Sandra: Yes, goodbyes! As I am myself hypnotized by mithya all through the day, my heartstrings get pulled and the impermanence of it all catches me up and hypnotizes me again and again. Sweet and bitter and beautiful and fleeting moments. And then I find consolation in Vedanta.
Sundari: That’s the way it goes for most people, even most dedicated Vedantins. Maya is pretty persuasive, and it’s all too easy to get sucked in by it. Vedanta really is the only true refuge from and for the jiva, one that is not itself an attempt to escape, run from or deny.
Yet it brings the ultimate and only escape, Self-knowledge. This gradually wears down the reality of the jiva persona, and though it can still enjoy the sheer improbable and sublime beauty of mithya along with its profanity and beastliness, the mind does not get unhinged or sucked in by either.
Then, as a good friend of ours said, though it’s even easier for the jiva to get subsumed in the bliss of the Self, you are ok with being an ok person who knows they are not perfect and not really a person. As limited as the mind is, Self-knowledge makes it expand way beyond its finite borders, and everything becomes all right.
It’s the art of living well, with genuine kindness toward your (not) self and everyone else’s, to breathe easy with the zero sum of life, so that it becomes an all-sum. Mithya may be zero sum, but you are the sum of the total, and no matter how you look at that, break it down or it gets broken, you are the one looking at it. You are always the sum total. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
To live with life as it is, to show up and do our best according to Isvara’s decree. Some days all we can do is manage that, and maybe poorly. But the witness of good and bad days is always the same, and never affected.
These words are just words, and they can inspire those who understand and confuse those who don’t. But the Isness of I am has no words. No matter how much weight words carry, they are always only pointers.
Sandra: You are a true warrior and are marching on with love in your heart to the new adventures around the bend. I so admire your way
Sundari: I don’t know if I qualify as a warrior, or what it actually means to play that part. It may seem to take courage to go with what Isvara decrees, especially ‘at our age’, if one buys into that jiva brain washing. Which of course, we don’t. Several people have asked us, and I am sure many more wondered, why did we sell and have to move? Well, ask Isvara.
Actually, it’s the easiest way to live to surrender to Isvara. For sure the jiva will still have to get with the program, it is far wiser to jump in the cold river and allow it to take you where you are supposed to go. Not clever to hold back – Isvara will only step up the heat until you take that plunge.
Humans want to cling to sameness because the mind craves safety and the known. Yet nothing in mithya is ever truly known, and to believe that it is, is to be deluded. To apply karma yoga appropriately means taking action when you are supposed to, not running away or making excuses. And surrender the results. This is how we operate, and it’s the only sane way to live. The roots of the old life have been pulled up, there is no putting them back in. New life will blossom.
We move forward, never looking back, knowing without doubt that everything of true value is always with us, here and now.
Much love
Sundari
