Rituals & Reasons-5

Japa can be used with the awareness that it is a means which helps us to be free of our thoughts. But if we take japa to be an end in itself, of course we will be free of other thoughts but will be a prisoner of japa, which is as good as a thought. Our mind will remain as burdened and as tense as ever. There is not much difference between the mind teeming with thoughts and another filled with chanting of Rama or Ave Maria. At certain level they are equally tense and restless. It is possible a thought filled mind can achieve something worthwhile in the workday world; a few of the thoughts may be found useful, though most thoughts would be wasteful. But a chanting person will say, what helped to free him from wasteful thoughts is something valuable, and he is not going to part with it. This type among us is a man carrying a boat on his head. To give japa the place of Yajna or sacrificial ritual has a deep secret, it is meaning. When Krishna calls it Yajna, a sacrificial ritual, he means to say that japa is also like fire, which first burns its fuel and then burns itself. And it is meaningful only when it burns itself.

So we can use a mantra, a word, a seed word (Bhija Mantra), as a means to cast away other words from our minds. But ultimately the mantra also goes away. If we get attached to mantra, if we start clinging to it, then it will cease to be japa. It will instead turn into a kind of hypnotic trap; we will be a prisoner of its hypnosis. If we become obsessed with japa, we can go berserk. There are people who get so fixated with japa that they begin to derive an infantile kind of gratification from it, and then they can never be able to part with it. Then it becomes pathological. Japa has to be used with awareness. If we are a witness while chanting a name or mantra, if we know that while chanting goes on at the mental level, we remain a witness to it, then we are mankind a right use of japa. And it is only then that some day we will be able to go beyond it. And then japa becomes a Yajna, afire which first burns its fuel- the thoughts and then burns itself. And when we are empty, totally empty, silent within, we attain to meditation, we attain to Samadhi or super-consciousness. 

Krishna gives immense importance to Yajna. That is the reason he gives both knowledge and japa the status of fire. They are Jnana-Yajna and japa-Yajna. The truth is, if we are ready to burn our ego, our “I”, if we are ready to totally efface our self, is ready for Yajna. He alone is deserving of Yajna who is capable of making an offering of his own self into the fire of knowledge. And then all Yajnas fade into insignificance before this great Yajna, which I shall call the Yajna of life.   

Wishing you good health & happiness,

Dr. Dwarakanath, Director, Mitran foundation- the stress management people