By: Kishor Kulkarni
A lightning ‘arrester’ is installed in a tall building to protect it from lightning strikes. The lightning arrester is a long rod made of a good conductor of electricity like copper, with its one end being buried under the earth and the other one jutting out of the top of the house. The lightning arrester provides a path of least resistance for the lightning if and when it strikes the house. So, the lightning safely passes through the arrester down into the earth without damaging the house.
There is a parallel to this concept in the spiritual realm. We keep receiving one or more of the five sensory inputs from the external world, through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin, every waking moment. These sensory inputs cause transformations of our mind which are called as vikaaras. Essentially, they are the agitations of mind in the form of our six enemies – desire, anger, greed, attachment, pride and jealousy. Thus, our mind can be seen as a house and the sensory inputs from the external world as frequent lightning strikes.
However, we can install a lightning arrester in our mind in the form of a spiritual attitude whose bed rock consists of vairagya bhav or asceticism, lack of ego, non-doership and non-duality. When I have a spiritual attitude, I am convinced that everything happens for a reason as part of the big picture for the Divine. So, nothing can disturb the equanimity of my mind. I have no likes or dislikes and hence am able to take life as it comes. I do not see any duality between myself and the rest of the world. Thus the spiritual attitude tackles the external stimulus and makes it pass harmlessly without affecting the mind one bit.
For example, when I smell a spicy hot dosa at a roadside stall, I am able to pause and tell myself that I don’t quite need to go for it if I am not really hungry. The vairagya bhav in me has helped me overcome the desire. When my car is hit by another vehicle at the rear, I do not get angry because I do not see any duality between the driver of that other vehicle and myself. It is like my eye not getting angry when I accidentally put my finger in my eye because eye and finger are both parts of the same body.
I am no more greedy to earn more and more money because vairagya bhav is firmly established in me. I do not feel sad when my daughter or son gets married and leaves home to make a new home of their own because I have no feelings of “me and mine”. If I get praised for some good work done by me in my office, I do not feel any sense of pride because I know I am not the doer and it is the Divine that has acted through me. I do not feel jealous if I miss a promotion and a colleague of mine gets it because I have faith in the divine scheme of things and am disinterested in worldly things.
Many of us lack a spiritual attitude. Later, some of us realise that external stimuli are like lightning, damaging our peace of mind. Then we start exploring the various ways and means of protecting our mind against these lightning strikes. This effort, spiritual sadhana, when appropriately guided by a true guru appearing before us at the right time, becomes a lightning arrester for our mind.