मृगमरीचिका The Mirage

                         मृगमरीचिका The mirage

Everyone wants care, compassion, appreciation, physical comfort,  mental pace and intellectual satisfaction……

And to acquire all that,

We chase the beings…..

We chase the things…..

We go on changing the work, jobs, places, persons so as to get the contentment….

Yes….we do get what we seek…..but after some period of time, it fades……and we start chasing again…

Our scriptures repeatedly tell us that such chasing and getting and again chasing will take us nowhere….

Because happiness is not in the things or beings, but within……
If you seek the permanent source of happiness within,  you don’t need to go anywhere…..

To explain this concept,  vedanta uses a beautiful analogy of the mirage/मृगमरीचिका.

While wandering in a desert, a deer becomes thirsty. So he goes on searching the water to clench his thirst. While searching,  he sees the water at some distance. He runs towards it…..but when he reaches the spot, he sees no water. Again he start searching…..again he sees the water at some distance…..but after reaching the spot he sees no water. Thus he goes on running….

In the desert, a traveler sees at noon a mirage where water, meadows, trees and mansions are seen. He believes the sight to be true and reach the spot. The nearer he thinks he is to spot the further it retreats from him. Thus he wanders in the desert, leaving his path.

Then he realizes that it is a false appearance of water and so he leaves his chasing.

In the desert of the Jagat, jiva is the wanderer…a traveler. He turns away from the true path ( original path of perfection to be Sat Chit Anand swarup) and start chasing the false mirage of this life of sensual pleasure on earth.

But when he realizes through jnana,  falsity of the world, which appears to give pleasure,  with objects and beings for indulgence to him and that he has mistaken the unreal world as the real,  he stops running after it.

Brahman is real,  but the world in which we live is a mere illusion, like a mirage. It appears in our consciousness because of the activity of the mind and the senses.

Just like a traveler laugh at his mistake of considering the false water spot as real, the realized master sees the world as illusion/appearance/ mithya, just a play of maya.

Even after knowing the false nature of the mirage, traveler sees it, but doesn’t get affected by it.
Realised masters also continues to see the world but with different vision. He sees and lives in the world considering it just as a play ( unreal) till the end of his prarabdha.
So, let’s be aware of the mirage of worldly life…..let’s not deviate from our Real path…..
                        Hari Om!