The ultimate destination of this seemingly enigmatic journey called life is Shunya. A life is a chain of endless doing. This doing never stops. And if we believe in re-birth, then a person is on an endless journey of lives, one after the other, with brief pauses in between, known as death. But as Upanishads tell us, this chain of events can stop. The main import is this that there is a state after reaching which, possibly there is no return, i.e. one is not born again. This state is the state of shunya, which is the final destination of our journey.
Shunya is when nothing remains. When we lose everything that we have, we enter that state. We need to get rid of our personalities and our possessions, such as desire, attachments, passion, greed, fear, everything. We need to drop the three qualities of our being, which is sattva, rajasa and tamasa. We can do that only when we realize that we have these possessions. We can have this realization only when we watch ourselves and make an attempt to know ourselves. For this, we need time and an appropriate environment, where we can sit in silence and solitude. If we start to bring down our level of engagement with the external world by removing unnecessary doings, we can get time for ourselves.
But this is not an easy state of mind to achieve. We need to understand why we do so many things and why do we get involved in so many acts. If we analyze this deeply, we would know that the primary cause is some desire. All of us have some desires, however, these would vary from person to person. But at the root of all desires is the desire to be happy. We are on a never-ending search for an indestructible source of happiness, which will make us feel complete. But the sad part is that out of ignorance, we keep looking outside in the external world, which has nothing of that sort. This goes on through the entire life, and in lives after lives.
The wise men advise us to turn inward and look internally. Desires breed on the fertile soil of our mind. So if we have to deal with desires, we need to understand the mind. A desire to do something or to own something can be born out of our old habits or can be triggered when we come in contact with objects of the world, through our senses, which feed into mind. As an example, let's hypothetically assume that there is a brand-new Mercedes Benz car parked and a person is passing by it. He comes into contact with the car through his eyes. Eyes relay the image of the car to the mind. Up to this point, there is no problem. But the problem arises, when a thought comes that its a beautiful car and it would be nice if he can get a car like that. This breeds a desire to own the car.
Now, if he can afford the car and if he can not use his intellect to turn down mind's wish, he will go and buy the car. But if had right understanding, he will tell his mid to shut up and walk away. There is another possibility, that the man wants it badly even though he can't afford it. But he gets so much attached to the idea of owning it that he makes it a goal to be achieved over next 12 months. Then he works harder, does double shifts, accumulates money for the down payment and buys the car on a bank loan. Unknowingly he creates a trap for himself and he spends next few years on paying back to the bank. This becomes habitual and the same things is repeated for other things.
The bottom line is that desire is the root cause behind all of our unnecessary actions in the external world. And when all desires drop, the state of being that remains is shunya.
Shunya is when nothing remains. When we lose everything that we have, we enter that state. We need to get rid of our personalities and our possessions, such as desire, attachments, passion, greed, fear, everything. We need to drop the three qualities of our being, which is sattva, rajasa and tamasa. We can do that only when we realize that we have these possessions. We can have this realization only when we watch ourselves and make an attempt to know ourselves. For this, we need time and an appropriate environment, where we can sit in silence and solitude. If we start to bring down our level of engagement with the external world by removing unnecessary doings, we can get time for ourselves.
But this is not an easy state of mind to achieve. We need to understand why we do so many things and why do we get involved in so many acts. If we analyze this deeply, we would know that the primary cause is some desire. All of us have some desires, however, these would vary from person to person. But at the root of all desires is the desire to be happy. We are on a never-ending search for an indestructible source of happiness, which will make us feel complete. But the sad part is that out of ignorance, we keep looking outside in the external world, which has nothing of that sort. This goes on through the entire life, and in lives after lives.
The wise men advise us to turn inward and look internally. Desires breed on the fertile soil of our mind. So if we have to deal with desires, we need to understand the mind. A desire to do something or to own something can be born out of our old habits or can be triggered when we come in contact with objects of the world, through our senses, which feed into mind. As an example, let's hypothetically assume that there is a brand-new Mercedes Benz car parked and a person is passing by it. He comes into contact with the car through his eyes. Eyes relay the image of the car to the mind. Up to this point, there is no problem. But the problem arises, when a thought comes that its a beautiful car and it would be nice if he can get a car like that. This breeds a desire to own the car.
Now, if he can afford the car and if he can not use his intellect to turn down mind's wish, he will go and buy the car. But if had right understanding, he will tell his mid to shut up and walk away. There is another possibility, that the man wants it badly even though he can't afford it. But he gets so much attached to the idea of owning it that he makes it a goal to be achieved over next 12 months. Then he works harder, does double shifts, accumulates money for the down payment and buys the car on a bank loan. Unknowingly he creates a trap for himself and he spends next few years on paying back to the bank. This becomes habitual and the same things is repeated for other things.
The bottom line is that desire is the root cause behind all of our unnecessary actions in the external world. And when all desires drop, the state of being that remains is shunya.
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