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 Welcoming the New Year

 March 30, 2014

 Far apart from each other and leading to totally different results are the two ways: one of right, spiritual understanding and the second of wrong, pleasure-driven understanding.

Kathopanishad 1.2.4

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Ugadi (Yuga + Adi), going by the lunar calendar is on Monday, March 31 this year. It heralds the New Year – samvatsara. Spiritually speaking, it is a new year for us if we opt for ‘ways of vidya’ and give up our habits rooted in ‘avidya’.

 Even the well-placed ones among us have certain habits because of which we have let peace elude us. We take pains to make a hundred changes on the surface but do not give up these psychological habits that are at the core of the self (ego) in us. Habits (in thought processes) after all make the ego.

 We are not talking about coffee or tea, cigarette or wine. By psychological habit is meant things we do following the belief that our self-worth depends on a certain ‘image’ to which we are attached. The behavior in daily life that follows this belief causes spiritually incorrect choices and disharmony with people around.

 An educated husband for example could find himself in disharmony with his wife when he values his social image excessively and does not care enough (and truly) for his wife. His attachment to his own ideas of how people in society look at him gets so strong that he is constantly trying to boost that (self-conceived) image. His buying and selling, eating and drinking, entering politics and leaving it, etc. are all driven by the ‘image’ that he is trying to protect and embellish. Self-inquiry (who am I?) can expose this attachment and make him realize the falsity of the image too. To be more specific, he may find that people would love him even if he (for example) does not buy some fancy property; he had falsely presumed that his image would suffer if he did not buy. Also, he may realize that their love and respect are of no worth, when they value him if only he becomes the owner of the glamorous property. “I am fine with or without this new property; I am fine with or without these people showing respect to me,” becomes the silent discovery when he conducts self-inquiry. The Atma-Vichara loosens his value structures and bestows upon him inner peace that is unconditional.

When he is relieved of all the self-created inner pressures, which made him conform to certain unnecessary patterns of behavior, he cares for his wife better. She would then feel the difference.

May we question the workings of avidya (spiritual ignorance) in us; may we leave thoughts supported by false presumptions; may we walk into a New Year marked by right seeing, possible through vidya (right understanding). 

Swami Chidananda

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