This week, we will explore how Easwaran links simple sense-training activities to grand qualities like freedom, joy, and loyalty in relationships. We’ll also have an opportunity to try some of these activities.
Is there an area of sense training that you do well, or that comes to you naturally? Please share this with us for inspiration!
And is there an area of sense training that you’d really like to work on? Here are a few areas where many of us feel challenged:
Getting free from cravings to attain true fulfillment
Juggling likes and dislikes
Selecting right entertainment
Freely choosing when and how to access media.
Suggested Activity: Think of a specific situation in your daily life where you would like to practice sense training. For example, you might try getting free from a sensory craving for a type of food or entertainment. You could list a few healthy substitutions for your craving and try one the next time a craving sneaks up on you. We’d love to hear about your experience with this activity. Please share in the comments section.
As a bonus activity, feel free to enjoy this audio recording of Easwaran and Christine reading aloud passages. This is a practical opportunity to enjoy spiritual inspiration as uplifting entertainment.
Reading Study
Are there particular sections from the reading that stand out to you? Is there something in the reading that applies to your life? Does this reading motivate you to try your sense-training activity with the intention to become freer from compulsion? We look forward to hearing your thoughts.
This is an excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume 1 by Easwaran.
59. Though aspirants abstain from sense pleasures, they will still crave for them. These cravings all disappear when they see the Lord of Love.
If we remember Patanjali’s definition of dharana, the first stage in meditation, it may give us some idea of the behavior of the senses in the early years of our sadhana. Patanjali with his unfailing spiritual accuracy says that dharana is the effort to confine the mind in a limited area. Imagine the mind to be a dog. If I take a dog to the store and chain him outside while I go in, telling him, “I’ll be out in two minutes – just a few groceries and I am done,” the dog will expect me to come back soon. When he does not see me coming out, he will start going round and round, howling and putting his paws on the glass, trying to see me. After a while, when I still have not come out, the dog will finally become tired of looking. After a lot of restlessness, after walking about and whining, he will turn around three times and then lie down. The mind is very much like that. It has got to run about and howl a little, then stand up and see who is inside and what is coming out. But after a while it will turn around three times and lie down.
The senses, too, are very restless. They are so turbulent, and have been indulged so long, that even when you are beginning to restrain them, by eating only when hungry and only what is nourishing, they still may rebel. Though you may be having only a meager breakfast, a spare lunch, and a pauper’s dinner, you are still thinking about what makes a sumptuous meal, and mentally you are eating a long list of items. In your external consumption of food there may be extreme restraint, but for a long, long time the old sense cravings and selfish desires are going to be there in the mind. Sri Krishna is very compassionate. When you are restraining the senses, he admires you for that, and he does not hold it against you if once in a while you are tempted to say, “If only I hadn’t taken to meditation!”
What is required for a long time is our conscious effort, our sustained discipline, in restraining the senses. Gradually these noxious weeds of sense cravings will begin to wither away if we do not yield to them. Even though the desires may arise in the mind, if we subject the senses to an external discipline, the desires will gradually cease to agitate our minds through the practice of meditation.
Listening to people who are subject to compulsive habits of eating is sometimes a little like science fiction. They say they are just walking along, thinking about what passage to memorize for meditation, and all of a sudden an unseen hand pulls them inside. Before they know where they are, the door has closed on them and they are in the restaurant. For such compulsive cases, what I would say is even if you are being pulled in the doorway, try a judo twist. In this way you can actually manage to come out and start running. When you are nearing a bakery, if you are not quite sure whether you are bakery-proof, make a dash for it. It helps your physical system, you get vigorous exercise, and you conquer temptation, too. So in the case of bakeries, candy shops, and restaurants, for all those who do not mind a certain amount of curiosity on the part of passers-by – run.
In samadhi, when we see the Lord, the source of all joy, then we do not need any other source of pleasure. When we see the source of all beauty, then we do not need any other source of beauty. When we see the source of all love, we do not need any other source of love. In samadhi, Sri Krishna says, we become complete; all the vacancies are filled, and there is no more craving.
When we consistently practice this exhilarating discipline of discriminating sense restraint, the time will come when we shall see for ourselves that the connection between our senses and the sense objects is cut. It is a glorious day that we can mark on our calendar as Deliverance Day, and celebrate every year because it brings such relief. Then we can go everywhere in freedom; there is no compulsive liking or disliking. We are free to choose.