1.2 Colouring of thoughts

During my flight journey to Mumbai from Bahrain a couple of days back, I remembered the fate of Air France passengers when our flight experienced turbulence a couple of times. At that moment, it seemed immaterial who would cry holding my memories intact or conduct memorial highlighting my superficial goodness or pray for my soul to rest in peace. Where there is no life, there possibly can not be any relationship with the dead. A few thousand miles above the earth, the emotions of humans seemed over reaction of a jobless mind and a theatre classic. I felt that I would be no way affected by these emotions once I am dead.

But once landed, down the earth, separation or death appeared once again to be cruel and painful. Why and for whom?

Any relationship must be treated like a beautiful scented flower. When such a flowery relationship breaks up its destined fringes, mind goes berserk due to its emotional tie-up with pristine thoughts. The thought of separation from the beloved brings intense pain in the heart of the lover, for the beloved can never be seen, heard or touched at any point of time.

No laughter be heard, no teasing done, no arguments entertained, no warmth of affection felt, no tears of love seen – all…. all seems permanently lost in the black hole of Creation. With the name and form wiped out under the aegis of time, the dead or separated exists only in the memory of the living. The loss is acutely felt whenever this memory is tapped accidentally or deliberately.

In one sentence, pain is only for the living and not for the dead.

To experience such unbearable pain or anguish, this can’t be a time pass relationship. Like us, Uddhava too feared to experience this irreparable loss and irreconcilable pain, as his relationship with Krishna was built only on love.

To such a dear one, Shri Krishna tries to drill some wisdom into him thus, “Know this world, grasped by the mind, speech, eyes, ears and other senses, to be insubstantial and transitory, being like mental projection in a magic show. For the man of uncontrolled mind, there is erroneous perception of multiplicity; a person with such perception is subject to the notion of good and evil. Therefore, with the mind and the senses controlled, you must see the world in the Atman, and that all pervading Atman in Me, the Supreme Lord. ”

Living on this earth, is it possible to transcend this perception of multiplicity?

Though the world had not failed to entertain me with different emoticons throughout my lonely travel, I managed to remain a peaceful onlooker throughout. However, had there been any of my dear ones in danger as a part of the same entertainment, my immediate response would be to outwardly act to protect them from the evil and inwardly bend, kneel, shed tears and pray to God soulfully for their good.

That’s why Uddhava must have pleaded, “The ignorant fool I am, Maya has bound me with the feeling that I am the body, and all those connected with it are mine. O Worshipful Lord! Instruct me, how I could soon achieve that abandonment of all attachments commanded by You.”

I stand alongside his emotional pleading, for I have understood theoretically that the turbulence of the mind is only due to the non-stop colouring of thoughts and that this colouring is nothing but ‘attachment’.


P.S. The extracts are taken from the translation works of Srimad Bhagavata of Swami Tapasyananda, Ramakrisha Math.