One morning, while tavelling on the tram, I saw a quite
common event. A mother was travelling with her little daughter, who could
already walk nicely, still she had a rubber teat in her mouth.
They only travelled one stop, then the mother took the child
in her arms and prepared to get off. During this action the child dropped the
rubber teat which the mother did not notice but I did.
I quickly picked up the teat and returned to the mother. She
said Thank you.
I meditated a little on this quite trivial scene. To be
frank, such pacifiers are important not only in the lives of children. There
are scores of things we are attached to that are no less illusoric than the
rubber teat is to the child.
What is the use of the rubber teat? It is trying to give the
same experience to the child as sucking, whereby the mother is nourishing the
child with her breast milk. For a child, especially a small baby, breast
feeding is everything. A source of food, relationship with the mother whom the
child does not distingush yet from the world, actually not even from itself. Simply
put, sucking is pleasure itself.
However, little by little, the baby has to give up this pleasure and
feeding and relationship (yoga!) will be gradually separated. It will keep
contact with its mother through speech and a diminishing amount of physical
contact. The rubber teat is supposed to mitigate the pain of this separation,
however, it provides precious little: it does not give milk, the rubber thing
is not connected to the mother’ body, it is meagre consolation.
Why is this relavant to me?
Our own lives are also full of pointless attachments to so
many things. Let us take the example of sex life, for instance, the original
purpose of which is producing children. The whole world literature, and even
the history of music are witnesses that sex leads to so many calamities, even
tragedies. People are obsessed with searching out the opportunity of sex with newer
and newer partners. To get a desirable partner they are even prepared to kill.
All this when it is well known that the satisfaction of the sex desire is but
momentary: after a short while it will again attack the mind.
This is the rubber teat of the illusory energy, Maya, which
we eagerly suck. This is the steel door slammed on us in the prison of material
existence, because of which we have to take birth again and again in this
material world, in a material body, undergoing the tortures of birth, death,
old age and disease.
How much mainly mental but also physical suffering is caused
by the sex desire! The best would be to get rid of it, but it is very
difficult.
There was a period in my llife when I thought that happiness
is actually being desire-less. Now I know that such a state of mind is
impossible to attain. We will always have desires. There is no other way than
purifying our desires, directing them towards God, who will never let us down.
The method of purification is recommended by no less a person than God Himself,
Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu: the chanting of the Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare mantra, the
Maha mantra.
This is what I am trying to do diligently myself.
