Commentary by Swami Ananda Saraswati
Knowledge becomes handy when you are in a complex situation. If you miss that, you make the situation more and more complex. A child cries when it is born. Everyone around the child smiles. Whereas, when a person dies, the people around cry. There are cases where the dying person cries and people around him smile within themselves, out of relief. When you start something (Say your job or business), you see yourself where you are and you strive to improve yourself. After working for a few years, if you discover that you are not improving, will you continue with that job? When it comes to life, the fundamental point is “Do you evaluate yourself?” Even if you evaluate yourself, it is not based on you, it is rather based on others. You all evaluate ourselves based on what you have rather than who you are. In a complex situation, what you have does not come to your rescue. Only what you are comes to the forefront. Whatever you go through in your life, you project that upon others. It maybe an object, person or situation. Whether the situation is social, emotional or financial, you try to add your projections upon people objects and situations. It is not reality.
In any given time, if you observe carefully, knowledge comes handy, followed by people and other resources. This must be understood very carefully. Rather, you look for resources first. The concept of “use and throw” started with ball pen. Earlier there used to be an ink fountain pen. But ball pen took over. No doubt ball pens are convenient. However, this “use and throw” concept of ball pen has destroyed us. In your subconscious mind, it is established that “if something is not working, discard or throw it”. People have started applying this unfortunately to relationships. Similarly credit card or mobile payments do not work at the right time. If knowledge is not handy to manage a situation, you depends upon other people or objects. While doing this, your sense of dependence increases. When this increases, you end up as a consumer. Not as a contributor. At once, you become a consumer and your life is just a struggle for your survival.
If you look at people around, irrespective of education or not, they are struggling most of the time. Why do you struggle? You are struggling for survival. In this world there is nothing called emergency. We create an emergency out of our insecurity and dependence. For a doctor, an emergency is only when a person is gasping for breath. And it is possible that the doctor may not be able to reach on time. That time you struggle, when you treat every situation as an emergency. For Knowledge to be handled, we have to give priority to knowledge. Else it will never become handy when we need it. It will simply become an information and a burden over time in your daily life. You all are currently in this situation. You all have information, with the help of technology or our own smartness. But is this knowledge useful for you? Is the knowledge helping you grow? Or is the knowledge making you dependent? If knowledge does not help you grow and instead forces you to depend upon, that situation, object or person is not healthy for you. There is a difference between ‘being happy’ and ‘becoming happy’. The more you have a sense of becoming, the more you are suffocated with yourself and your life. Life is really about sense of ‘being’. If you want to ‘become’ something or someone, then you become stressful. You continue to work without knowing this difference. The purpose of life must to “be a happy person” and not “become a happy person”. This text Yati Pancakam has five verses on a Yati (superficially means ‘a happy person’). Also known as Kaupina Pancakam, this famous quintet is attributed to Adi Sankara.
While praising the sanyasin as the most fortunate, the verses highlight the inner disposition of the renunciant as the one who is free of longing, and therefore is carefree and happy. This text highlights what is the key for a person to live a happy life.