What is Sādhanā?
PROGRESS ON THE PATH
The material world generally accepts quantitative evaluations as measures of prosperity and success:
- How much have you earned?
- How much did you save, produce, sell and acquire?
- Material success depends on how much, how many, or how often.
In spiritual practice -
- It is not how much we read,
- But how much we understand and
- Reflect and meditate upon the concepts that assures success.
Spiritual seekers often suffer chronically from lack of progress on the path. From their diaries, it is clear that if quantity alone were demanded in spiritual practice, such seekers would have nothing more to do.
And yet their experience is that they find themselves exactly where they were three years ago. Indeed, it is a painful disappointment.The cure for such seekers is easy to prescribe, but perhaps more difficult to practice.
What they need is a sharpened tempo in their spiritual seeking:
- a quickening of perception,
- an alertness of the soul,
- and a warmer ardency in their embrace of the goal.
Harmony comes as a result of two processes:
Discrimination (vivek): The positive process of gaining a clear picture of the all-satisfying goal and the straight path to it.
Detachment, dispassion (vairagya): The negative process of detachment from all dissipating urges. Once these two qualities are carefully cultivated and fully developed — discriminating appreciation of the Real and detachment from the false — the rest of the pilgrimage becomes pleasant and sure, though in no way easy.
Reference: Chinmaya-Tej, January/February 2015
Comments
Post a Comment