The Drive for Moksha

[Guest guest]

Fellow seekers,

 

I would like to receive some enlightenment on an issue that is plaguing me

for long. In the following few lines, I am actually thinking aloud. So,

please bear with my tone of arguments, and the repetitions.

 

What drives me to take to the spiritual path today? Why should I strive for

moksha? If everything was fine with the material world, and we got success

in all our endeavours, then nobody would take to the thorny path of

liberation. If every effort was crowned with success, we will not take to

the " unsure " path of spirituality. In a nutshell, if the world was full of

pleasure, and there were no pain, we will not think of rising above both.

 

Rare is the human being who, like Buddha, has a burning aspiration for the

ultimate. So much so that even the worldly successes and pleasures seem to

be a pain to him. Most of us learn that the world is a combination of

pleasure and pain. It is the pain that drives us to resolve the mystery of

experience.

 

I wonder if taking to the path of spirituality just because of pain is a

sign of cowardice. Should one not first actually experience that there is no

pleasure in this world *at all*? because the former implies that if the

world was all pleasurable, I would take it rather than achieve liberation.

This makes me unfit for spiritual study, does it not? To take to spiritual

sadhana, you must be like Nachiketa who renounced all the pleasures in

favour of the " mystery of death " , when Yama offered him the former.

 

I asked this question to someone who I consider learned in the shastras, and

he told me, " Arjuna asked for advice from Krishna in the battlefield, and

not before that, did he not? So why should you have a problem taking to the

spiritual path because you experience pain? "

 

The argument sounds logical. In fact Sri Krishna gave the advice to Arjuna

when the latter was turning away from the heat of battle, when he was

already displaying cowardice.

 

So, is it justified to take to this path just because you do not get

everything you want and work for, because the world is not ideal, because

relationships are not perfect, because people you interact with do not seem

to be rational, and so many other things? The problem is that in every event

that happens to me, I see that there was something lacking in me that caused

the frustration. So, it seems that if I perfect myself enough then I can

circumvent the pain. That the spiritual path does not need to be taken

recourse to, as long as there is room for perfecting yourself.

 

Or is it that I can never perfect myself before I take to sadhana? Perhaps,

a perfect human being will be so ready for liberation that God will

automatically shine in him? So, am I already on the spiritual path, and the

day I rid myself of these little faults I perceive in myself, I will achieve

liberation anyway?

 

Regards

Sanjay Chakravarty

sanjaych

 

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path,

and leave a trail - Anonymous