Editorial

Finding the Riverbank

Are the waves in the ocean or river real? As long as we see the waves, they are certainly real. But what are waves made of? Waves are not water. Waves are actually circles, but we see only the upper part of the circle. These are energy circles, caused by wind, gravitation etc. The movement of energy in circles creates waves. We only see the upper part.   Waves rise and fall constantly, day and night. Energy acts constantly. Which wave is new, which one is old is almost impossible to say. If you sit on the sand for sometime and watch the waves rising and falling you may think, “Why are they rising wasting such a lot of energy, only to die down the next moment?”

Sit on the bank of a river. Create an imaginary line in front of you. The water that crosses that line is the past. The line is the present, and the water that flows towards the line is the future. So, as you sit on the bank of the river, water from the future flows into the past. Why past? You have seen that water flow by already. Water flows constantly, day and night. As you sit on the bank of the river, you see future becoming the past instantaneously.

Nature or the world is similar. What is to come is the future, what has happened is the past. The future is rushing towards the past.  The question is, what is new in the future? If we could sit on some “river bank” of the world and watch, it’s just the same flow like water.  It is the same nature that flows from the “future” to the “past” constantly. The same trees, plants, animals, humans, buildings, world–keeps on flowing from the future to the past.  We sit in the middle, in the present, and think that the future is going to be bright, the future shall be different, and so on. So what has been added to the future? Our hopes and expectations. We hope to see a better and bright future.

There is the other side of the story also. The elderly think that the past was golden. They think that the future would be devastating. This, again, is either a hope or an expectation.

So what is the meaning of this story? What flows is just water. Just like the ripples and waves are nothing but wind or energy which appear as huge transformations in that water, life is a flux. We create an imaginary line and divide life into two–past and the future. It is just the flow of, let’s say, the three gunas, sattwa, rajas and tamas in diverse shapes and forms. We add color to this flow by saying, “the past was bad, the future shall be great.” The tomato plant gives tomatoes always, forever and not black pepper. The pepper plant shall never produce mangoes. It is all the same. We think there shall be some change, some thing that brings joy to us. About our lives, we study, work, earn money for a living, die, take birth, study, work, earn money for a living….and so on.

Advaita Vedanta says, find a “river bank” of life to sit and watch the flux of life and do not flow with the current. Misery comes when we flow with the current. Standing away from the flow and watching, observing objectively is the way. This brings freedom.

What is that riverbank of life? Vedanta says, that riverbank is the real I, the Atman. All the rest is matter, ever-changing matter.

May Sri Ramakrishna, Mother and Swamiji bless us all.

Swami Sunirmalananda