Detachment, key to happiness

CHENNAI, FEB. 4. Life in the world is a transitory stage in the evolution of a bonded soul towards liberation. Scriptures have prescribed through the fourfold scheme of values - Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha - a way to regulate a person's life to the goal of liberation. These values are pursued during the four different stages in human life, known as Ashramas, and the last one, Sannyasa, is exclusively meant for realising this goal.

When one's perspective of life and the goal are clear it becomes easy to lead a fulfilled life in the world. Man rightly belongs to God and he has to go back to Him. Detachment is thus the key to his happiness in his earthly sojourn. The moment the feeling of ``I'' or ``mine'' surfaces, there is bound to be unhappiness because of attachment to his possessions.

This can be appreciated better with an analogy. When we go on a holiday and stay in a resort temporarily, we do not cry because we have to leave it when we return home. So also, when we are born in this world it is for a temporary period we come here. All that we are endowed with at birth and the possessions we acquire serve us only during this period and hence there is no room for anguish when we have to leave them behind.

In his discourse on the Bhagavata Purana, Sri Venugopal Goswamiji Maharaj said that detachment must be the watchword in life. The life of King Bharata depicted in this Purana highlights the truth that attachment can distract even a man of renunciation. Born in the lineage of mighty emperors, Bharata ruled the kingdom he inherited with a sense of duty and devotion.

He was not only a just king loved by his subjects but was also spiritually inclined, as his father Rshabhadeva was a manifestation of the Lord Himself. Bharata performed many sacrifices and his devotion to God grew day by day. He retired to the hermitage of Sage Pulaha on the bank of the Gandaki river (Salagramakshetra in Nepal) after dividing the kingdom between his sons, to devote his life to worshipping God.

As he sat meditating one day, he was disturbed to see a pregnant deer in distress chased by a lion and it succumbed to the exhaustion of premature delivery. Moved at the sight of the helpless young one without its mother he took it to his hermitage and lavished his care on it to the extent that he became intensely attached to it. Such a man of detachment who had gained total control of his senses and mind after renouncing a kingdom voluntarily, now doted on a deer whose welfare and pranks occupied his entire attention that he was reborn as a deer in his next birth.

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