The Chitta-Vrittis, the mind -waves, which are gross, we can appreciate and feel; they can be more easily controlled, but what about the finer instincts? How can they be controlled? When I am angry, my whole mind becomes a huge wave of anger. I feel it, see it, handle it, can fight with it; but I shall not succeed perfectly in the fight until I can get down below to its causes....
...I thought, "I am going to be angry". Anger was one thing, and I was another; but when I became angry, I was anger. These feelings have to be controlled in the germ, the root, in their fine forms, before even we have become conscious that they are acting on us.
With the vast majority of mankind the fine states of these passions are not even known- thestates in which they emerge from subconsciousness. When a bubble is rising from the bottom of the lake, we do not see it, nor even when it is nearly come to the surface; it is only when it bursts and makes a ripple that we know it is there...
until you can get hold of them before they become gross, there is no hope of conquering any passion perfectly. To control our passions we have to control them at their very roots; then alone shall we be able to burn out their very seeds....
As fried seeds thrown into the ground will never come up, so these passions will never arise.
Swami Vivekananda on Patanjali's Yoga Sutra 9, Book 2
No comments:
Post a Comment