A Person of Supreme Wisdom

We are always enamoured by seeing a rich man, a billionaire. Have we ever thought that the billionaire never carries all his billions with him? It is just the idea of his ownership of those billions. If tomorrow the whole government or banking system of safeguarding his money fails, for instance, due to having been taken over by another country or government, then the same billionaire will cease to be so in a minute. Therefore, let us talk about something that cannot be stolen, confiscated, invalidated, or destroyed by any power in the world. It is spiritual wisdom, and the one who owns it is not called a billionaire but a man of supreme or steady wisdom, sthitaprajna.

Almost all of us are extremely curious about a person of high spiritual achievements. We are always excited to know about the person who has realized God or has attained Samadhi. Even some of those well-versed in scriptures find it difficult to believe that they may see a person of realization around them. Sometimes the study of scriptures becomes only an intellectual exercise. Our heart remains untouched.

What if we want to know about the man of God from the very person who is one such divine personality—a person of steady wisdom, as the Bhagavadgita calls it? The chances may be rare for us, but for Arjuna, he was asking this question to Sri Krishna himself, the embodiment of Perfection. And in such circumstances, why should he not expect to get the perfect response?

Before going into the details of how Arjuna got a perfect answer from the divine personality of Sri Krishna, let us first consider what Swami Vivekananda had to say about Arjuna’s questioning:

The Vedanta also says that not only can this be realised in the depths of forests or caves, but by men in all possible conditions of life. … My wants are as nothing compared with the demands of Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, commanding a huge army; and yet he could find time in the midst of the din and turmoil of battle to talk the highest philosophy and to carry it into his life also. Surely we ought to be able to do as much in this life of ours—comparatively free, easy, and comfortable. Most of us here have more time than we think we have, if we really want to use it for good. With the amount of freedom we have we can attain to two hundred ideals in this life, if we will, but we must not degrade the ideal to the actual.1

Is Vedanta Practical?

For the vast majority of us, spiritual life is a work in progress. Arjuna cannot be an exception. To the despondent state of mind that Arjuna was in, Sri Krishna responded with a bombardment of lofty ideas of the immortality of the soul and the glory of intelligent action. So, we suddenly find Arjuna posing a doubt on the very practicality of these ideas. Was all this possible for a dutiful warrior like him who was going to fight the war of a lifetime? Are not all these grand ideals suited for the persons living in the forest? These abstract philosophies are surely not applicable for a person living a regular workaday life!

And if this was possible, where are such examples? Unless I understand how such a person looks like, how he walks, how he talks, how he carries himself in front of others, I would rather label such ideas as hypothetical. Therefore, to convince himself of Sri Krishna’s talk, Arjuna poses this question that we often pose to holy men. We are reminded of Narendranath, who also presented such a query during the very first meeting with Sri Ramakrishna, and we know how his would-be Master had asserted that he himself was one such man of God-realisation and Narendra too could become one if he followed his advice.

The Signs of Supreme Wisdom

Mind is the culprit behind all the delusional experiences of happiness and misery. Our fears and anxieties are all part of the mind games we are thrown into playing. It is not a real snake but just a piece of rope, it is not a thief standing but just a stump of a tree. Where is that ghost which we are always anticipating in the darkness? So is with the experience of pleasure. The pleasurable feeling subsides as soon as the sense-object loses its contact with the corresponding sense organ, and that fleeting pleasure too depends upon the strength or health of the sense organ. Realising these dependencies as arising only from the mind or just modifications of the mind, the man of steady wisdom renounces them all, as Sri Krishna says, प्रजहाति यदा कामान् सर्वान् पार्थ मनोगतान्—a man of steady wisdom fully renounces all the desires that have entered the mind (Gita, 2.55).

Among the various ways of looking at the drawbacks of the mind that the man of wisdom is aware of, we can present here one more. This sthita­prajna realises that there are faults in everyone. If we focus on the faults of others, we will become fault-finders. Knowing the fact that all faults emerge from the desires of the mind and that the desireless mind is the faultless mind, the man of steady wisdom renounces all desires. He enjoys being with himself, immersed in the thoughts of his Self; आत्मन्येवात्मना तुष्टः स्थितप्रज्ञस्तदोच्यते—He remains satisfied in the Self alone by the Self; he is called a man of steady wisdom (2.55).

Every single day in this world we encounter problems, disappointments, failures, calamities, as well as the elating experiences of happiness, successes, and monumental achievements. An ignorant person is constantly tossed on these waves of duality. It is only the man of steady wisdom who, though externally experiencing this tossing on the waves, is calm inside. This man has accepted all the dualities—pleasant or unpleasant—of this life as his own. He sees the world perceived through his senses as mere reflection of his own self, wherein nothing can be denied or labelled as ‘the other’. ‘विश्वं दर्पणदृश्यमाननगरीतुल्यं निजान्तर्गतं पश्यन्नात्मनि मायया बहिरिवोद्भूतं यथा निद्रया, यः साक्षात्कुरुते प्रबोधसमये स्वात्मानमेवाद्वयं … Seeing the universe in his own Self as contained within himself, like a city seen in a mirror, and by Maya beholding it as if produced outside as in sleep, he, who realises at the time of spiritual illumination, his own immutable Self alone’.2

The desire for the auspicious and beautiful vanishes when you see everything as your own reflection. Then the fear of the inauspicious and ugly also disappears. He has owned whatever is there in this world and no one is a stranger to him. Thus, all fear and anxiety towards the happenings in life are bygone for this person who has established his intellect in steady wisdom. दुःखेष्वनुद्विग्नमनाः सुखेषु विगतस्पृहः। वीतरागभयक्रोधः स्थितधीर्मुनिरुच्यते—He whose mind is not shaken by adversity, who does not hanker after pleasures, and is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady wisdom (2.56). Such a person is a true sannyasin though he may or may not be clad in ochre robes. He knows it well that getting attached to either happiness or misery will force him to seek out happiness again and again, wanting to avoid misery altogether. He will end up becoming a slave to those sources which give happiness and an enemy to those which give misery. So he wilfully stays away from them—ज्ञेयः स नित्यसंन्यासी यो न द्वेष्टि न काङ्क्षति, निर्द्वन्द्वो हि महाबाहो सुखं बन्धात्प्रमुच्यते (5.3).

Swamiji elaborates on one of the distinctive qualities of a person of steady wisdom:

The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us, and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work. … And if you read the lives of the great workers which the world has produced, you will find that they were wonderfully calm men. Nothing, as it were, could throw them off their balance. That is why the man who becomes angry never does a great amount of work, and the man whom nothing can make angry accomplishes so much. The man who gives way to anger, or hatred, or any other passion, cannot work; he only breaks himself to pieces, and does nothing practical. It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.3

Likewise, Sri Krishna also says, यः सर्वत्रानभिस्नेहस्तत्तत्प्राप्य शुभाशुभम्, नाभिनन्दति न द्वेष्टि तस्य प्रज्ञा प्रतिष्ठिता—The wisdom of that person remains established who has no attachment for anything anywhere, who neither welcomes nor rejects anything whatever good or bad when he comes across it (2.57).

Chronology of a Fall

While emphasizing the great qualities of the man of Supreme Wisdom Sri Krishna suddenly takes a small diversion to describe the step by step psychological process through which a person falls into the snare of temptations and forgets his or her real nature. He explains that a person constantly thinking of enjoyments gets attached to them; this attachment fuels the desire to possess that object of enjoyment; but it is rarely possible to secure those enjoyments for longer enough that one starts missing them already and this pain of separation turns into a madness of anger; and every angry person is seen to lose his or her mind, even for a moment, and gets deluded; this delusion almost erases the memory of one’s own identity, one’s responsibilities, duties, and the consequences of one’s actions; the intellect, which is devoid of proper information due to being fed by a delusional mind, naturally succumbs to erratic judgements and the result is ultimate disaster (2.62–3). One’s sanity is jeopardised as soon as the mind starts blindly following the sense-organs resulting in a situation similar to a boat being drifted by winds in the sea.

On the contrary, ‘by perceiving objects with the organs that are free from attraction and repulsion, and are under his own control, the self-controlled man attains serenity. When there is serenity, there follows eradication of all his sorrows, because the wisdom of one who has a serene mind soon becomes firmly established. For the unsteady there is no wisdom, and there is no meditation for the unsteady man. And for an unmeditative man there is no peace. How can there be happiness for one without peace? Therefore, this wisdom becomes established whose organs in all their varieties are withdrawn from their objects.’ (2.64–8).

Here, Sri Krishna is trying to convince Arjuna that he need not give up his intrinsic duties, his swadharma, to attain the non-dual wisdom. The dualities of this life have to be conquered not by escaping them but by going through them and transcending them. There is nothing other-worldly or esoteric in Sri Krishna’s language about manifesting the Supreme Wisdom. Every single word of his relates to us and exhorts us to try to emulate those qualities of a sthitaprajna

References

  1. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1–8, 1989; 9, 1997), 2.296.
  2. Dakshinamurti Stotra, 1.
  3. Complete Works, 2.293.