Commentary on the Dhammapada–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
The Struggling Mind
Comfort?
One of the most unfortunate misunderstandings about spiritual life is that it should almost immediately bring peace to our minds and lives–to many, peace is the only purpose of spiritual practice. Just the opposite is true. The purpose of spiritual life is conflict–a battle to the death with ignorance and ego. When we win that battle then there is peace–everlasting peace. But until then: War. That is why Jesus declared so forthrightly: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” And: “I am come to send fire on the earth;…. Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division” between truth and untruth, between wisdom and folly, between the ego and the true Self. “Therefore you must fight,” Krishna told Arjuna. “Fight, and have no fear. The foe is yours to conquer.” The outcome of the battle is assured, but until then:
Terrible struggle
“Trying to break out of the Tempter’s control, one’s mind writhes to and fro, like a fish pulled from its watery home onto dry ground.” This is a rather horrid picture. I am sure many of us remember the terrible distress we felt the first time we saw people we loved and trusted pull a helpless fish from the water and indifferently watch it suffocate as it desperately flopped about, trying to regain the water. How we wanted to let it live! But “they” looked on our compassion as childish, confident that it time we would grow up and become as callous as they. Is it any wonder that Jesus counseled his disciples to “become as little children”?
In time many of us came to lose compassion for the helpless innocent, at the same time developing compassion and indulgence for the guilty: our own false ego. As a consequence, when the ego-mind and emotions are pressured or pained we lapse into self-pity and begin looking for a way out as desperately as the poor fish struggles to get back into the water. We, however, are just opposite to the fish. Whereas its return to the water was necessary for its continued life, we have become so horribly addicted to the false realm of death, both psychically and physically, that we mistake death for life and life for death. Like an addict deprived of his addictive substance, we feel that we will die without it and are willing to do anything to avoid our cure and maintain the addiction. Free will complicates this a great deal, for as long as we will to remain distorted and ignorant–just so long shall we remain so. We can understand why Krishna said: “How hard to break through is this, my Maya!” We are our own Maya! Yet it must be done.
It can be done
“To achieve this certainty is to know the real meaning of the word yoga. It is the breaking of contact with pain. You must practice this yoga resolutely, without losing heart. Renounce all your desires, for ever. They spring from willfulness. Use your discrimination to restrain the whole pack of the scattering senses.
“Patiently, little by little, a man must free himself from all mental distractions, with the aid of the intelligent will. He must fix his mind upon the Atman, and never think of anything else. No matter where the restless and the unquiet mind wanders, it must be drawn back and made to submit to the Atman only.” How simple. But in the meantime, we must face it: the mind is going to writhe in agony. The crucial question is: will it strive to return to “the sleep of death” or will it awaken into real life? “Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead.” “The recollected mind is awake in the knowledge of the Atman which is dark night to the ignorant: the ignorant are awake in their sense-life which they think is daylight: to the seer it is darkness.”
The opponent
What are we struggling with? Richards employs the expression “the Tempter,” but the Pali says Mara. Mara is the force of cosmic evil, but let us consider a moment. Can we be tempted by any thing whatsoever unless we first have an inner affinity for it? If a person dislikes some kind of food or drink, can anyone persuade him to eat or drink? Not at all. Nor will it take any will power for him to refuse. If someone dislikes a certain activity, can he be “tempted” to engage in it? Never. In the same way the wise who have seen through the tawdry and petty offerings of relative existence cannot be drawn toward them. He need not even resist–just ignore them as usual. Whether we call it Mara or Maya the truth is plain: if it cannot be found within us then it can move us not at all. This is why Jesus managed so easily when Mara-Satan tempted him. The secret? He was not tempted at all!
Could someone persuade us to once more do the things that so delighted us as infants or children? How interesting would our old toys seem if once more presented to us? Or the mindlessly repetitious games that we continually entreated our parents or other adults to play with us? Just look at children’s Saturday morning television programs. We can’t stand them; there is no need for us to resist–they have no attraction at all.
Easy…
How easy it all sounds; but how tremendously difficult it is to pass from dream to awakening, from inner childhood to inner adulthood. It is a literal life-or-death struggle. And to succeed it must be constant.
“You must know Him who is above the intelligent will. Get control of the mind through spiritual discrimination. Then destroy your elusive enemy.”
We are ourselves the answer, the secret of success in spiritual striving.
“What is man’s will and how shall he use it? Let him put forth its power to uncover the Atman, not hide the Atman: man’s will is the only friend of the Atman: his will is also the Atman’s enemy.
“For when a man is self-controlled, his will is the Atman’s friend. But the will of an uncontrolled man is hostile to the Atman, like an enemy.”
Self-freeing
We must free ourselves. None else can do it. Ascending the cross we must not come down until death has been transmuted into life. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”
All the enemies that militate against us have been summoned by the One Enemy that flourishes within us. Once it is eliminated the enemies will not only be powerless against us, they will abandon the battle field altogether. This is why more than once in the Bible we find the enemy vanquished without a single blow or stroke, fleeing and leaving behind everything. That is, those aspects of our being that we thought were opposing us and in the enemy camp will be restored to us in peace as our own by right.
“Therefore you must first control your senses, then kill this evil thing which obstructs discriminative knowledge and realization of the Atman.”
How?
How do we do it? The simile of the fish tells us. The mind must be drawn out of the water of egoic life. That is, we must transfer our consciousness from the unreal to the Real, from darkness to the Light, from death to Immortality. We must transfer it from the kingdom of earth to the kingdom of heaven. And this is done in no haphazard manner but precisely and methodically through the sole transformer: meditation. “Yoga purifies the man of meditation, bringing him soon to Brahman.” “He should meditate on the Atman unceasingly.” “If he practices meditation in this manner, his heart will become pure.” “When, through the practice of yoga, the mind ceases its restless movements, and becomes still, he realizes the Atman. It satisfies him entirely.…He stands firm in this realization. Because of it, he can never again wander from the inmost truth of his being.” “Make a habit of practicing meditation, and do not let your mind be distracted. In this way you will come finally to the Lord, who is the light-giver, the highest of the high.”
And how to meditate?
“Let him take refuge in steady concentration, uttering the sacred syllable Om and meditating upon me. Such a man reaches the highest goal.”
“One should meditate on this Syllable [Om]. That is the quintessence of the essences, the Supreme, the highest.”
“Meditate on Om as the Self. May you be successful in crossing over to the farther shore of darkness.”
“Om is Brahman. Om is all this. He who utters Om with the intention ‘I shall attain Brahman’ does verily attain Brahman.”
“Engaged in the practice of concentration, uttering Om—the one-syllabled Brahman—remembering Me always, he…attains to the supreme goal. I am easily attainable by that ever-steadfast Yogi who constantly and daily remembers Me.”
When we do this, we ensure that the fish of the mind will not be able to twist and flop its way back into the waters of samsara.
“On earth there is no purifier as great as this knowledge. When a man is made perfect in yoga, he knows its truth within his heart. The man of faith, whose heart is devoted, whose senses are mastered: he finds Brahman. Enlightened, he passes at once to the highest, the peace beyond passion.”
“If a yogi has perfect control over his mind, and struggles continually in this way to unite himself with Brahman, he will come at last to the crowning peace of Nirvana, the peace that is in me.”
1) Matthew 10:34 [Go back]
2) Luke 12:49, 51 [Go back]
3) Bhagavad Gita 2:18 [Go back]
4) Bhagavad Gita 11:34 [Go back]
5) Dhammapada 34 [Go back]
6) Matthew 18:3 [Go back]
7) Bhagavad Gita 7:14 [Go back]
8) Bhagavad Gita 6:23-26 [Go back]
9) Psalms 13:3 [Go back]
10) Ephesians 5:14 [Go back]
11) Bhagavad Gita 2:69 [Go back]
12) Bhagavad Gita 3:43 [Go back]
13) Bhagavad Gita 6:5,6 [Go back]
14) I Corinthians 15:53,54 [Go back]
15) Bhagavad Gita 3:41 [Go back]
16) Bhagavad Gita 5:6 [Go back]
17) Bhagavad Gita 6:10 [Go back]
18) Bhagavad Gita 6:12 [Go back]
19) Bhagavad Gita 6:20 21 [Go back]
20) Bhagavad Gita 8:8 [Go back]
21) Bhagavad Gita 8:12 [Go back]
22) Bhagavad Gita 8:13 [Go back]
23) Chandogya Upanishad 1.1.1 [Go back]
24) Chandogya Upanishad 1.1.3 [Go back]
25) Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.6 [Go back]
26) Taittiriya Upanishad 1.8.1 [Go back]
27) Bhagavad Gita 8:12-14 [Go back]
28) Bhagavad Gita 4:38,39 [Go back]
29) Bhagavad Gita 6:15 [Go back]
