LIGHT ON THE PATH - 46 : Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 3

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 46 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 4 - THE 3rd RULE

🌻 Kill out desire of comfort. - Be happy as those are who live for happiness. - 3 🌻

207. C.W.L. – This rule does not mean that people may not be comfortable, though many have taken it in that sense. Yogis, hermits and monks have taken similar statements in other scriptures in that way, but it is absolutely wrong and foolish.

Some monks in the Middle Ages wore hair shirts; and some Indian yogis sit on spikes and sleep in the hottest weather in the midst of a circle of fire, all with the object of making themselves uncomfortable. That is, the result of choosing one text and running it to death. It is particularly stated in the Bhagavad-Gita that those who torture the body torture the Divine One seated in that body, and their way is not the way of progress.

So this rule does not mean that we may not be comfortable, but simply that we must never let our desire for comfort stand in the way of any work which we have to do. If to do what ought to be done will cause us great discomfort, we must not on that account refrain from doing it.

208. To make ourselves unnecessarily uncomfortable only puts difficulty in our way. People talk much about the virtue of suffering and the extent to which progress is made through it; but if we look at the cold facts we shall find that the progress is made after the suffering is past. It is not actual suffering itself which causes the progress, but in many cases that wakens a man to conditions which otherwise he would not have sufficiently noted.

It sometimes weeds out of him qualities which made progress difficult for him, but it is only after the suffering is over that the progress is made, because only then is he in a fit state of mind to attend to higher things.

209. We must not think that there is any virtue in making ourselves uncomfortable. On the contrary, when the physical body is comfortable we are much better able to think of higher things. Yet I have known people who would persist in doing it. For example, in India where meditation is best understood, it happens to be the custom to sit cross-legged.

I have known scores of white people who would weary themselves out and even cause themselves pain by trying to follow the Indian custom in meditation, not understanding that that is merely an outer detail and the Indian only adopts that position because he has been accustomed to it from childhood.

It is exceedingly futile for people who are not accustomed to it to force themselves into what is to them a position of discomfort. Patanjali’s direction is to take a posture “easy and pleasant”.

Continues...

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08 Dec 2020