Mukti/Liberation! Is it that cheap?

November 6, 2006

Shri Hari

Respected elders!

Please enlighten me on an issue that has been lingering on my mind for a

while..

Is Mukti/Liberation as cheap as it is "portrayed/interpreted" as in our

Shastras???

In my very little reading recently I have come across many places/references

that I am sure everyone has themselves come across where the Shastra says

If one .................................. he/she will be given liberation.

The gap can be filled with many references from our shastras....for eg

a) does Tirth darshan of xxxxxxxx or yyyyyyyyyyy

b) has a bathe in the river xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (like Ganga, Jamuna, Radha Kund)

c) drinks the charnamrita of Lord in his Deity or Salagram form, as per..

Akaal mrityu harnam, Sarva vyadhi vinashanam, Vishno(Salagram) padodakam

pitva, punar janma na vidyate

d) Offers one tulasi to the Lord (in the month of Kartika)

e) does dIpa dAnam to the Lord in kArtika

Similarly in various stotras or prayers written for the Lord...I am sure the

respected elders have come across stotras etc where in it there lies mention

of one who reads this nn number of times or on a certain day like pUrnimA or

ekAdasi etc are given Liberation.....

So as a young person I believe and see that

a) in this world that good things come with hard work

b) People sacrifice their whole life to get the love of the Lord

c) people in the past (ages and yugas) have gone through enormous pain to

enter the Lord's divya Dhaams

So for me...it seems that Mukti or Liberation is percieved as so cheap that

one can go to a local travel agent, book a ticket to a certain Teerth sthaan

and visit and take darshan and as a result attain a GUARANTEED ticket to the

LORDS DHAAM when they leave their body....and irrespective of what the

person does in their daily lives....including

a) not taking shelter of Acharyen

b) be involved in consuming Liquor and meat

c) not practising devotion in their daily lives

I am not contesting our shastras...I have great faith in them... I believe

that I am not interpreting them correctly as per the "desired" meaning.

So please I beg the respected and Wise elders to enlighten me to what

"seems" as a great inconsistency, unfairness, anomaly in our shastras.

Please pardon my offences...I am genuinely seeking enlightenment.

Your servant.

Deepak

Shri Hari

Narayana Narayana Narayana

November 7, 2006

Respected Sir:

The word is not the thing.

Please, you need to read between the lines. What is really happening is

not all five fingers are alike. Each of us have different tendencies,

propensities, different attitudes, different capabilities, capacities,

different physical,mental,psychological,physiological make-up. To have a

standard guideline for liberation is therefore, not logically feasible.

The Vedas, the seers, the sages and our Acharyas are all very wise. Being

fully siezed of the foregoing differentiaing factors, here and there, at

various places - be it the puranas, the ithihasas or the prayers,

chantings, verbal testimony, discources, satsangas at every point various

simple instructions have been infused both in subtle form as well as a

direct injunction. Some of these have been listed by you. Each is

independent, yet interdependent if you look deeply.

The common thread which runs through each of these is echoed in the the

famous refrains in the BG where the Good Lord declares :

"Whosoever offers me whether a fruit, flower or etc.etc with faith

and affection....I accept"

You yourself are in no doubt about the omniscience,omnipotenacy and

omnipresence of The Good Lord. By the same token of reasoning, we also have

no doubt that all creations are His and His alone, be it your effort

(energy expending, work, Karma) or thoughts, or speech or possessions,

creations (like painting, artwork, a computer program). Extrapolate these

and you will see that all the points raised by you are interlinked.

Whether you go to take dip in the holy river, or offer a flower to the

image affixed to the wall of your small kitchen, you need to be COMPLETELY

AND ABS0LUTELY INVOVED with the Bhakti Bhava. Even cutting your nails can

be an act of devotion with everything dedicated to the Good Lord with the

attitude that "Look this body is given by You, This Belongs to You and I am

just doing a servant's job of clearing out the weeds and keeping the body

healthy because it belongs to You...".

Lets look at what are likely outcomes of complying with the various typical

requirements listed by you. Assume you do each and every of these. What is

the most likely, highly probable result ? "as you sow so you reap".

Firstly your maturity, understanding, thought processes and senses will be

impacted and will receive divine inputs by way of blessings and

'approvals'. None of these acts will be detrimental in the long run. What

will this translate into ? If you are a chain smoker, the seed of a thought

that "this is not healthy and not conducive with the relationship I am

seeking with the Lord" will begin to germinate in your brain. As to where

the seed of the thought comes from is not the point but nevertheless you

will most probably abandon smoking without any rhyme or reason yet with a

perfect understanding inside you. You will feel the benefit coursing your

being and this in turn will push you towards other "good" works dedicating

more of your energies to the Good Lord. You are also a meat eater.

Suddently another thought process could germinate. You will see in your

inner mind the fact that the beast which is butchered is the creation of

the Good Lord. You will suddently get the enlightened idea like a flash

bulb that this is utter nonsense. Maybe you will be ashamed to the core

deep within your heart of hearts and abruptly one fine morning you are

free, no longer a meat eater. You have comprehended the entire business of

killing, harming, eating for satsifying the senses etc. and you are

thorough with it. You see your Acharya eating a handful of puffed rice and

in the very "darshana" which is also one of the items mentioned in the

scriptures to attain Mukti, your senses will revolt and lo and behold,

without any prompting, without anyone knowing you will be a different

person. You take care of a Tulsi plant diligently and fall in love with it

and devoute each leaf to the Good Lord and man you are already a liberated

being on this earth !!!!!!!!!!!!! In Mysore there is an old Sanskrit

insitute.Its principal is a highly respected person. He has a big garden

and he does not pluck the flowers. His logic is simple. By plucking, I am

harming the plant. Look at this man's idea of ahimsa. He picks up flowers

which have fallen on the ground and offers only these to the Lord.

So go ahead, ask your travel agent to book for a trip to the Ganges, take a

dip in the Yamuna, also the Godavari etc. and visit each Ksethram. There

are 108 divya desams....try to travel to at least 100 by taking two Divya

desam each year...which will cover 50 years... Plus 100 rivers are there

each holy. ...every three months a river and you are occupied for nearly 25

years....Do the Sandhyavandanam diligently thrice a day without let; do the

rites for the forefathers if applicable without let...each samskara has its

own time frame. Even a marriage in the strict sense is a minimum of 3

days...so by the time you are involved in all these what happens to you ?

You are a living-liberated person who is perhaps not aware of his own

liberation nor will you be concerned with your age.

To extend what you yourself have said :

a) in this world that good things come with hard work : Yes, all

these listed by you are hard work indeed. Doing with Complete Bhakti

is not a joke. You have to

reach the utter devotion levels benchmarked by

by the Eternal Greats like

Nammalvar, Ramanjua etc. ? Is this not hard work

a worthy striving?

b) People sacrifice their whole life to get the love of the Lord:

Certainly, you need to sacrifice all and function with total

absolute detachment.

Its a different form of hard work.

c) people in the past (ages and yugas) have gone through enormous

pain to

enter the Lord's divya Dhaams So it again boils

down to the same point. Undertake the task and you will see

there is no pain but simply

unabounding bliss.

There is an ancient Sanskrit Subhashita :

Paropakariya phalti vrukshah

Paropakariya vahati nadaha

Paropakariya dohanti gavaha

Paropakariya tamadim shariram

(meaning : for others the tree bears fruits, for others the rivers flow;

for others the cow yields; and so for others this body should be dedicated)

It is this single-pointed devotion that is exhorted throughout the Vedas,

the sayings of the Acharyas and the scriptures.

You need to therefore, reorient the way in which you look at this. Coming

specifically to the concluding points posted by you. Yes, your eating

habits, the food etc.or whether you smoke or drink alcohol etc. are

secondary matters. What is of paramount importance is you first understand

that the ultimate purpose is to be in proximity to That Divine Lotus Feet.

You may choose to call it Mukti, someone else Liberation, another Nirvana,

another as Bliss, another as Kaivalya. Irrespective of the

word-combinations, if the bottomline is firmly fixed in your mind then all

other questions become irrelevant.

P S : by contemplating on this topic of mukti, participating in these

august forum called "", by talking about these good matters, by

exchanging views, learning, understanding, conveying, communicating you are

in e-satsang and this is yet another form to attain Mukti if you want.

__/\__

Om Tat Sat