Contentment

Contentment

By Swami Jyotirmayananda


The Glory of Contentment

"Santoshatanuttam sukh-labhah" — "By content­ment, one enjoys incomparable bliss." This statement is very significant. The happiness of one who enjoys contentment far surpasses that of an emperor. It is even higher than heavenly enjoyment because it leads to the highest goal, Liberation.

Santosh or contentment destroys cravings, feel­ings of humiliation, and the impurities of the heart. One who is contented enjoys rare inner peace and restfulness in a world that goes on whipping a person like a harsh master.

If you are drinking the nectar of contentment, the world of the senses becomes insignificant. Pos­sessing a diamond, you will not chase after glass. If your mind is flowing towards the Self and you are tasting the joy of Brahman, your mind no longer creates creepers of miseries and afflictions. Your intellect no longer degrades itself.

Think of the joy experienced by a traveller who has crossed over a burning desert when he sees ahead of him a wonderful green forest with sparkling streams. He lays down to rest under the cooling foliage of a tree with great delight. Santosh or contentment bestows even more profound rest on the mind of a person who is struggling through the world-process.

The mind is always being buffeted by external conditions, but one who possesses a mind that has envisioned the eternity of the Self is not dependent upon the world. He has secretly begun to taste the sweetness of the Divine Self and receives endless refreshment from within.


Real vs. Sentimental Contentment

Contentment is not a sentimental state of mind. Sometimes, a person may say that they are contented, that they have everything that they want.... until someone flashes a lottery ticket in front of them. That is sentimental contentment.

Real contentment demands a change in the impres­sions of your unconscious, a change brought about by the flow of the mind toward the Self. As long as the mind does not flow towards the Self in a spontaneous manner, it continues creating karmas, giving rise to adverse and sorrowful conditions.


The Folly of Comparing Yourself with Others

People are always comparing their happiness to the happiness of others, feeling that they are lacking something because they do not have the wealth or accomplishments possessed by another. When you compare yourself with others, your mind is always degrading what you do possess. You look down upon what God has given you, ever imagining that others have been given much more.„

While people waste their energy in envy, ev­eryone's feet are actually trapped in the jaws of a shark. Indeed there are many sharks in the ocean of the world-process, baby sharks who seem to mean you no harm, and mighty sharks who cannot be so easily ignored—such as death. Although death is waiting for all, the majority of people ignore that fact and spend their precious time comparing imaginary advantages that one has over another.

The Mahabharata gives a graphic description of this delusion. Many animals are lined up to be butchered, but they choose to ignore this obvious fact. Looking at the line in front of them, they console themselves with the idea that there is yet a long way to go. In the meantime, they are fighting over who is stronger, who is wiser, who is more popular — all the while suppressing the knowledge that they are steadily marching to their death.

If you had deeper insight, you would realize that the world has been so fashioned that even though one may have lots of benefits, there is always something that spoils them somewhat. With philospophical insight, you learn that no one truly enjoys anything in this world. Nature does not care to fulfill all your desires in this plane of existence. Therefore, while Nature with one hand gives you lots of prosperity, with the other hand she twists a little thorn into your flesh.

Nature has given to no one an absolutely perfect situation. If you can't see the defect in a particular case, it is only because you do not have all the in­formation. Many people do not reveal before others the things that are gnawing at them. They always try to portray themselves as happy and prosperous. This brings about a lot of illusion, with everyone thinking that others are so happy and they are the only ones who are miserable.


Contentment Is a Dynamic Virtue

Working to develop contentment does not mean that you will become passive or lazy. Certainly you will continue to work hard to progress in all planes of life. However, your work will be performed with a calm mind, not one burdened with the illusion that you cannot be happy until you accomplish a given project. If you are contented, you simply work with joy.

With spiritual contentment, you are free. If you succeed in a given project, wonderful. If you don't, then you have still succeeded in a far more important project — that of keeping the mind tranquil.


Learn to Watch Your Mind

To promote contentment, try to watch your mind under three conditions: when a desire for an object or circumstance first asserts itself, when you acquire the desired object, and when you lose it. What hap­pens to your mind in these three situations? Ideally, the mind should not vary in its state of tranquility. It should remain balanced at all times.

The majority of people have no understanding of the benefits of a balanced mind. Day by day, they push their minds to high tension: desiring something with tremendous involvement; developing hatred towards anyone or anything that seems to be an obstacle in obtaining it; becoming agitated with elation once the object of desire is attained; straggling to maintain or hang on to what is attained; then, inevitably, grieving terribly when the object is lost or they become disil­lusioned with it.

Most people allow their minds to swing in this way day by day. They know of no other way to live. Therefore, they have no idea of the type of serene happiness that can be experienced in a calm and relaxed mind.

However, just as the dust in the atmosphere settles down when there is a shower of rain, in the same way, all anxious desires in the mind settle down under the shower of contentment. A contented person is not agitated by raga and dwesha — attachment and hatred, nor dominated by ego and its expectations.


Contentment Brightens the Intellect

If you are contented, you have no stress. You enjoy inner peace. Your mind is not ruffled by objects. No longer is the light of the intellect obstructed or refracted by the agitations of the mind.

The moment your mind becomes calm and re­laxed, your intellect gains a special brightness. If you practice meditation and your mind becomes relaxed eyen for five minutes, immediately certain power­ful thoughts and insights arise, and you are amazed to have those insights. This shows that if the mind were to enjoy tranquility continuously, the light of intellect will continue to burn bright. Therefore, there will be rootedness in God, the internal knowledge of identity with the Absolute Self.


Discontent Obscures One's True Identity

Just as you cannot see your face reflected in a mirror that is covered with dust, in the same way, you cannot see your deeper Self in a discontented mind. Because it is confused, such a mind prevents you from knowing your true inner identity and always exaggerates things.

At one time, the mind asserts its greatness. The ego soars. Then in another moment, the mind laments, "I am the most unfortunate person! The whole world has been created just to hurt me."

When you think so highly of yourself, that is one exaggeration; and when you think so lowly of yourself, that is another. A discontented mind does not allow you to understand yourself profoundly. Only in a state of contentment do you rise beyond your mind and realize, "I am Brahman, I am universal, I am the Absolute." A contented mind is like a clear mirror in which your spiritual face reflects without any distortion.


A Contented Mind Is the Greatest Wealth

If your mind is contented and free of defects, then even though you may be poor, materially speaking, you are richer than the greatest monarchs in this world.

As you study this point in an objective way, you realize that for the majority of people becoming rich does not mean that they are going to be happy. If wealth comes to a person on the basis of goodness, as the grace of Goddess Lakshmi, then a spiritually advanced person will make good use of that wealth for the betterment of all. However, if wealth has been obtained by hook or by crook, or comes without proper effort or spiritual readiness, then that wealth will probably lead to unhappiness.

Whatever little happiness a person had is go­ing to be lost the moment he wins a big lottery. The moment that the person becomes too rich, he cannot enjoy a walk outdoors by himself. He needs a bodyguard. He cannot talk to his friends without wondering what they want from him. If such a person were later to enjoy real serenity, he would realize that all the wealth of the world is nothing compared to contentment.


Contentment Prevents Vitamin "P" Deficiency

People often entertain the illusion that certain objects are absolutely necessary for their happiness. For example, a person has a perfectly good car, but then he sees a neighbor's car and becomes fascinated with it. He says to himself, unless I get that type of car, I am not going to be happy. The moment that idea enters his mind, his own car no longer gives him any happiness. Whenever he sees his neighbor's car with all the latest advances, he becomes discontented.

One who does not have that type of expectation and is able to enjoy whatever he has is able to live in the present. The moment you have expectation, you are living in the future. If you believe that by gaining an object you will be happy, you are living in the future.

Much in the same way, due to lack of contentment, people tend to live in the past. If there is frustration and you feel that you cannot fulfill your desires, then the mind plays another trick and goes backward, flunking that once upon a time you were so happy and everything was so wonderful. In reality, it was not as enjoyable as memory now makes it. If God were to send you back to that state, you would be miserable.

Thus, the majority of people either turn backward or forward, but never enjoy the present. Therefore, they become deprived of a special nourishment of the soul. It is called Vitamin "P," Vitamin Present.

The mind must be nourished by the present. When there is contentment, your mind enjoys the present and on the basis of the present, builds a future with a sense of fullness and expansion.


A Mind Sanctioned by God — Not the Ego

When the mind enjoys contentment, any idea that arises in that mind is sanctioned by God. A discontented mind is under the influence of the ego. The ego's de­sires and expectations — which are generally rajasic and tamasic in nature — are not sanctioned by God.

When the mind has reached a high level of purity and tranquility, whatever desires arise in that mind are based not on the ego, but on love of God in the world. It is that type of desire, sat kanta, true desire, that becomes the basis of the great deeds done by Sages. All prosperity flows to a person who has developed that state of contentment.


From Darkness to Light

When the mind is not contented, the defects of your personality become highlighted; but if the mind is highly contented, the defects of your personality begin to fade away. To understand this better, think of the moon in the night sky. When the moon is not full, you see dark shadows in the moon; but when the moon becomes full, the fullness of the moon overpowers the dark shadows. Certain limitations are always present within the human personality as long as one is bound by the world. But when the mind is contented, there is a special ability to transcend the limitations. The inner fullness cascades over your limitations and drowns them.

The mind becomes restful when you see the luminous face of one who is contented. When you see that face, you are seeing your own face that is to come in the state of Enlightenment. The face of the contented person, like the face of Buddha, beckons your soul to the state of Nirvana. Whoever is en­dowed with perfect contentment is adored by God. The whole atmosphere adores that person.

“International Yoga Guide” Volume 54: NO.10, June 2017



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