The Kleshas Week 3 - Raga and Dvesha: Life Happening From Us, Not To Us
We’ve managed, over the last week,
to turn the topic of suffering into something wonderful.
We talked about nothing but the cause of suffering —
and found it to be good news.
Good yogic news about suffering.
But the enquiry —
I think it is the greatest enquiry there is.
The most important contemplation we can partake in.
“What is this suffering?”
“How does it create me?”
“Is life creating me?”
“Is it happening to me?”
“Or am I creating me?”
“Or… am I not?”
Understand that there is suffering — and we are not talking about hardship.
We are not talking about pain.
No matter how gloriously positioned your life might be,
no matter how heavenly it might be,
it will still have hardship.
It will still have challenge.
It will still have pain.
It will still have loss.
I could put you in a palace, surround you with comfort,
make everything just the way you want it.
Hardship would still come to find you.
It is built into the fabric of Life.
Challenge is what we grow through.
It gives us contrast.
It offers us the opportunity to deepen.
So hardship will come looking for you.
Loss comes to everyone.
But that is not suffering.
Suffering is what we do
with the experience we are having.
Suffering is a state we create inside ourselves
in relationship to what is happening.
And that is amazing news.
So I am the cause — and therefore the liberator.
I can sort this out.
I will experience hardship.
I will experience pain.
I will experience loss.
I will experience all the stuff that Life brings to all beings.
But I don’t have to suffer.
The yogis made an outrageous statement.
They said:
“If you position yourself as Life,
Life is not suffering itself.
It is not suffering its own creation.
Not suffering its own birthing.
Not suffering its own dying.
Not suffering its own hardship.
It is in a state of perpetual ecstasy and freedom
in its own liberating expression of itself.
Just imagine sunlight.
Just imagine daffodils.
Imagine trees.
An ecstatic outpouring of pure, unadulterated consciousness and creativity.
That is Life.”
A yogi switches position —
from being a “me” subjected to the onslaught of Life
to Life itself.
And that is a different position to hold.
And a difficult one.
It could just be down to positioning.
The position you take in relationship to Life might be the determining factor over whether you experience it as Life or you experience it as suffering.
And it really could be this simple.
We can either consider that Life is happening to us
or Life is happening from us.
It’s either coming at you and happening to you
or it’s coming from you.
It’s arising out of you.
You are the beginning of its arising all the time.
If it’s happening to you, there is pressure.
If it’s happening from you, there is momentum.
It will either be a weight on you
or a wind behind you.
You will either be a victim of it — because that’s how it will be if you think Life is happening to you —
or you can switch victim into victory.
You just walk.
Walk.
Walk off the end of your life.
Off the end.
You might walk into Hades.
You might walk into heaven.
But you’re still going to walk —
walking on Life happening from you and through you.
That positional switch is there.
So avidyā says we fall under the weight of Life when we take the position that Life is happening to us.
And we move into vidyā — into knowledge, into self-realisation, into Life itself — when we feel it is happening through us and from us.
When Life is happening to me, “me” gets bigger.
“Me” develops a very big story about Life and me.
The more it’s happening to me, the bigger my story gets, the bigger my identity gets, the deeper my sense of victimhood gets.
The burden gets heavier and heavier.
And this is asmitā — the second kleśha.
First it’s happening to me.
Then my “me” builds a story around it.
Life isn’t about me.
Or it doesn’t have to be.
You can switch it so that you are about Life.
That’s the movement from asmitā to smita — to the natural smile.
Now, when Life is happening to us and the “me” grows dense,
we move into rāga and dveṣha.
We divide Life into what we want and what we don’t want.
What we like and what we don’t like.
What we want the future to be.
What we wish the past had been.
Split.
Split.
Split.
This is what the mind does.
And inside the noggin, that is exactly what’s happening.
Are you ready for the mantra?
It’s not Sanskrit.
It is as it is.
You don’t have to do the “so it is” bit.
I just came up with that one.
It is as it is.
And you wanting it to be different all the time —
and never being happy, actually, with how it is —
because it could always be a little bit better for you.
Could it not?
This is suffering.
Rather than Life is happening from me —
however it comes —
and I am journeying with it,
now Life is happening to me,
and I get to have a little look at it before it arrives.
And we’re doing the great juggling.
“I want this.”
“I don’t want that.”
Nobody enjoys this game.
This life.
This is rāga.
Yeah.
Feels good.
“I want that.
I want more of that, actually.”
And dveṣha.
“I don’t want that.”
Resistance.
Objection.
Avoidance.
That’s one half
of what the mind wants to do.
The other half —
“I want that.”
Grasp.
Hold.
Keep.
Possess.
Split down the middle.
Half doing that
and half doing that.
A healed mind —
a mind healed of its split —
can contain everything that is happening and coming,
because it has that power.
You do not.
Have we all agreed?
Everybody been overwhelmed?
Know what that feels like?
Everybody been anxious?
Because you cannot contain it.
And any attempt — any kind of training programme you take —
is not going to give you the power to contain everything.
Full of shit.
You’re talking from a divided perspective.
There is only one power in the universe
that can contain everything.
And that
is what I suggest you surrender to.
To God.
And open.
So here’s a suggestion.
Stand in your body as it is.
Recognise that your body is currently being created —
that it is an outpouring.
It’s quite a teaching.
Everything has an impact for a time.
There’s this impact over time.
No matter how brilliant it is —
a stunningly impactful moment —
after a time, as we use it and use it,
it becomes weary.
You know?
It loses some of its vitality.
And that’s just natural.
That’s why we talk from so many different angles together —
to freshen it back up.
To re-inspire.
But this one you received this morning —
there are some teachings
in the great book of Life
that can take you along
and continue to take impact.
They’re very positional.
They’re always relational
to where you are.
You know what I mean?
“What’s my position in Life?
Is it happening to me?”
You can use this
to reposition yourself
again and again.
I don’t know if we can leave these to you.
I mean, you can leave them here…
Or you can take them with you.
There are some yogis that I can think of that only needed a single teaching.
Nisargadatta Maharaj.
He was given a single viewpoint.
Single.
Just a small set
of word instructions.
That was all he was given.
He received it in a cigarette shop
and took it as if it were a gift from the gods.
He understood that everything he would ever need to contain
was in that instruction.
And he walked with it for two years.
He walked into his life for two solid years
and refused not to apply the teaching.
And it illumined him to such a depth
that before he knew it
he was able to contain the whole of experience
without any rāga
and without any dveṣha.
He had overcome suffering
through just one teaching.
Learn your position.
Why am I suffering?
Oh — because it’s happening to me.
Got it.
These experiences are coming from Life.
They are emerging and returning.
It’s flowing from you.
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