Vishaada Yoga

Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

[This is an extract from a talk given by Poojya Swamiji on  "Meaning and Message of Vishaada Yoga" that appeared in the 
October 1980 issue of the monthly journal ‘Vicharasetu – The Path of Introspection’]

People generally complain that they have no time to do saadhana. Being busy in the world with their affairs of their day-to-day life, they are unable to do any special saadhana, to promote spirituality or religion in them. The struggle to win their bread, to pursue their avocation, to preserve their domestic and professional routines, alone keeps them busy, occupying the whole of their attention. How can Yoga as an additional or special practice, be taken up at all – they ask!

To this question is the answer – ‘practice vishaada yoga’. Vishaada, a Sanskrit word, denotes sorrow, affliction, grief or misery. It is a very common experience, an adverse reaction of our mind. When our mind faces an objective situation contrary to its thoughts, motives or likes, in short, whenever any incident or experience not to our plan or approval takes place, the emotional torment that follows is vishaada, grief. You find the great Arjuna meeting vishaada right in the Kurukshetra battlefield, on looking at the army ranged against him, standing in the front. That was an occasion when no fighter would ever have felt grief, but Arjuna did feel. The turn of event was quite unexpected, much more so than one can imagine or be ready to witness.

Similar confrontations, developments, resulting in grief are too common for all the living humans, everywhere in the world. In fact our complaint is that vishaada frequents our life much against our own wish. We do not like it at all, yet it occurs too often. What we relish is its opposite, santosha, which, to our dejection, does not persist at all. By force, by the peculiar laws of the world, by the hard facts of our life, vishaada rises forth too frequently. And we have no formula either to meet it with readiness or eliminate it altogether.

Such frequent, unwanted, disliked and much-resented grief, is what should constitute the content and practice of yoga, says the Gita. In making it so, we need an insight, an example, a precedent. And in Arjuna’s behaviour is all this provided. Arjuna had obviously met grief and agitation in his life many times earlier. But never before did he make a ‘yoga’ out of the experience or fate. Only now, the better sense of Arjuna prevailed. His sincerity, nobility of attitude, emotional readiness and the sense of distress, all stood well set to transform the vishaada in him into the Yoga that he needed, everyone of you will need, for winning the supreme spiritual wisdom and salvation.

So from now on, never can you say that it is lack of time that prevents you from practicing yoga. Nor can it be the lack of enough spiritual knowledge and experience. Vishaada is a frequenting experience of the mind, and in your interaction with the world produces it compulsorily. You too, in your turn, must rise up to the occasion and treat the vishaada, to make it the finished product called yoga.

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