Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-11

June 21, 2006

>From Surging Joy

By Dr Sarada Nataragan

If we would only care to stop and look at our lives for an earnest

moment, we are likely to discover that we hardly derive joy from the

desires we cling to so tenaciously…Happiness lies neither in the

pursuit of desire nor in its conquest.(29)

How is one to make a clean break from all propensity to think? For,

it is clear it must be the perfect cut, the total break. There are

many ways advocated to create this sense of complete detachment. The

awareness of the transitoriness of things is one. The precious bliss

to be obtained as a result of detachment could be remembered as the

positive counter-pull. Of course, the intense attitude of self-

enquiry (29) immediately scorches every second thought. If one

believes that one does not know oneself, where is the question of

thinking of anything else? However, such intensity in self-enquiry

also is not easily cultivated. Even when one intellectually believes

that one is not limited to the body, to this identity that one has

taken oneself to be, one continues to be habitually attached to it.

It is to break the habit that continuous self-enquiry is advocated.

If the attitude of self-enquiry is not intense enough to keep it

continuous, aids are suggested to create this intensity. One such

aid is the awareness of temporality. To be aware of the transience

of all things is an aspect of this. But more important is to be

acutely conscious of death, to recognize that death may come the

next minute.(30)

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