Self Awareness Through Meditation

Author(s): Ranjitsingh Kumat
Publisher: Ranjitsingh Kumat

Page 67

SELF AWARENESS THROUGH MEDITATION
the pain and pleasure are real or unreal, self-inflicted or inflicted by others, permanent or temporary etc. To respect what one knows is to respect one's own understanding or wisdom. If we do not know the nature of our pain, how can we get rid of it? It is, therefore, essential that we know our pain rather than suffer it. To know it, one must live in the present moment, which will take us to the path of ‘Pragya' or wisdom.
Often man feels miserable for the conditions that are unpalatable. Some feel miserable because they are born in a lower caste, or are inflicted by blindness, or deafness, or dumbness or physical handicap. Aachaaraanga Sutta says, “observe this condition with equanimity and do not feel miserable or blame some body or the other. There is no law involved in it. One who sees the cycle of birth-death and pain-pleasure will get rid of this cycle. On the contrary, one who suffers will not get out of it”. In the second chapter, after examining the causes of pain and suffering, it is observed that “You alone sow the seeds of pain and thus you are the cause of your own suffering”55 We run after the things believing that they will give us comfort and pleasure but they are the cause of our suffering. It has been said in the second chapter of the Aachaaraang Sutta, "what gives pleasure, gives no pleasure too”56 Further it is said that wise person should observe the source of pain and its cause and should not be sloth in this task. It is further said,
"Observe death, observe the Dhamma or nature of things appearing and disappearing. O saint! Observe—there is so much horror."57
One who has undergone the course of Vipassana meditation, would soon recognize these instructions. In this meditation, the aspirant is asked to observe each part of the body, sensations arising and disappearing, the essential impermanence of all this without any craving and aversion and thus establishing oneself in equanimity. If one does not suffer or enjoy the sensations and merely watches them with equanimity, one can be free from the cycle of pain and pleasure. Let us again study the next instruction of the Aachaaraanga Sutta,
"One who observes the body, observes the universe. He knows the lower part, the upper part and the terrestrial part. One who is going through all the parts of the body and moves through the body continuously, Comes to know the link (the link with the cycle of birth and death) And thus gets freedom from it.”58