This article first appeared in Prabuddha Bharata, January 2025.
Why we suffer?
The idea that “I” exist, and the “world” exits outside of me, is inherent in every living being that makes them survive and spread through their progeny.
This understanding of “I” and the “world’, has been described beautifully by Acharya Shankar in his inaugural statement of his phenomenal work on the Brahmasutras by the expression “yuṣmadasmat -pratyayagocarayoḥ-viṣayaviṣayiṇoḥ-tamaḥprakāśavad- viruddhasvabhāvayoḥ”-- That the sense-object (Vishaya) and the subject of sense-objects (Vishayin) which are within the range of the denotative power of the words ‘Yushmat’ and ‘Asmat’respectively, and have natures as opposed to each other as darkness and light, cannot transform themselves into each other...Brahma Sutra Bhashya by Shankaracharya).
It simply means that the Cartesian divide of “I” and “You”, which implies crass dualism, can be seen in action everywhere that makes every living being, including us, to fight for survival and supremacy. Even the support system in the form of family and friends is towards that end only. This outlook, sometimes silent, and often expressed in no uncertain terms, permeates every fabric of our society and dictates our acts, great and small.
A more serious outcome of this individualistic approach towards life is that we end up considering ourselves to be a body-mind-ego complex, and treating everyone as a body, which results in our interactions like two stones colliding with each other. Even when we accept someone as our own, the desire to survive and be superior to them continues in some form or the other. There is simply no way out of it. A Bedouin apothegm puts such a desires in simple terms, "I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my cousin and I are against the world."
Unfortunately, this gives rise to severe drag in life in the form of emotions, particularly those related to sorrow and expectations. We feel lost, low and often turn violent, resulting in the growth of popularity of Babajis, counsellors and shrinks, which is not at all a healthy sign for a society.
There are, however, some lucky ones who make the plaintive cry, “No more! I want a way out.” Look wherever you may – family, work place, community, society, world – this cry can be felt everywhere, although not always audible. These are the people who feel instinctively that things are not what appear to be, and this state of things cannot be allowed to continue forever.
The solutions that are offered by the equally materialistic pop-gurus are generally crude, lacking sustainability, and mere patchworks. The saner minds then wonder if at all there is a way out of the mess.
There is a way out, and there has always been.
Being and seeing Divine
The ancient sages realised long ago the root cause of our problems that result in lust, anger, greed, craving, jealousy, and other such emotions that give birth to life threatening pain, and in worse cases may end up becoming psycho-somatic problems. The twin maladies, known as adjustment issues and psycho-somatic, have become too prevalent in the present times to be ignored.
The ancient masters cut at the root of the Cartesian divide of “I and the world”, and said in clear words that “unless you know yourself to be divine, and see everyone and everything as divine, you will continue to suffer”. To be divine means to see uncompromised oneness. One of the great mantras that echo this thought comes in the Isa Upanishad:
ईशा वास्यमिदं सर्वं यत्किञ्च जगत्यां जगत्।
तेन त्यक्तेन भुञ्जीथा मा गृधः कस्यस्विद्धनम्॥
Whatever exists in this changing universe – living or inert -- should be covered by the Lord / Atman. Protect the Self by renunciation. Lust not after any man's (or your own) wealth.”
The meaning is that we should learn to see the Divine everywhere -- in the living as also in the inert. That is the way to live in the world for the wise. Those who fail to do so, end up in the blinding darkness of self-centredness sooner or later, whereas this outlook releases us from all kinds of suffering born of sorrow and craving.
The important thing to note here is that this outlook is not an imposed philosophy, but is rooted in our true nature of being divine, which we have somehow forgotten over births, as exemplified by a popular story.
How man lost divinity: A Story
According to a popular Hindu story, when God created the universe, He gave unique powers to different beings. For humans it was self-knowledge – atma jnana, which essentially means that they are divine. This terrified the gods in the heavens. They realised that if humans were to know who they truly were, they would then attain all power, wisdom and joy. In turn, this would put to shadow the powers of the gods. So, they pleaded with God to curtail the power of the humans. The Lord agreed to this request saying that the gods may hide the self-knowledge of humans wherever they want to.
The gods thought of all the inaccessible places in the universe where they could hide this knowledge of human beings. But they realised that no place was unreachable for the humans, and no crevice was too hidden for them.
Finally one god suggested that this self-knowledge be hidden in the hearts of the humans itself. Outgoing by nature, they would never bother to look within. The gods were very happy with the proposal. They got down to doing this, and the self-knowledge of the humans was hidden within their hearts forever. It was thus that the gods became powerful, happy and safe, while human beings brought suffering upon themselves.
Since the time of creation, we have learnt and trained ourselves to look outside for everything, and never within. It is this innocent folly that makes us suffer. This idea is emphatically stated in in the Kathopanishad too -- parāñci khāni vyatṛṇat (Katha Up: II.1).
The fall from the our true nature, due to whatever reason, is narrated in the popular story of Adam and Eve too who were cast out of the heaven because they ate the forbidden apple. The fall from grace of the human race is simply a narration of the lost divinity.
However, divinity being our nature, it has express itself in some form. Indeed it does so all the time, but by our identification with the body, mind, objects, people etc. One famous incident from Swami Vivekananda’s life makes it clear.
When Swamiji was on his way back to India from America, he had to get down at Cairo with his friends for some hours. So they went out on a tour of the city, but lost the way. Soon they found themselves in a squalid, ill-smelling street, where half clad women lolled from windows and sprawled on doorsteps. Swamiji noticed nothing until a particularly noisy group of women on a bench in the shadow of a dilapidated building began laughing and calling to him. One of the ladies of the party tried to hurry along, but Swamiji detached himself gently from the group and approached the women on the bench.
"Poor children!" he said. "Poor creatures! They have put their divinity in their beauty. Look at them now!"
He began to weep. The women were silenced and abashed. One of them leaned forward and kissed the hem of his robe, murmuring brokenly in Spanish, "Hombre de Dios, hombre de Dios!" (Man of God!) Another, with a sudden gesture of modesty and fear, threw her arm in front of her face as though she would screen her shrinking soul from those pure eyes. (New Discoveries VI. 397)
This is the problem with us. Instead of seeing the divine in us, as also in everything around us, we confine our divinity in our body, possession, relations, or in our mind. We, the unlimited, limit ourselves to the mundane, and identify ourselves with the worthless causing uncountable self-inflicted pain. .
This has to stop. One has to learn the practice of seeing the divine as divine, and not as confined to some object or person. It is only by seeing divinity everywhere, as exemplified by Swamiji, that one realises their true nature, which does not lie in body, or mind, but in something beyond; and, only then can one realise their true strength, knowledge, power and glory – which is infinite. This realisation takes one beyond all sorrow, grief and expectation. We then become blessed, and people around us get peace in our presence.
Seeing the divine everywhere
According to Vedanta, Atman alone exists. However, due to Its illusory power, known as maya, Its nature gets covered, and It becomes ignorant (as if) of itself, ending up in the mess of the world and behave as if it were limited and individualised.
So, it would be perfectly in order to start seeing the Divine everywhere, since it is our nature, as also of everything else. This reality, and hence the outlook, is not confined only to people and objects, but has its spread everywhere. Look wherever one may, everywhere it is the Divine struggling to express Itself.
Swami Vivekananda's teachings centred this fact, and so he explained it further:
Evolution is the manifestation of the perfection which is already in every being.
Religion is the manifestation of divinity already existing in man
Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.
Civilisation is the manifestation of that divinity in man
Swamiji often used the word “perfection” for “Divinity” and mukti, so he saw and preached the presence and play of the divine everywhere and in everything.
Nowhere else in any scripture of the world we come across such clear expression of how every force of nature and the society is actually the play of the Divine to express itself. The wise see it all the time, but those who do not want to see it, never see it.
A few simple tips
While it may all sound quite appealing, but can it be practised? Do we ever see people behaving that way?
The answer is that not everyone who talks of these exalted outlooks, practise these, but that does not mean that it is all wrong or impractical. The big problem in putting a precept into practise often lies in setting a very high ideal in the beginning itself. An idea, howsoever grand it may be, requires basic preparation and practise for a long time. The growth is slow and tortuous.
One beautiful way to work upon this ideal comes in the sacred book Srimad Bhagvatam where the just born Lord Sri Krishna tells his parents:
युवां मां पुत्रभावेन ब्रह्मभावेन चासकृत्,
-- Thinking of Me constantly as your son as well as contemplating upon Me as Supreme Brahman and loving me affectionately, both of you will attain to the highest state in relation to Me.(X.03.45)
Sri Krishna, the Lord and master of the universe, did not ask his parents to look at him as God or as Divine, but to have both outlooks – of a son and Divine. The problem with us is that most of us get stuck with one of these two approaches, in which one leads to crass materialism and the other becomes impractical.
This idea has been reiterated in Gita too where Lord Krishna asks Arjuna to dedicate all his acts to Him (Gita IX.27), ‘Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer as oblation to the sacred fire, whatever gift you make, and whatever austerities you perform, do them as an offering to Me, O Arjuna.’
At a more practical level, the beginning towards tranquillity born of seeing the Divine everywhere has to be more mundane. Since we are assailed by the six eternal enemies: kama (desire), krodha (anger), lobha (greed), moha (craving), mada (pride), and matsarya (jealousy), which make us forget our divine nature and of others, these need to be handled by countering them with opposite emotions as stated below. The listing is merely suggestive.
1.Mā gṛdhaḥ(Isa up: 1) -- Covet not. Do not hold on to what you have, and do not covet what is not yours. People need money and security, but that does not mean that one would become demonic about it. Let go of what goes, and welcome what comes on its own. Accumulated water and possession stink like no other thing.
2. Anger has been described in Gita as the great enemy of a person (III.37). Who but a fool would want to live with one’s enemy? The great mistake lies in thinking that expression of anger is a show of strength, but in fact it is a scream of the weak. The truly strong neither raise voice nor their hands. And to think that the raising is at the Divine!
3. Never want what is not coming to you. Greed is only a more crude form of desire. Kids want everything that they fancy, but not the grown up. Those who have woken up to the reality of spiritual truth cannot afford to go back to the childish ways of wanting to have for themselves what others have.
4. Crave not for what does not come naturally to you –Moha -- As the Isa Upanishad (I.1) taught –kasyasvidhanam, anyone else’s wealth -- do not let your mind dwell on what you do not have. Acharya Shankara has termed this world as an ocean ofshoka (grief) andmoha(craving). To swim out of it is the only way to survival, which can only be done by seeing the divine everywhere.
5. You are not the greatest around. Your true reality lies in being divine -- one with God -- so naturally you are the greatest, but so are others. Know it, and cool down. Learn not to be haughty, nor puffed head.
6. Others got it because they deserved it. Jealousy, ah! There is a beautiful hymn inAtharva Veda(VI.18.1), as also at other places, which talks about uprooting jealousy! Why be jealous when others got it because they deserved it? And if they are divine, then how can we afford to be jealous?
7. “Let the dead bury their own dead”, said Lord Jesus Christ (Bible: Luke 9:60), which means that let go of what is gone. Indeed, it is difficult to accept the loss of what we have lived with for a better part of our life, but what option do we have?
This problem of shoka (grief) is universal, and can be countered only by seeing the Divine everywhere. Isa Upanishad says “tatra ko mohaḥ kaḥ śoka ekatvam-anupaśyataḥ” – how can there be craving or grief for one who sees the divine everywhere.
Scaling the walls
The goal of life is to become spiritually enlightened when we will be able to see that the Divine alone exists in every form. Of course, this cannot be attained in a day, but what is needed is to awaken to this reality. Unless the ideal settles well in the mind, the possibility of starting a struggle to move towards that is out of the question.
This requires spiritual awakening, which is preceded by spiritual literacy. Only when we hear of it, read about it, and think over it day and night that it will be possible for us to become spiritual literates.
Most importantly, any misplaced notions born of emotionalism will only create violent reactions and take us away from the ideal for a long time.
