Yoga Sutra Reflections Session 34: Raga Dvesah Abhinivesah

Integrating Ancient Wisdom in Modern Life: Pleasure, Pain and Bliss

1. To maximise and desire to repeat the same pleasure of 5 senses again is called Raga, Attachment. Similarly we want to maximise and desire to repeat the same pleasure of our thinking which is aligned and reinforced with my self-concept is called Raga, Attachment.
2. Why do we want to repeat the pleasure? Because our self-nature is Bliss, Anand. We think by repeating pleasure we will arrive at our self-nature, Anand, Bliss. No, on the contrary it will give you more pain, misery. If one becomes alert towards pain, pain disappears and Bliss will shower. Intelligent person will transcend the pain to experience Bliss. He understands, to repeat pleasure needs a lot of energy but to become alert needs no energy. On the contrary one will have a surplus of energy to feel the Bliss.
3. Attachments of body and mind are for survival and reproduction purposes. Because of this purpose we want to have pleasure again and again. This law was up to the evolution of animals. Human beings have a higher purpose and have the capacity to transcend pleasure to anand. They have to raise themselves from this temporary Pleasure to permanence Anand, Bliss.
4. Dvesah, Aversion means we want immediately to get away from physical and mental sorrow and misery of the past which is repeating. Attachment and Aversion are two sides of the same coin. Non attachment is generally taken to mean aversion, but it is not aversion. Aversion is a kind of attachment – the opposite of attachment. Non-attachment altogether is different; it is freedom from both attachment and aversion.
5. Abhinivesah means fear of death even if life is full of misery and clinging to life. The fear of death is so much, it haunts you your whole life. The moment you drop the idea of separation, the fear of death disappears. Death is the greatest mystery of life. Life has many mysteries, but there is nothing comparable to death. Death is the climax, the crescendo.
6. Pain is not to make you sad, remember. That’s where people go on missing. This pain is just to make you more ALERT – because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them. Otherwise they don’t become alert.
7. If we recollect our experience of anger and out of self-awareness if by focusing on breath we become calm. It will be very easy for us to understand that we have the inborn capacity to transcend anything. So we will create wisdom and empathy towards pain and we will be able to feel the organic unity of gross and formless, temporary and permanent. This will immediately change the gestalt from fear of death to deathlessness in us. We will know our deathlessness.