Questioner: Pranaam Acharya Ji. Patanjali speaks about sadhana and he says that
sa tu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara sevito dridha-bhoomih.
For a foundation, a sadhaka has to practise for a long time, but sometimes when a sadhaka is practising for a long time if he is doing some nitya karmas and if he is practising certain things, will he not get bored by certain practices (that) he is only doing? So, what does Patanjali mean by saying that one has to practise for a long time?
Acharya Prashant: One has to practise for a long time not because long time is needed as such but because it’s the nature of this battle to last long. If you could finish this off in a split second, there was no need for Patanjali to assert that “Dirghkaal”, a long duration, is definitely needed.
You must understand what sadhana really is. If sadhana is merely a set of routine exercises, if sadhana is just repetition of certain activity, then obviously there is a danger that the whole thing will turn boring, as you said. But sadhana is not quite that.
I used the word battle. Sadhana is always against a resisting entity. Sadhana is always a battle, a challenge. It is an act of meeting a strong, unyielding, primitive, inner physical force.
So, sadhana is always against oneself. And that is why sadhana tends to last long. And that is also why sadhana can never turn boring.
Are you getting it?
Sadhana is highly exciting, adventurous and it presents a new challenge every day. The moment you think that you have conquered one aspect of the self, you discover that the next aspect is probably more obstinate than the previous one. Now stands afresh in front of you, challenging you, taunting you.
When you are being taunted, then there is excitement, not boredom. Right? The excitement might not be of the pleasurable kind, but for sure when you are discovering that there is so much inside, that still needs to be addressed, tamed or simply understood, how can you get bored?
But you can get bored if you are constantly wading only on the surface. If you are not quite daring to penetrate deeply within your own psyche. If you are not unraveling hither to unseen parts of your inner self, inner personality, then all that you will see is just that which you are already seeing, then it can become boring.
If sadhana is becoming boring then that means that sadhana needs a fresh dose of sincerity. It can get boring only when it gets stalled, blocked. Otherwise, it’s a fresh challenge every day.
You are in the middle of a war. Right? You are being assaulted from all sides, at least from the inside. Would you suddenly drop your guard and drop your weapon and say oh I’m bored of this constant battling? Has that ever happened with a soldier? Does the soldier get bored in the middle of a battle? Sadhana is a battle. It doesn’t afford you the space, the time, the luxury to get bored.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, so in reference to this previous question, you mention that there is excitement , there is challenge, there is taunting in all this, how do we, don’t we run the risk of getting attached to this and then one thing to take new challenges?
Acharya Prashant: No! When you are being challenged, how do you even get attached to the challenge? What’s the entire mechanism of getting attached to the challenge?
Challenge by definition is a call to engage a fight till finish. One side has to emerge victorious, right? That’s the only way you can engage with the challenge. Otherwise, there is no engagement. If you and the challenge happily co-exist, then is there a challenge at all? Then there is happy coexistence, there is no challenge. So, challenge by definition demands action towards annihilation. Action towards subjugation of one party or the other. Either your determination will win or your old animal primitive tendency will win. One of the two will stand victorious and the other will stand vanquished. Right?
So, if you say you are attached to a challenge and that means that you can never forget the challenge, you are on constant remembrance of the challenge, then such a definition of attachment is great. Is it not?
I’m besieged, I'm being attacked, I'm threatened. And for a moment I cannot afford to forget that I'm attacked. It’s alright.
Why console oneself with a false sense of wellness or security when the fact is that your one precious life, your peace is actually under attack and siege?
See! When we talk of remembrance, I just use that word, and that word is frequently used in spiritual literature. Remembrance can’t imply of positive memory of the highest state.
Though we often say that one must always remember the Truth or one must always remember God. Those who have known have said that instead you should always remember Maya, you should always remember kaal. This is what should be there in the mind all the time, because the mind anyway exists in the maya and the kaal. Maya — illusion and kaal — change, time.
So that is what can be actually and practically remembered all the time. Right? Remember that.
We often feel that our problems are our problems. Our real problem is not that we are problemed, our real problem is that we don’t know the real problem and we keep comforting ourselves with a very false feeling of alrightness, with a very false feeling of wellness.
And the moment the false feeling is about to be disturbed or threatened or verified in some way, crosschecked, we figure out some way to somehow sustain that false sense of inner wellness. We go and may purchase something, we go and find some way to entertain ourselves. Maybe, just have some good food or read some book that assures us that we are already alright.
There is a lot of that kind of spiritual propaganda these days, is there not? You are beautiful as you are. You are already the Truth.
That’s our real problem. This artificial sense of wellness, which never allows us to address the lingering and deep issue within. If it could be addressed, it could be resolved. But if it's not addressed, there is no possibility of resolution.