I was corresponding with someone this week about how it is possible to practice meditation for many years and to sponsor yagyas and still feel like the outer world just never gets “fixed”. Certainly if you read the whole of the Mahabharata or the Ramayana, no one’s life every seemed to get fully “fixed“. Certainly there were times of relative peace and calm, but they were not permanent. So perhaps, one of the lessons of these great epics is that outer life is always going to be fully of chaos and trouble. It is the inner life that needs to be developed so that we have some independence from the turmoil of the outer world. I suspect that the enlightenment of the rishis is all inner and the outer life becomes largely irrelevant, at least as far as satisfaction and happiness are concerned.
The story of the churning of the ocean of milk really is a great myth for this. The gods wanted to become immortal and so they churned the ocean (consciousness) and what comes out first? Poison! Not love and bliss and happiness….poison! But in the end everything they wanted, and more was given to them.
What happened to the poison? Shiva held it in his throat neither swallowing it nor spitting it out. So in the same way we have to accept the crap that comes out of our own churning…our own efforts at living and growing and evolving. You can’t reject it because it is the product of our own karma. And you can’t swallow it. And by that I think that the myth means that you can’t take it all too seriously. You can’t swallow it and let it become a part of you. It is just karma and you can develop some distance from it, or as you point out, develop a sense of dispassion. It is admittedly a fine line distinction. I suppose the old zen saying holds true, that everything is important, but nothing matters.
It is possible through meditation, and yagyas, and conscious effort to begin to recognize the push and pull of the different planets in your psyche. And having done so, when you get reactive about a particular situation, you can say to yourself…oh…that’s my Saturn acting up again. I’m letting myself get depressed. Maybe I’m being too serious. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic. I think I’ll let it go…and see what happens.” In an odd sort of way Saturn challenges us to let go and trust the universe more than we are readily capable of, or think we can.
There is no question that crappy things happen in life and sometimes we are helpless. The bad stuff we endure has to be chalked up to paying back past bad karma. In the rest of life we can find balance and see the planets the way they are just pulling and pushing us.
There is no evidence in the vedic tradition that our karma ends and suddenly we are transported into the garden of eden. I think that we develop an independence from all the ups and downs and they don’t affect us as they used to. We are less reactive, and our fulfillment is less tied to the outcome of events because what we “want”…the satisfaction is built into our awareness and it enhances the outer experiences…rather than comes from them.