Bhaje Govindam - 3

 Health and Happiness  -Dr Dwarakanath

Sankara is too direct when he tells ‘O fool’ but it is the reality. O fool, give up your (insatiable) thirst or desire to possess or amass wealth and earthly objects, devote and develop your mind to thoughts of serenity, contentment and reality, be happy and satisfied with whatever you get as a reward of your past actions and entertain your mind with such noble thoughts. Commentary: after attacking the desire of acquiring mere scholarship in the first sloka, Sankara attacks the desire of amassing wealth in this sloka. The extrovert human being goes away not only from reality but also from himself. He searches for happiness outside himself in possessing or amassing earthly objects, wealth, name, status, fame, etc. while struggling for these mundane pleasures, equipoise due to greed, lust, power, and many such evils.

He completely immerses in samsaara and invites sorrow and enjoys temporary happiness. He forgets his originality, which is endless peace and selfless love. Every such extrovert is a fool as one is suffering from one's own ignorance, because all the satisfaction that one gets from wealth and worldly objects is temporary. Acquiring wealth is not wrong, but the insatiable desire to keep on acquiring wealth is a sin and one has to give it up sooner than later. There is no need to condemn those objects which give physical happiness, but one's relationship with them is always limited and transitory.

While meditating on reality, it is easy for one to use one's discriminatory intelligence and enjoy the worldly objects with a passionless mind. The whole problem is with the mind. If mind is withdrawn from the sensory objects and the objects of entertainment, it stops from dissipating itself on mundane pleasures; it will become empty and its infinite power starts working. So, it is very important to cleanse the mind off its lust for objects, greed for possessions, covetousness for wealth, hungry for power, and worry for status in the society and apply the same mind to contemplate on reality, the eternal Brahman.

One has to live in this world in contentment and satisfaction with whatever one gets as a result of one's past deeds. Desires multiply as long as we keep on satisfying them. With increasing hunger to satisfy desires, one gets deeper and deeper into that quicksand and loses peace of mind and ultimately ends up in frustration. Wealth can purchase only sense-gratification that too for a limited period of time but if one wants permanent peace of mind, the only recourse is to contemplate on god. So, all methods we apply to acquire wealth will only lead us to disarray and disintegration and results finally in degradation, as attachment brings endless worries. True enjoyment stems from true renunciation. The fundamental truth is that one will never get God through greed for wealth. One has to make sincere efforts to raise ones sense objects above the mundane and selfish requirements. As one grows from childhood to adulthood, one does not pay much attention to the toys available in the market, but the child accompanying one, may get attracted to them, the same way one should try to raise ones’ mind above the earthly objects by using ones viveka or discriminatory powers.

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