Samadhi

Chapter 3 - Samadhi

Day 13 

Question - Gurudev, is it possible to get stuck in achieving a mood of dispassion, turning one's attention to the separation between self and thoughts, emotions and sensory data, and is it possible to see more clearly who you are? But if a habit is developed of separating oneself from everything in an artificial way, you will lose spontaneity, attunement with nature and will not fully engage in life by giving it your 100%. How do you walk this tightrope, and how do you know if you are too far on one side or the other? 

Gurudev Sri Sri - Dispassion does not divide you. In fact, it connects you. It connects you to the present moment so totally that you can be 100% in anything that you are doing. When you are not dispassionate, then what happens? You are linked to the past or future. 

You are not one 100% connected to the present and are more divided. So when your mind is hoping for something in future or regretting the past, it is not 100% with the moment - that means it is divided already. When you are fully centered while doing anything in the world, you are 100% with every moment. 

You may be eating, and you are eating 100%. You enjoy every bit of it. You can feel every sip of the soup that you are having. Every bite of the food tastes great. Every sight is fresh and new. So your love is like the first love every moment. When you look at anybody or anything, they are all charming to the core, as if you are seeing for the first time.

Dispassion doesn't take away the joy from you. Dispassion gives the joy which nothing else can give. What pleasure can dispassion not give? It gives all the pleasures because you are so totally in the moment. It puts you hundred percent in the moment. Every moment is a peak experience.

The so-called dispassion in the world seems so dry. 

People who think they are very dispassionate are melancholy. They are sad. They run away from the world and then they call it dispassion. Then, they say that they have renounced the world. This is no renunciation or dispassion. People who escape because of failure, misery, sorrow, or apathy feel that they have dispassion. 

Dispassion is something more precious, more refined, and more valuable in life. If you are dispassionate, you are always centered - full of joy and contentment. Anybody would like to be like that.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji 

PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS