The one who enjoys walking with just a kaupina is a blessed person and is called a Yati. It does not mean that the person does not have anything. It only means that the person ‘chooses’ not to have anything. When you choose not to have, it is a blessing, as you are able to exercise your free will. Only humans have this option of exercising their faculty of choice. No other living being has this option.
An animal does not plan for the next meal, but humans plan for the next day, next year, and even the next generation. Freedom is not in the outside world. Nobody can make you free either. The more you have the ability to exercise your faculty of choice, the more you are a free person. When you are not able to exercise your choice, you become suffocated and helpless.
You all exercise your faculty of choice. The best example is when you visit a shopping mall and there is a discount sale going on. You exercise your choice to buy the items on sale. The faculty of choice that you are able to use is based on your preferences, your conditioning, your likes, and dislikes. This way you complicate your life. You think you are exercising your choice. But in reality, you are not.
You rarely exercise your faculty of choice. Most of the time, you are forced or cornered by the situation, people, or surroundings to exercise your faculty of choice. This situation of helplessness is called stress. If you cannot manage stress, it leads to more distress. What makes you helpless? You become helpless when the situation takes over you and you want to control the situation. Despite controlling the situation, it takes over you. You want the situation to unfold based on your whims and fancies.
Who is the cause of stress? It is you who welcomes stress into your life. You want everything to function according to your wishes. This is neither possible nor healthy. Unless you want to prove or compete, you will not try to control a given situation or people. When you have a notion that you are better than others, you will not be able to enjoy that “betterness” in you. The person who has been beaten up in life always tries to control. When you dwell upon the teaching, you will stop controlling.
Do you work for control or security? You all work for comfort in the name of security. Not a single person is working for security. The more you work for comfort, the more you are miserable. You become ‘comfortably’ miserable, and in this state, nobody can empathize with you. People around you will only feel sorry for you. Unfortunately, you all are brainwashed to work for comfort. Is there anything called comfort? A state of mind, wherever you are acquainted, gives you comfort.
Comfort is not in the outside world. You think you will be comfortable when you acquire certain things. However, comfort is a mental status. Your usual way of thinking is not being questioned. Hence you show off your comfort but are not comfortable within. The teaching of Vedanta highlights that you don’t have to work for comfort. It is the by-product of work. As you work, the result has to bring some comfort to you. When you work for security instead of comfort, you can be comfortable within. A Yati is thus happy in any given situation. He does not bother about basic needs. You, on the other hand, are always worried about the future.