Samatvam yoga uchyate…Gita

[February 11, 2012; Message taken from discourses of Shri Datta Swami] The lives of human incarnations of God are always filled with intensive scenes of pleasure and sorrow. It is just like the plate of meals containing intensive sweet and intensive hot dishes. The intensity of the sweetness and the intensity of the hotness give climax of enjoyment. When the dish is intensively sweet or intensively hot, your enjoyment will always reach the climax. The Gita says that equality is yoga (Samatvam yoga uchyate…). The interpretation of the word ‘equality’ is misunderstood by the scholars. Some interpret that the sweet and hot dishes are equal. This is meaningless because only a mad fellow can say like that. Sweet is sweet and hot is hot. Some other scholars say that your feeling in eating the dishes must become equal so that you are not mentally enjoying both. This is also foolish interpretation because only the tongue of a diseased person becomes inert without grasping the tastes of both the dishes in different ways. For him, the tastes of both the dishes become equal. Therefore, in this interpretation, the tastes of both the dishes become equal. Both these interpretations are totally wrong since the practical experience contradicts such views. Neither the dishes are equal, nor are the tastes of the dishes equal. Such equality is not really yoga. It is only forced misinterpreted yoga. The real yoga is the equality in the enjoyment of the different tastes of both the different dishes.

 

The dishes are different and the tastes are different. The tastes are not changed during enjoyment. But, finally, the resulting state of enjoyment is one and the same. If you think that enjoyment lies only in tasting sweet dishes, you are just a child with ignorance only. The adult enjoys the hot dishes also in the same manner. In fact, most of our daily meals do not contain sweet dishes. Most of the food is hot and sour only. The sweet dishes are occasionally introduced during the times of rare festivals only. Therefore, the enjoyment of the adults is mainly from hot dishes only. But, unfortunately, the human being always craves for happy situations only and is reluctant to unhappy situations. His attitude in the daily meals is just reversed in his attitude towards life. If you see the life of the human incarnation, most of It is filled with unhappy situations only. That is the natural status of a human being in the enjoyment of daily meals, but, the same human being becomes reverse in his attitude towards the unhappy situations of the life. God created this universe with pleasant and unpleasant phenomena. He enjoys both in alternative way. Any continuous enjoyment leads to boring and therefore, both are equally important and required alternatively to maintain continuous enjoyment. If you can achieve this state of continuous enjoyment from both pleasure and sorrow, you will become equal to God and this is the concept of Advaita of Shankara. But, remember that you are not equal to God in other aspects like creation, control and destruction of the creation.

A producer and peon can enjoy the cinema equally. This does not bring the total equality between them. In producing, controlling and withdrawing the cinema, the producer is totally powerful, whereas the peon is zero. However, this difference is irrelevant in talking about the equality in enjoyment of the running cinema. Such irrelevance is denoted by the word Mithya by Shankara. Irrelevance means negation and absence of other angles, while considering a particular angle. The other angles like creation, control and destruction are unnecessary as far as the enjoyment of creation is concerned because the ultimate purpose is only the enjoyment of creation. If you slip now and then from such continuous state of enjoyment, it is called as Savikalpa Samadhi, which means the state with intervals here and there. If you are in the state of continuous enjoyment like God, it is Nirvikalpa Samadhi, which means the continuous state of enjoyment without any rupture. Such continuous state is finally tested at the time of death. If you stand in the state of enjoyment during death also i.e., if you can enjoy the death also, it is perfect yoga fully certified (Sthitvaasyaa mantakalepi… Gita).

At the lotus feet of Shri Dattaswami

-Durgaprasad