Vairagya: Dispassion helps you to come alive

Jan 20, 2010, 12.00am IST
PRANAV KHULLAR.

It is a challenge: Veering the mind away from external distractions and focusing on the very origin of thought.

How could one accomplish this? This is the central theme of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. He talks of pratyahara – the withdrawal of the mind from its scattered externality to focus upward. Patanjali details several practical steps to initiate this withdrawal, like yama-niyama , svadhyaya and satsang . To accomplish this, however, you need vairagya or dispassion.

Vairagya i s at the heart of all yoga systems and Vedantic thought. It is said that even Brahmn-vichara , the enquiry into the Self and all yogic practices become redundant if the mind has not yet fully turned away from the externals, and vairagya is absent. The seers explain that most go through momentary phases of dispassion, arising out of personal disillusionment with a situation, but they are unable to sustain this attitude for long, in the face of external obstruction like wealth, beauty, position and fame. There are also those who hypnotise themselves into believing that this ‘accidental’ vairagya is the real state of renunciation, and renunciation itself becomes a means to seek the same external vanities. Real dispassion, the sages say, can only arise when there is genuine inner discrimination developed through vichara , that helps you to distinguish between the outer ‘drama’ that is transient at best, and the witness-Self which is beckoning to a dimension beyond the transitory.

Bhartihari eludes to the real vairagya , in ‘ Vairagya-Shatakam ’, Hundred Verses on Renunciation. He points out how, despite the transitory nature of the world staring us in the face, we continue to want endlessly, trapping ourselves in a vicious cycle of pleasure and pain. A shriveled body, a failing eyesight, a hostile offspring, a nagging companion, all these, Bhartihari says, also do not seem to stop us from desiring more. This arises from our misunderstanding of what is real and permanent. In perceiving the outer empirical reality as the only reality, and in perpetuating this notion, we desire the external enjoyments and become addicted to them. Desire gives birth to more desire, and triggers a self-consuming ‘mind-reality’ that is desperate to possess just that bit more, be it riches, fame or position. Mind games keep defining an identity for ourselves, inevitably leading us to be dissatisfied and restless. The true yoga practitioner tries to reverse this notion through pratyahara and vairagya .

Vairagya , however, does not entail the other extreme, of the abnegation of social responsibilities on a whim – if the mind is not disciplined enough, the same desires will follow the mind even in the most secluded spots. The path of a Buddha or a Sankara might be taken only when the seeker has developed intense vairagya , a state of total dispassion for all material things and not merely momentary disenchantment. Vedanta states that the mind itself must be used as an enquiring tool, to delve deeper into the purpose of life, beyond the visual-auditory-sensory matrix of impressions.

You need a discriminating mind; able to distinguish between the essential and the perishable, even as you go about your duties in life, maintaining equanimity between what is needed to be done, atma-vichara and what is required to be done, duties in whatever station of life destiny has put you in. True vairagya is the cultivation of a dispassionate mind in the middle of this turbulent world, just as Krishna was able to resolve confusion and conflict by keeping his focus on the inner Self, that witnessing consciousness, which directed his actions. Krishna roused Arjuna as well to this new awareness through his revelations in Bhagavad Gita .