Veda means knowledge and anta means the end. The term Vedanta literally means ‘the end of knowledge” or “the highest knowledge”. Vedanta is the scientific digest of knowledge of life and living. Living is an art, a skill, a technique. Learn Vedanta and practice life, as you would a musical instrument or fly an aircraft. Vedanta explains your inner constitution and how it relates to the world around you, determining the quality of your life. Vedanta develops clarity of intellect to think originally and strengthens to make right choices in life. It restores your mind from stress to tranquility. Relieves fatigue from work, rendering your action dynamic and enjoyable. You then breathe an ethereal air.
Dissipation
Action seems to cause tiredness, fatigue. Universally, people seek escape from action. Look forward to weekend, vacation. Even early retirement! The cause of this fatigue is your ungoverned mind sapping your energy. Not work. Contrastingly, your child is dynamic and cheerful. Bristling with activity; never tired. You struggle to keep pace with a child. The secret of the child’s energy remains in the fact that its mind is neither worried about the past nor anxious about future.
But your mind constantly rambles between past memories, worries and future anxiety; seldom in present. Mind rambling puts your inner personality in a state of constant swing, causing lapse of concentration and mental fatigue. But you erroneously conclude action causes you tiredness, fatigue!
Seeks Instant Pleasure
An ungoverned mind is on a rampage for instant pleasures. Your mind is attracted towards what it likes and averts what it dislikes. What you like could be detrimental. Example – Junk food. What you dislike could be beneficial. Example – exercises. Watch out! Enjoyment vitalizes. Indulgence neutralizes.
Desires
Your mind is a magnet gathering endless desires pertaining to the world. Your excess baggage of unfulfilled desires causes mental obesity. Produce disappointment and stress. Falling a prey to peer pressure, you lose your capacity to think, reason and decide a course of action in life and ape others. Even the intelligentsia lamely follows a herd instinct, yielding to survival pressures. Blood pressure, blood sugar, heart ailments, breakdowns and estranged relationships assume epidemic proportion. These are consequences of prolonged neglect of ungoverned mind, unfortunately considered as physical ailments and treated with nutrients, medicines, diet, exercises and at times with tranquilizers. Sadly, nothing works after a short while as the source remains unidentified; much less cured.
Relationships
In relationships, your mind develops unreasonable expectations and demands from your partner. You possess and confine people to tow your line. This causes friction. Passive succumb to domination and turn into a vegetable existence. The aggressive revolt. It causes friction initially leading to conflict and divorce in due course.
Attachment
Your mind gets attached to your work, family, profession and possession. Attachment means a tunnel vision conditioning you to see nothing beyond in life. It creates dependence and desperateness on self created bondages with the world for your inner happiness. In their presence, you cling and hang on; in absence you miss and crave. Mind remains in agitation, fear and despair. Though possessing many things, even the wealthy complain an unexplained vacuum, ‘wealth fatigue syndrome’, throbbing in their inner bosom and search for external sources to fill this inner vacuum.
Vedanta helps you recognize this inner malady. It provides scientific knowledge and practical direction to resolve it. Half the battle is won with the recognition that your life is your own creation. You are the architect of your life, its fortunes and misfortunes. Hence, you can change it altogether.
Your inner personality viz. the mind and intellect alone determine the quality of your life. Mere raise in standard of living doesn’t enhance quality of life. Your life devolves with an ungoverned mind. Life evolves when you develop a strong intellect to fend your mind and life challenges. But your intellect now remains blunt and primitive, lacking knowledge of life. What education develops is mere intelligence. Intelligence pertains to the governing things in the world. Helps you make a living, pay bills. Intellect is the capacity to govern your mind and steer it away from stress, towards peace and prosperity.
The wisdom of Vedanta helps you recognize the difference between mind and intellect and how they solely determine your life. With this knowledge, you perceive a goal in life beyond making a living. A strong intellect helps you in governing the inner rambling of your mind, facilitates concentration in action, assuring your prosperity. Action energizes you, never causing fatigue. You look forward to work, inspired to serve with initiative rather than being inflated with incentives. Such a self governed person relishes life in all profiles.
Discover thy Self
Above all, Vedanta prompts you to enquire into the purpose of your existence. It guides you to rise beyond your body, mind and intellect to realize the real Self in you. Discover thy Self and remove the imaginary vacuum that haunts you day in and day out. Vedanta shows the way.
~ by Swami Parthasarathy
