________________
42
I am the Soul
disenchanted. Disenchanted over what? We all would have come across situations in practical life, where a feeling of dejection would overcome us. There would have been times when we feel our mind is upset over nothing in particular. Doesn't this happen? When somebody asks - "Brother! What happened? Are you feeling sick? Did somebody hurt your feelings? Did you have a fight with somebody?" - you say "Nothing of the sort. I can't realise what, but something is bothering me. I feel very depressed today".
There are also times when you get disheartened over a reason. Say, something goes against your wish, or you lose some thing, somebody hurts your feelings, somebody insults you and so on. There could be many such reasons which leave you disheartened. But this disheartened feeling is not Vairagya. Then what is Vairagya? The effort to distance yourself from every object to which you are attached, whether a person, a thing, a passion, a tradition or an interest in something, and the inner state of detachment that arises from such an effort is called Vairagya.
To get a measure of the attachment that lies within us, we will have to investigate the inner world. Just try to estimate how large is the inner world. This outer material world that we see seems trivial when compared with the expanse of the inner world. Now let's see. You would sometimes say that this man cuts a wide circle, to mean that person's relations are established far and wide. But how far? Say you are settled in Madras, you are a Jain, then your contacts would be in the Jain community. If you went further, say in the Non-Jain community and perhaps in the business community. If you went beyond Madras, then perhaps in its vicinity or in specific towns across the country. Yet there are limits which you may not exceed. That goes to say that the external attachment has its limits.
The inner world, on the contrary, is a vast expanse. The yearning for places you did not see, things you did not get are all reasons for attachment. The mind immersed in its attachments is
Jain Educationa International
For Personal and Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
