Adjusting our Lenses

Adjusting lenses is a figurative way to suggest cultivating the right and proper way to see, understand and respond to things. Seeing things correctly would help cultivating a right attitude leading to a good and understanding vision. Long ago it was said that the mind in itself and in its own place makes a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell. In real life, it is one’s own attitude, that is the capacity to see (which means the correct lenses) that make life either as pleasurable, meaningful and worth living on the one hand or otherwise. There could be two ways of looking at life, yielding two perspectives. Broadly there are two perspectives, the tragic and the comic. The comic (not merely the laughable) is said to be more pleasing, and, in the long run, life-­sustaining. The tragic perspective contributes to creating a salutary effect by sobering down the effervescent eddies of tears caused by grief.
To borrow a figure from the theatre in our national psyche there is a stable and rooted conviction that all the world is a stage and all men actors playing their roles as directed by the creator, God is sometimes envisioned as a sootradhari in this jagannataka. A writer said that this life in the world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Coming to feeling, it is highly subjective, the thing seen through the individual lenses. The same scene may appear to some very painful but natural and to some not very logical and hence absurd. All of us have feelings and all of us to some extent or the other are thinkers also. But then, most of the time we reveal ourselves occupied totally with the one or the other in exclusion to the other. This lands us in trouble.

What is necessary is a balance between the heart and the mind, balance between the thinking and feeling. Thought has to be perfected and feeling has to be held under control. We have the moral sense, which really does not have much to do with university degrees or bank balances. Right from our childhood the parents, school and everyone around have given us some idea of good and bad. We have been given the idea in the simplest formula: paropakaaraya punyaya paapaaya para peedanam. Helping others gives punya, merit, harming, is paapa, sin. We commit offence and violence, himsa, not out of ignorance butbecause of the inability to see correctly. This ability to adjust lenses comes from ripeness, maturity of the mind. A mature mind is essential for real happiness in life. Happiness is contentment.

Anybody familiar with Gayatri knows how our sages and seers down the ages and the pious and devout among us even today have been, and still are, worshippers of nature. Worship is respecting and treating someone or something as noble, powerful and capable of blessing us. What is not worshippable that is around? The tree, the river, the sky, the earth, fire, the breeze, our forefathers worshipped everything in nature.

It is of urgent importance to understand how we look at things and how they ought to be looked at to get the best of our vision. Though life is like a play, life is real and it presents problems and offers pleasures also. A drama is unreal but life is real. It cannot be looked upon either as tragic or totally comic. We want to live, notwithstanding the suffering that is subsumed in it. We will do well to equip ourselves to face all contingencies with the capacity to adjust the lenses. The ordinary human being is exhilarated by joys and confused and thrown in despair by problems. To meet both what is needed is equanimity.

Only an inclusive vision explains and accounts for the ‘human condition’. The human condition is compounded of both tears and laughter. Tears and laughter are part of living.

Acceptance, tolerance, cheerfulness, faith in a supreme power, resilience, forgiveness, capacity to endure all these are necessary. The advantage of cultivating an inclusive vision is that it enables us to see the contradictions and the inherent absurdity in human acts, roles and projects. This enables us to accept human acts and human mind, with all man’s weaknesses and failures. Those who have belief in providence and God would not be easily disturbed or shattered. Such people can be considered samadarasanas for they have a rich sense of humour and a sort of philosophical amusement at all contradictions and illogicalities. God’s play or leela is such, they tell themselves.

Life is a strange mixture, of the tragic and the comic. It is necessary for us all to acquire a perspective that can react healthily to all situations. The implication of this for enthusiastic livers is to cultivate serenity and equanimity, cheerfulness and compassion. Only adjusting the lenses makes the cultivation easy. Sri Krishna, the divine charioteer enjoins us to practice cultivating the saint’s eye-view, sama drishti. The spiritually evolved have this quality.

‘The learned ones, the pandits look upon the learned pious brahmin, the cow, the elephant, the dog and the one who cooks and eats dog’s meat with sama drishthi, equal temper of mind.’

Our dharma is sanatana dharma, the vedic dharma. We are told time and again by jnaanis that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. Let us understand why this is true. Religion cannot exist independent of our life or way of living. When it is accepted as an integral part of people’s belief and way of living, it is no longer a religion in the abstract sense. Any religion divorced from practical living is not worth any attention.

Catholicism is also a way of life: here is what St Juliana of Norwich, a 14th century Catholic mystic, said:
Sin is behovely
All shall be well and
All manner of things

Sin or man’s incapacity to escape from error or suffering can become behovely without disconcerting one if there is a proper inward discipline and an ability to look at things in their perspective. Such a person, who can look at all with equanimity is nitya santushtha, the ever contented, the one above dualities.

For adjusting the lenses what is needed most is sankalpa shuddhi, the purity of intention and manojaya, winning the manas. Mano nashana, destroying manas and along with it all desires, all likes and dislikes, is a noble ideal but then it is not easy except for a mahatma or mahapurusha. But disciplining the manas and holding it under control are possible with individual effort under the guidance and with the blessings of a guru, a preceptor.

Spiritual progress can be achieved by winning the six enemies, the arishad vargas, shedding ahamkaara and wiping out vasanas. All these are possible only through looking inward. So the logical conclusion is THINK, THINK and again THINK and adjust your lenses, turning the searchlight inward.