philosophy
Life experiences and liberation
Yoga Sutra II.18 – Patanjali
The seen is of the nature of the gunas: illumination, activity and inertia; and consists of the elements and sense organs, whose purpose is to provide both experiences and liberation to the Purusha (the Divine Self which abides in all beings).
focus
Nature (Pakriti) and its three qualities of balance, activity and inertia (Gunas) exist for two purposes: one is to give you bondage (bhoga)) and the other one is to give you liberation (apavarga).
We make our choice on which purpose to pursue.
Like fire: fire is not only there to burn us, but also to warm us and cook our food. Fire is good and bad depending upon how we use it.
So Nature (Pakriti), that we can also call Life, is there to give us experience, challenging us through our sense organs with desires, pleasures, and material enjoyments and it is also there to teach us discrimination, intellection and wisdom.
I’d like to share with you the story of the silk moth that Swami Satchidananda used to tell.
“Silk yarn is a sort of fleshy, pulpy substance that comes out of the silk moth. When the moth is just a day old, it is the size of a hair. You can have more than a hundred worms within the space of a thumb. The next day, you’ll need the palm of your hand to accommodate them. On the third day, you’ll need a large tray. Within thirty days, each worm is a thicker than a thumb and over three inches long. They grow so big within such a short time because they do nothing but eat mulberry leaves. The first day, all hundred worms can feed from a single leaf. The second, a basketful of leaves is needed. The third, a cartload. The fourth, a truckload. Day and night they consume the leaves. The more they are given, the more they take. After thirty or forty days they are so tired they can no longer eat. Then they sleep, as anyone who overeats does. When people go to sleep on a full stomach they roll about, this way and that, as digestion is carried on. So the worms roll, and while they roll a juicy type of saliva comes out of their mouths. All that the worms ate comes out as a stream of thick paste, which forms silk thread. While the worms rotate they become bound up in the thread, the silk cocoon. When all the thread has come out, the worms go into a deep wherein they know nothing.
Finally, they awaken to see themselves caught in the tight cage created by their own saliva. “What is this?” the worms think. “Where am I? How did this happen?” Then they remember. “We ate and ate and ate. We enjoyed everything we could, without exception. We overindulged and became completely exhausted, then totally unconscious. We rolled around and around, binding ourselves up in this cocoon. What a terrible thing. We were completely selfish and greedy, only focused on our pleasure. People of wisdom spoke a lot about a selfless life of sacrifice, but we never listened nor followed their advice. The moment they stopped speaking, we started eating again. All those wise words came in one way and out the other. We are paying for our mistakes now.”
The worms repent, pray and fast. In their deep meditation they resolve all their unconscious impressions and decide not to live a selfish life again; in the future, they will discriminate before accepting anything. At this decision two wings appear on either side of the worm, one named viveka (discrimination), the other vairagya (dispassion). These are combined with a sharp, clear intellect, which turns into a sharp nose to piece open the coon. With that, the worms, now silk moths, slip out and fly up high with their fantastically colored wings and look back to see their discarded prisons. “We are leaving and we’ll never come back to that again”.”
Swami Satchidananda encourages us to ask ourselves: where are we now? Are we still eating? Are we in cocoon? Are we meditating? Are we growing wings?
For some of us the “eating” takes months, years or even life times. But eventually experience after experience, lesson after lesson we learn. And if we don’t learn by ourselves, life will force us. When all the entanglements will tie us down, when we’ll have no more room to move, then we’ll stop “eating” mindlessly.
Eventually Nature will liberate us. It’s up to us how long it will take and how many experiences and lessons we’ll have to pass through.
Rossella Rossi
(Atmajoyti)