Arunagirinatha says, ‘I was infatuated with desire for women and material prosperity and these became hurdles for spiritual progress.’ We have read the life histories of many such saints and yet we refuse to learn from the messages their lives convey.
 
When people repeatedly ask you, ‘When are you inviting us for your wedding feast?’, whether you want or not, you feel there is something wrong if you do not get married. Then their next question: ‘When is the baby due?’ prompts you to beget progeny. From then on, life becomes a series of adjustments to be made. You sacrifice so much for the sake of children. It is in negligibly few families that children adjust for the sake of parents.
 
Commitments arise because of a wrong approach to life, despite knowing fully well that attachments do not create more pleasantness. More often than not, people are caught in the web of desires unwittingly and then continue making compromises, because they have accepted a particular way of life that they do not find congenial, but have to pretend that they are happy, because they do not want others mocking at them for making a wrong choice.

And then human life becomes a maze of emotions. If you observe carefully, you will understand that all these are not relevant for life. You can actually steer clear of all such attachments. But not only are you guided by what others may think of you, you are also subjected to the effect of karmic cycles - - the pending karmas of previous births. They play a prime role in deciding your worldly commitments.

As long as you face pleasant experiences (and again, ‘pleasant’ is a relative term), worldly life seems heavenly. Once you run into conflicting situations, you start researching why something happened, how to rectify the situation, and then you are on the path to enlightenment.
 
We are mere witnesses of whatever happens in life. Despite careful driving, a person may be a party to an accident if the other driver is not as careful. Life is also like that.
 
The world has been like this from the day men became rational. As long as man was one with nature, he had no problems. Once he started using his rationale to analyze life, he became possessive; he developed attachments. And he landed in the excruciating web of desires.

Materialistic wants are another cause for bondage. If you are contented, no harm can befall you. Problems increase in direct proportion to material needs. Most people commit this blunder. They squander away their wealth on the comforts and luxuries of living. For the purpose of securing these, they enter into loans and then repayment becomes a lifetime burden. Most of the time, they land up selling their assets because they can no longer repay the loan.

At a time when they cannot afford anything more, they settle down with what they have, because they have no other option. The other extreme is when you have everything in surplus, and you have no room in your mind for anything more, you become contented.

Well! So what to do? Just witness knowing that all the experiences you undergo have some lessons in them for you, lessons for your good, your progress. Even your attachments will teach you something.

(Based on the request of viewers, we have created a new email id where you can address your queries to Baba. Mail your queries to soughtclarifies@samratchana.com Baba replies to all queries during the daily Sathsangh and nilacharal.com will publish the transcribed version of His reply.)

( Baba's replies to other questions continues next week....)

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