“A small story from the great epic, the Mahabharata: There was once a…”

What more do you want?

A small story from the great epic, the Mahabharata: There was once a king by the name of Yayati. He lived for 100 years, enjoying his kingdom and all the physical and mental comforts of life. At the end of 100 years, Yama (God of Death) came to take him as it was time for him to leave the Earth. The King was shocked to see Yama and started saying, “Why have you come so fast and that too, suddenly without any notice? I have not lived my life fully yet; please give me some more time to live.”

Yama replied that there is no extension possible to life. Yet, Yayati pleaded with him and begged for more time. Yama finally conceded that if any of his sons was ready to give his life for Yayati, then the king could live for that much more time. A pleased Yayati called one of his sons and asked him to give him some time of his life. The son gave up the remainder of his life and died instantly. Yayati got another 100 years to live. He continued to enjoy all the material comforts in the same way as before and lived another 100 years at the end of which, Yama returned to take him. This time also, Yayati felt he had hardly lived and begged Yama saying that he was not prepared and wanted some more time. Yama gave him another chance; another of Yayati’s sons gave up his life for his father, and Yayati got a lease of another 100 years of life. Now, after Yayati enjoyed the next 100 years, Yama came back to take him. This time also, Yayati asked for more time but Yama refused to play the same game again. This time, Yama instead gave Yayati a beautiful teaching in just a few words: “Can you put a fire by pouring oil into it?”

The Mahabharata says that Yayati at that moment experienced Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth) in his Being. He finally realized the Truth and rested at the feet of the Divine.

This is a small but wonderful story that we need to understand the underlying meaning of. Lakshmi is not the quantity of life; She is the quality of life. Most of us think that having Lakshmi in life means having lots of possessions like cars, houses, good bank balance etc. Masters, however, interpret Lakshmi in a totally different way. They say that Lakshmi is actually the quality of your life, your mind and not the quantity or number of things you have.

The story about the origin of Lakshmi is also representative of this fact: When the ocean of milk was churned by the devas (demigods) and rakshasas (demons), using the Meru mountain, from deep inside the ocean, Lakshmi emerged. This is actually a metaphorical representation: When the milk ocean of the mind is churned by the mountain of pure awareness, it raises the quality of your life in the form of Lakshmi.

Most of us think that our minds are very logical. Actually, the mind is the most illogical. Just try this experiment: Sit down for 5 minutes, write down all your thoughts that come to your mind in these 5 minutes, honestly, without editing. Then, read what you have written and you will realize how illogical you are; we are running a mental asylum inside our heads. One moment, you would have been thinking about your workplace, then for no reason, you will find yourself thinking about the house. The next moment, without realizing it really, you would be thinking of your kids.

When you analyze clearly what is right and what is wrong, what is eternal and what is not, from the analysis, intelligence will arise, your quality of life will increase. This feeling of fulfillment is what Lakshmi is.

Most of the time, your house is filled with all kinds of comforts but your Being is not fulfilled. Fulfilling your Being is Lakshmitva (having Lakshmi). The mind always works towards having more and more. However, by its very nature, more can never be fulfilled. Have you seen a single person who was fulfilled by having more? Never!

You see, you always travel in the horizontal dimension of “What next? What next?” Sankara says beautifully that the mind is like a musical instrument that continuously plays “Tata kim tata kim” (What next? What next?). As long as you are moving in this horizontal line, you will run and run till you drop dead in your grave. Traveling from more to more is only traveling towards your grave. It can never be life; it is just a slow death!

A small story: A man was sitting in a bar, drinking. He noticed an old lady from the Salvation Army going from table to table, advising people not to drink and to clear their lives of bad habits. He tried avoiding eye contact with her but she managed to come to his table and started advising, “Son, don’t you realize what you are taking is slow poison?” The man, who was already irritated by her preaching, replied, “I know. But, I am not in any urgency!”

The idea of more and more is also slow poison: traveling towards death. It will never allow you to taste life; it will never allow you to enjoy life; to totally and truly relax. If you have a deep satisfaction, you will enjoy life. If not, the greed for more will be enjoying you. To a certain level, you will be drinking. Then, drinks will start drinking you. Up to one level, you will be smoking and then the smoking will smoke you. Up to one level, you will be eating. Then, the food will start eating you. If your life is based on craving, if you move on the horizontal line continuously, this will never end.

You need to understand that there is one more dimension to existence, to your life, to your Being: this is what I call the vertical line. Start living the reality that you have. Start enjoying intensely what you have in life. This will give you an immense deep satisfaction and reveal to you a whole new space, a whole new dimension of life.

Most of us think that we crave for things because we enjoy them. No! If you are sensitive, your Consciousness expands; you will enjoy and not crave. If you really enjoy this chair, you will not crave for the sofa. If you can’t enjoy the chair, will you be satisfied with the sofa? No. If you cannot sleep on an ordinary cot, even a queen-size bed will not satisfy you because one you get it, you will start dreaming about a king-size bed. If your mental setup is trained towards ‘more and more’, a new layer which psychologists called cerebral layer, opens up where you start enjoying mentally and not physically. You don’t enjoy what you have but enjoy mentally what you think you are going to have. If you have a Lexus, you are thinking of acquiring a Benz. When you get the Benz, you are already mentally at the steering wheel of a Rolls Royce! You are continuously escaping reality.

People ask me, “Swami, what is renunciation? Should I renounce to become enlightened?” I tell them there is no need to renounce anything that you have. Just renounce what you don’t have. What you have is not a problem; it is yours; enjoy it! Renounce what you don’t have. We are continuously enjoying what we don’t have. This is what is craving.

Enjoying reality never disturbs you. It is only the ghost of craving that troubles you. In Sanskrit, there is a beautiful word called Maya, which cannot really be accurately translated to English. Maya: ya ma iti maya (That which is not there is maya). That which is not there but which troubles you as if it is there is what is maya.

When you fantasize about a super-model or Miss World, your wife looks ugly. Be very clear: the outer women never disturb. It is the only inner women who disturb you. Reality never creates trouble. Only when you try to convert your fantasies to reality, the trouble starts.

Drop your fantasies, your imagination about what you don’t have.

When you drop the idea of having more and more and start living in the present moment, you start living inside your boundary. What do I mean by start living inside your boundary? You get up in the morning; you are brushing your teeth but thinking about office. Then, you reach office but once you are there, you are making plans for the evening: go to the beach or maybe the restaurant. In the evening, you go to the restaurant but once you are there, you start thinking about when you can go home and take some rest. Similarly, on a Wednesday at office, you start thinking about the weekend. But, when the weekend actually arrives, you start worrying about what work needs to be done in office on Monday. On Monday, you have already started thinking about the next weekend!

One thing is for sure: If you are here, your mind is not here. Your mind never stays where your body stays. This is the life style of ‘more, more and more’. You run, run and run without even knowing what for you are running. It is a rat-race: even if you win, you are still a rat.

When you run with all your energy, you forget to enjoy, you forget to live. You forget to have Lakshmi in your life. Again, it is the quality of your life and not the quantity that is important.

The other life style where you live inside your boundary, where you live in the present moment, creates a new mental setup: what Vedanta calls a cognitive shift. You start to live more intensely, with awareness, what Buddhists call Zen. Your living is centered on your Being; you feel fulfilled. You are in joy, bliss, ecstasy. Life opens a new dimension.

When you continuously feel dissatisfied, you feel threatened by your desires. You need to understand this: threatened by desires. Observe carefully: the moment a desire arises there is a deep uneasiness in your Being, body and mind. If the desire is fulfilled, you start worrying about whether you will get to experience the same joy again or not. On the other hand, if your desire is not fulfilled, there is a hangover, a deep craving to fulfill the desire. When craving enters your Being, it splits your Being into two halves. One side of your Being is craving for the desired result while the other side is working towards fulfilling the craving. This is actually schizophrenia. One half is thinking about what should happen while the other half of you is living the real life. This gap between reality and imagination is what I call tension.

There are two kinds of lifestyles: living with “more, more and more” and living with “this, this and this”. Either you enjoy now or never!

There are only two kinds of mental setups: that of a man who enjoys the path and the goal and that of the man who enjoys neither the path nor the goal. Be very clear: You can never enjoy only the goal and not the path.

For example, when you are young, you yearn to settle in the USA thinking that life there will be good. When you go there, you then start thinking of buying a good house thinking you will be happy after that. Once you get the house though, you think that after marriage life will be good. After marriage, you start feeling that when you have kids, they will get you happiness. After having kids though, you start worrying for them but think that when you retire, you will finally have money and no worries and then enjoy. However, by the time you retire, the mental setup you have created to continuously run behind more has now become a habit. You have forgotten how to enjoy life. Relaxation is only a word for you, not an experience. Naturally, you have lost the sensitivity to life, the quality of enjoying life. It is like selling your eyes to purchase a beautiful painting; like selling your life to purchase a house!

When Krishna says in the Bhagavat Gita, “Karmanyevaadhikaraste maa phaleshu kadachanah” (do your duty but don’t expect the result), he does not mean that you work without expecting your salary. What He means is, let the job itself become the enjoyment. Let the path itself give you bliss. When you enjoy the path, even if you fail to get the desired result, you will feel deeply satisfied. However, if you do not enjoy the path, even if you succeed, you will still feel dissatisfied.

If you postpone, the habit of postponement becomes a mental attitude. Be very clear: whatever you may acquire in terms of quantity, it is the quality of your life that gives it meaning. You may have a beautiful bed, but it serves the purpose only if your mind can sleep on it. So, work to increase not the height of the bed, but the depth of your sleep.

Small story: There was once a forgetful man who used to continuously keep a reminder of what he needed to do lest he forget. Once, he had to remember to do 3 tasks and as a reminder to himself, he tied 3 knots in his hand-kerchief. He finished 2 of the 3 jobs but could not remember the third job, however hard he tried. He sat up the whole night, racking his brains, trying to remember the third job. Just as dawn broke, he suddenly remembered the third job: remember to have a good night’s sleep since it was the weekend!

This is how we waste our whole life. We plan to enjoy but never enjoy actually. If the quality of mind is not present, what is the use of getting a weekend to enjoy your vacation? You will be in a different place but if you are carrying the same restless mind, the attitude is still the same. The moment you create sensitivity in your Being, even water tastes like amrita (nectar). There is a sutra in the Katopanishad that says, “If you give away all your things in the Vajpeya yagna (sacrifice), you will become Indra (king of Gods).” The underlying meaning of this sutra is that if you sacrifice the idea of craving, of having more and more, you will be in a different space. You will have the sensitivity to live and enjoy what you have.

A beautiful story from the life of the Buddha: There was a king by the name of Aparasanjita whose wife was related to Buddha. From a very young age, the queen had been associated with Buddha and knew Him. She continuously inspired the king to meet the Buddha at least once. Finally, the king decided to go to meet the Buddha. Being a rich and powerful king, he did not want to go like an ordinary person and decided to take the best diamonds with him to give to the Buddha. The queen warned him that the Buddha would not accept diamonds and suggested taking flowers instead. So, the king decided to take both. In one hand, he had a chest full of diamonds while in the other hand, he had a plate full of flowers. When he saw the Buddha with His 10,000 disciples seated in front of Him, he proceeded towards the Buddha. Just as he was about to offer the diamonds, the Buddha told him, “Drop it.” The king was shocked but since he was in front of all the 10,000 disciples, he quietly dropped the diamond chest and proceeded with the flowers towards the Buddha. Just as he started walking, the Buddha again said, “Drop it.” Surprised, the king dropped the plate of flowers as well, now feeling really stupid in front of the big crowd. When the king now took a few steps forward, the Buddha again said, “Drop it.” The perplexed king was not able to understand and asked the Buddha, “I don’t have anything now. I have already dropped the diamonds and the flowers. What more are you asking me to drop now?” A senior disciple of the Buddha, who was standing watching all that had happened, replied, “The Buddha is not asking you to drop the diamonds or the flowers. He is asking you to drop the idea of having more and more. He is not asking you to drop the diamonds or the flowers. The diamonds are not even worth dropping; drop the idea that these things have value. If you feel that the diamonds have value, you still have the fear to drop them since you think they are precious. That is why, the Buddha asks you to drop the false idea of what is valuable, what is great. He is not asking you to drop the physical things; He is asking you to drop the mind.”

So understand: Neither running behind more and more nor leaving the outwardly comforts will help you; only drop the idea of having more and more.

Bring your mind to the present moment to live life from moment to moment. Then, life will become joy, bliss, ecstasy as you will more intensely live life, with consciousness and awareness. Whatever you do, do it totally and completely. If you are drinking water, drink it with totality. If you are eating, eat it with complete awareness, totally. Whatever you are doing: walking, driving, sleeping, do it totally with full consciousness.

A king once goes to a Zen master and asks him, “Master, I have heard that you always live with joy and bliss. What is the technique that you use to do so?” The Master replied, “When I eat, I eat. When I sleep, I sleep.” The king was confused and asked the Master, “Do we not do the same thing?” The Master replied, “Surely not. When you eat, are you really eating? You plan about the future, worry about the past. When you eat, totally eat. When you sleep, totally sleep. Then, your whole life will become worship.” If you live life with the attitude of having more and more, life will be like work. If you live with the attitude of ‘this’, your life will be worship.

Understand one thing clearly: Either your whole life can be work or your whole life can be worship. You cannot have part-time work and part-time worship.

Whether your life is work or worship depends on your attitude. With the right attitude, work becomes worship. With the wrong attitude, even worship becomes work. With the right attitude, anything can be converted to meditation. With the wrong attitude, even meditation will be converted to work.

Once a disciple goes to his Master’s cottage and comes out after some time crying. After some time, another disciple enters the Master’s cottage and comes out laughing. The first disciple is surprised and asks the second one, “What did you do? What did Master tell you? I had asked Master whether I can smoke while meditating.” The second disciple replies, “I asked Master if I could meditate while smoking!” With the same thing, there are two different attitudes which resulted in one disciple getting beaten and the other getting praised.

Your attitude decides your life. With the right attitude, you are showered with more and more things. There is a beautiful sloka in the Puranas which says, “Ananda (bliss) attracts fortune.” There is one more saying, “Where there is bliss, Lakshmi walks in naturally.” It is not just a simple faith or belief but even modern day psychologists say that if your mind is blissful, you attract happy people, happy situations around you. If you are sad and depressed, you attract the same type of people and incidents.

The Being is like a dish antenna: if you tune yourself to joy, you attract bliss; if you tune yourself to depression, you attract suffering and pain. Your Being always attracts like incidents.

Be very clear: you can either enjoy in this moment or never! Tomorrow is also going to come to you as today. So, if you postpone your enjoyment today in the name of tomorrow, you will postpone it tomorrow as well in the name of day after tomorrow. It is your choice.

If you understand what life is, you will understand that you don’t need anything. You are not just given what you need; you are actually showered. However, if you don’t understand, however much you are showered with, you will take life for granted.

What more do you want? Let us understand this: what more do you want.

Small story: A man goes to a temple and prays fervently to God asking him, “God, please give me 100 dollars. I will manage with 100 dollars for a week. By then, I will get a job and then will donate to you.” The priest in the temple heard this. Feeling compassion for the man, the priest put in 50 dollars, all that he could afford to give, in an envelope and handed it to the man saying that God had asked him to give it to him. The man was very happy and ran home to open the package. Seeing 50 dollars, he exclaimed, “God, the next time, please give me the money directly and not through the priest. See, the priest has taken 50 dollars!” The man never bothered to feel thankful about getting the 50 dollars; he was only bothered about the 50 dollars he did not get.

When you understand how much life showers on you, you will understand ‘What more do you want?’ If you don’t understand what life has showered on you, even in your graveyard, you will be complaining that your neighbor’s tomb is better than yours!

Understand now or never and your life is filled with eternal joy and bliss.

Don’t be cheated by the mind which tells you that you are just an ordinary person. One more important thing: To become a Picasso or a Ravi Verma, you need talent, you need intelligence. However, to become enlightened, you do not need talent or intelligence. Just your “ordinary-ness” is more than enough. You just need this understanding.

Ramana Maharishi once said, “The moment you say I am Bhagavan and you are ordinary, you missed my whole teaching.” You hide your ego in a beautiful way by saying that you are ordinary. If the mind accepts that what I say is easy, you should immediately start practicing my teachings. But, for you to practice my teachings, your mind has to die; it has to lose its grip on you. Like all other beings, the mind also has its own instinct to survive. That is the reason it does not allow you to go about without worrying about the past or the future.

With just some intelligence, you can reason, “Through your worries, have you solved a single problem in the past?” If you had 10 problems to start with, you have created the 11th problem of depression by worrying about the 10 problems. So, why not be a little more intelligent? We cannot be so poor in understanding to say, “I understand fire burns but I cannot resist the temptation to put my hand in the fire.”

Never count the moments when you failed. Always count the moments when you were successful. To determine the strength of the chain, you determine the strength of the weakest link. Don’t use the same technique with your mind. Never think that you are weak and cannot achieve since you failed in earlier attempts.

People ask me, “Swami, I tried very hard but my mind does not become silent. What can I do?” I tell them, “You don’t know how much work is going on inside your mind. There are scientists doing research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) who say that to do 1/100 of the work of data gathering, processing and analyzing that our mind does, we need a 3-storey building computer and the noise generated will be as much as that of a large factory! The mind does so much work with no noise!”

Understand that in some way, you can also proceed. Don’t bother if you failed 9 times and succeeded only 1 time. If you have succeeded 1 time in 10 times, increase the number of trials to 100. You will succeed 10 times, simple! If you increase the number of trials, efforts, struggles, naturally, you will see more and more moments of bliss.

One more thing: You can easily hide in low self-esteem. You see, when you have high self-esteem, society will kick you; your ego will be disturbed. If you have low self-esteem saying that you are ordinary, society will never teach you; it will only praise you saying you are humble! This is an easy and very cunning way to protect your ego.

Never keep yourself in low self-esteem. I say, whatever esteem you have of yourself, except that you are God, is low self-esteem because you are divine. Don’t think that you are just your mind; you are verily Divine.

If you associate yourself with moments of success, your moments of success will naturally increase. Somebody was telling me the other day, “Swami, I am working on myself and I see the change happening slowly.” Be very clear: change is never slow; it is always quantum. Either you transform or you don’t. Postponement is a cunning method the mind uses to escape.

You complain, “I am a house-holder. I have so many things to take care of. How do I change? I am so restless; how can I meditate?” This is like saying, “I am too sick. How can I take medicine?”

Understand this: If your mind is restless, only then you need to meditate. If you feel you are an ordinary person, only then you need these teachings. If you truly feel you are extraordinary, you don’t need these teachings. If you feel ordinary, you need to practice with 120% effort. One more thing: when you start enjoying, you will express 10 times the creativity that you express now. As of now, your mind is behind ‘more and more’; so, 80% of your energy is spent in Iccha Shakti (power of desire) and only the remaining 20% is spent on Kriya Shakti (power of action). When you awaken the Jnana Shakti (power of wisdom), only 20% of your energy will be used in imagination while 80% will be used in expressing your creativity.

I am not saying, don’t make a big house or don’t have a big bank balance. I am saying, drop the idea of having more and more. Then, you will be more creative, more productive, more energetic and more active. Running behind more and more is what I call ‘house-keeping in dreams’. There is no use of doing house-keeping in dreams; do it in reality.

Just look skin-deep into all your struggles. Just try this experiment: for the next 3 days, just 3 days, drop all your worries. Surely, by dropping your worries for just 3 days, you will not lose your job or house; you will not die. Drop bothering about the future totally, utterly. Drop the craving for just 3 days. If it does not work, you can pick up your craving again. Don’t believe in this; take it as a hypothesis and experiment for yourself. Decide consciously that you will not allow craving, you will not run behind more and more for the next 3 days. Don’t plan on doing this eternally; you will never do it.

You will see how active, fresh, creative, bright, full of life, energetic, blissful you are. The moment you drop the craving, your whole energy becomes integrated, centered. 80% of it is available to express your creativity. As of now, 80% of the energy is not working since you are stressed out. Once you realize the waste of energy, you will drop the idea of craving and start using it in creativity. You will start living in the vertical dimension of achieving rather than the horizontal dimension of running behind more and more and getting tired. You will start living in a different space. Just try this experiment for 3 days; even if you lose something, it is worth trying. When you awaken the Jnana Shakti, you start living intensely with awareness in the present moment. The mind is the supplier of energy. So, if you are stressed out, how will you be creative? The moment you remove the weight from the mind, you remove the basic ingredients of stress, you will see that you explode into energy, explode into creativity!

May you experience the eternal bliss, Nithya-ananda!