma yoga is not just hard physical work, it is knowing that your involvement demands your full awareness, your full attention, your full creativity, your full expression, each and every moment. This creates immunity to the results, reactions and responses of the action. We become able to face our shocks in a much more balanced way, if we can develop immunity to the responses and reactions of our own actions.
Karma yoga has to assist jnana yoga. It is the merger of karma yoga and jnana yoga that ultimately leads to betterment of lifestyle. As a mother, go on looking after your children and fulfil their demands. As a father, be responsible for your actions and fulfil the demands that are placed on you. As an individual, be aware of your commitments and obligations and get involved in them with this attitude of a karma yogi and a jnana yogi. You have to become aware, adopt this attitude and observe yourself. This combination is necessary for the betterment in the quality of life for all.
I am only telling you the basic few items which you can apply in your life. No other restrictions apply. Eat, drink, be merry. Live your life the way you want to, but as a karma yogi and jnana yogi. This combination of a karma yogi and jnana yogi will develop your inner spiritual strength. Then the world will not pose any problem because most of the time it is due to wrong understanding or misunderstanding that confusion begins, that strife, struggle, hatred or terror begins. Whether it is terror, social or global, or whether it is ashanti, absence of peace, dissatisfaction, or whether it is hatred or jealousy.
Whatever negative quality we experience in the world, it always begins with one seed and that is of misunderstanding. Even relationships are destroyed by misunderstanding. Friendships are destroyed by misunderstandings. A lifelong friendship can be destroyed by one single misunderstanding which means one misunderstanding has the power to destroy the goodness of life that you have cultivated all these years. So imagine how strong this power of misunderstanding is. The power of misunderstanding is one of the most potent powers of human life. It can give birth to rage. It can give birth to hatred. It can give birth to terror. It can destroy life. With the combination of jnana and karma yoga, we can avoid such situations by cultivating our awareness, self-awareness, self-regulation, and eventually learn to develop immunity from our own responses, behaviours, expectations and desires.
The four points are: Cultivate awareness, point one. Two, self-observation and self-regulation, the SWAN principle. Three, attitudinal change. Glass is half full, glass is half empty. And four, total involvement. Total involvement so that you can express your absolute creativity for that moment. Karma yoga becomes the medium through which we can come to this level of creativity and participation. As a side effect, we develop immunity from our own expectations, desires, ambitions, loss and gain. These qualities become part of the lifestyle of a person who is aspiring to become a yogi in the course of time.
16 January 2009, Ganga Darshan, Munger