Thread by @AhammBrahmaasmi

🧵How to Handle Sorrow ? - Life-transforming Vedantic concepts presented with such simplicity by #Swami #Paramarthananda

सुखं मे सर्वदा भूयात् दुखं मा भूत् कदाचन |
इति ईच्छा सर्व-सामान्या ज्ञानादेव तत् सिद्ध्यते ||

May I be happy all the time, may I never have unhappiness.

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These two desires are basic and universal. How to fulfill these desires? - those two desires are fulfilled through Gnyānam or knowledge.

We will be surprised because we never think that knowledge is the one which will fulfill these two desires but this verse says they

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can be fulfilled ONLY through Gnyānam. How is it possible? What is that knowledge? A wanted experience is happiness. Sorrow is going through any experience which we don’t want to go through. We will think that all pleasant experiences are happiness because we would like

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to go through them. Accordingly, whatever experience we want to experience is a happy experience. Therefore, even if there is a painful experience, it is also happiness only if we would like to go through that experience(for ex. mountaineering & pain during child birth).

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Who has classified the experiences as wanted and unwanted? Whose job is this classification? Does this classification come along with the experience itself or is it my classification?
The truth is that only the experience comes,labelling the experiences as wanted or unwanted

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is purely my creation. Experiences happen because of innumerable known and unknown, controllable and uncontrollable factors. But wanted and unwanted classification does not happen because of any extraneous factor. It is purely my projection. Therefore, the scriptures ask,

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why can’t you try to handle what you are responsible for? You are not able to handle what happens in the world. Why can’t you try to handle what you are responsible for? And what are we responsible for? – Wanted and unwanted classification is Jīva Srushti. The whole universe

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is an orderly, perfectly harmonious creation. By which I mean that everything happens perfectly according to universal laws. Nothing is an odd or freak or chaotic incident. Everything is governed by Universal Laws. All the experiences possible in the Universe are also an

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integral part of the Universe only. If they are an integral part of the Universe, no experience can be redundant. Because it is an integral part of a wonderfully designed Universe, I should understand that every possible experience in the Universe is perfectly in order.

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The Universal mother, through the milk of experience (every single experience), is nourishing my spiritual personality. It is meant, designed and required for my spiritual nourishment. If I classify any experience as unwanted, it shows my emotional immaturity. It shows

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my intellectual arrogance. I am challenging the omniscience and omnipotence of the Lord with my puny intellect which doesn’t even know how to spell the word – Omniscient. With such a puny little intellect, I am questioning the validity and the necessity of an experience.

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So, if I have the Gnyānam of the orderliness of the creation, I will take a vow. What is my vow? Here after, I will never classify any experience as unwanted. I will remove the unwanted label from my dictionary.

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Download the above in PDF format with much more explanation here
arshaavinash.in/index.php/down…

#SanatanaDharma #vedanta #spirituality #Swami #Paramarthananda