With An Unattached Eye

The other day I was sitting with a friend and we were discussing many things. I have mentored him in English. He is of my age and being still unemployed he’s going battling with hopelessness.

He has tried for many exams, but hasn’t been successful yet. And the financial condition of his family is not well too. So, to bear his expenses he teaches in a local school run by the Bharat Sevashram Sangha. His income from that is meagre. And he often gives private tution. So, in a nutshell, he is struggling both financially and emotionally. 

Now, as a mentor, what am I to do? Trying to give consolation—I think—is an unempathetic thing to do. So, I didn’t do that. But, as our conversation deepened, I tried to make him see the bigger picture.

The Bigger Picture of Life

You see, we don’t see the bigger picture of life; because we are entangled in our daily problems and worries. It’s like being stuck in a traffic jam. Frustrating, isn’t it? Our life is not much different. We often find ourselves strangled in this street called life, and for most part, we live a frustrated life. 

As long as we’re thus caught up with the affairs of life, we cannot possibly think straight. We need to ‘unentangle’ ourselves first. We need to go to a higher vantage point. Then the ‘mess’ that life is won’t seem messy. You’ll see a beautiful pattern emerging. 

Sounds poetical, I know. But, this is a fact—that we are entangled in the events of our lives. Pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, success and failure, hopes and despair—this is what our life is. We are all the time caught up in all this. 

I could see him caught up in his situations too. He asked me what to do. I said, have vairagya.

Vairagya 

What we need is vairagya—dispassion. It’s a common word in Indian languages. In our culture, this wisdom is embedded. But little do we understand its significance. 

See, why are we entangled in the first place? Because we are attached to this world—to the million different things that the world offers. 

That friend with whom I was talking has his shares of attachments. I could see them; and his fears too. You see how these two are related? If you are attached to something, you’ll inevitably have apprehensions of losing it. That’s how fear is born. I could see how he’s entangled in his fears and attachments. Therefore, I tried to give him the antidote—dispassion to worldly affairs. 

But, dispassion doesn’t come like a guest. It’s a flowering. The more you evolve inwardly, the more wise you become; and with wisdom, your attachments fall away effortlessly just like a fruit fully ripe falls off from its root naturally. 

The first step is to look on this world with an unattached eye. 

The Actor

He asked me how to do that. I gave him the analogy of an actor.

A man acts on a stage. He plays a role. And in that act, so many things happen to him. Now, if the man gets too much identified with his role and start to think all that is happening to him—that’s the end of him, isn’t it? He is bound to suffer. 

It’s like getting trapped in the role. Much like schizophrenic patients. They are trapped in their alternative worlds and lose touch with the reality. 

A good actor gets deeply immersed in his role, but at the same time doesn’t forget that nothing is actually happening to him—he’s just playing a role. The ‘role’ is not real. So, he doesn’t get attached with the events that take place in the life of that character. 

But, we fail to see life like this. Life is a play after all; don’t you think so? We are all playing our parts. But, the tragedy is, we are deeply identified with our roles. That’s the whole ground of our suffering—identification with what we are not. 

We have to be detached like the actor. Yet, totally involved in our life! Yes, that’s the secret to living. Just as a lotus lives in a miry pool of water, but doesn’t get stained by it, likewise should we live—unattached. Seeing and acting in this world with a non-serious eye. 

That’s the whole gist of the post. And nothing more.

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Thank you for your attention.

Feature Image Credit: istockphoto.