Vairagya Quotes

Desire can be eradicated from the roots by firmly imbibing the four attributes of: Jnan, Atmanishtha, Vairagya, Dharma and the full fledged devotion to God.

The Yogis say that the man who has discriminating powers, the man of good sense, sees through all that are called pleasure and pain, and knows that they come to all, and that one follows and melts into the other; he sees that men follow an ignis fatuus all their lives, and never succeed in fulfilling their desires. The great King Yudhishthira once said that the most wonderful thing in life is that evry moment we see people dying around us, and yet we think we shall never die. Surrounded by fools on every side, we think we are the only exceptions, the only learned men. Surrounded by all sorts of experiences of fickleness, we think our love is the only lasting love. How can that be? Even love is selfish, and the Yogi says that in the end we shall find that even the love of husbands and wives, children and friends, slowly decays. Decadence seizes everything in this life. It is only when everything, even love, fails, that, with a flash, man finds out how vain, how dreamlike is this world. Then he catches a glimpse of Vairagya, catches a glimpse of the beyond. It is only by giving up this world that the other comes; never through holding on to this one.

No matter how well one cultivates vairagya or how diligent one is in performing good actions or what measure of bhakti, devotion, one practises, one will not shed the sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ till one has attained knowledge. One can attain self-realisation only if one sheds this attachment to the ego. Only when this ‘I’ is done away with can one attain self-realisation. A man’s devotion to God is to be judged from the extent to which he gives up his stiffness and bends low in humility. Only then will he be, not an impostor, but a truly illumined man, a man of genuine knowledge.

Oh Devi, give me the food for jnana (knowledge) and vairagya. This means not to project my past into the future and destroy my life by quickly aging. Devi then gives the grain of the great truth, the knowledge of not projecting your past into the future. When the grains are offered into that skull, the skull was enjoying so much. So she purposely drops a little bit of grain outside the skull on the ground. The skull felt the taste of the food so much that it just jumped out to eat that food and Shiva was free of the skull. He was liberated.

Kashmir Shaivism also developed an integrated and effective method of spiritual practice that includes intense devotion, the study of correct knowledge, and a special type of yoga unknown to other systems of practical philosophy. These three approaches are meant to be carefully integrated to produce a strong and vibrant practice. Yoga is the main path that leads to Self-realization, theoretical knowledge saves yogins from getting caught at some blissful but intermediary level of spiritual progress, and devotion provides them the strength and focus with which to digest correctly the powerful results of yoga and so avoid their misuse. This is a practice for both the mind and the heart. The teachings offers offer a fresh and powerful understanding of life that develops the faculties of the mind, while the devotional aspects of Kashmir Shaivism expand the faculties of a student’s heart. Combined together, both faculties help students reach the highest goal to which Shaiva yoga can dead them. The yoga system of Kashmir Shaivism is known as the Trika system. It includes many methods of yoga, which have been classified into three groups known as sambhava, sakta, and anava. Sambhava yoga consists of practices in direct realization of the truth, without making any effort at meditation, contemplation, or the learning of texts. The emphasis is on correct being, free from all aspects of becoming. This yoga transcends the use of mental activity. Sakta yoga consists of many types of practices in contemplation on the true nature of one’s real Self. Anava yoga includes various forms of contemplative meditation on objects other than one’s real Self, such as the mind, the life-force along with its five functions (the five pranas), the physical form along with its nerve-centers, the sounds of breathing, and different aspects of time and space. Trika yoga teaches a form of spiritual practice that is specific to Kashmir Shaivism. This system, along with its rituals, has been discussed in detail in Abhinavagupta’s voluminous Tantraloka, which is one of the world’s great treatises on philosophy and theology. Unlike many other forms of yoga, the Trika system is free from all types of repression of the mind, suppression of the emotions and instincts, and starvation of the senses. It eliminates all self-torturing practices, austere vows or penance, and forcible renunciation. Shaiva practitioners need not leave their homes, or roam as begging monks. Indifference (vairagya) to worldly life is not a precondition to for practicing Trika yoga. Sensual pleasures automatically become dull in comparison with the indescribable experience of Self-bliss. This is a transforming experience that naturally gives rise to a powerful form of spontaneous indifference to worldly pleasures. Finally, regardless of caste, creed, and sex, Trika yoga is open to all people, who through the Lord’s grace, have developed a yearning to realize the truth, and who become devoted to the Divine. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. xxiii-xxiv

Ultimately we don’t have to do anything to attain vairagya (dispassion; detachment) but hold to our meditative practice to reveal the source of all we ever thought we desired. Then there is nothing else to crave; we have found enduring happiness that is there no matter what else appears before us. In the fullness of the heart there is nothing else to desire. In this dispassionate state we enjoy whatever comes to us, and freely release whatever leaves us while attending to dharma in the world.

What learning do we get for our modern-day life from the story of the Trimurti? In our lives too, we keep creating, sustaining, destroying. Take money, for example. We earn, save, spend. Brahma is the one who earns, brings in the money. Vishnu spends and invests it in the market, enabling exchange so that commerce flourishes. Shiva is someone who is not interested in money at all; his is the attitude of non-attachment, vairagya. On the other hand, Brahma’s children are so interested in money that they hoard and fight over it, which is why no one worships Brahma or his children. The one who does business with the world, is involved with it, is Vishnu, so we worship him. When we grow old and wish to get rid of our desires, we can follow Shiva’s example by renouncing money. Each of us has all these qualities, mostly Brahma’s, but we shouldn’t encourage those. We should harness Vishnu’s qualities, so that Lakshmi, money, follows us. Towards the end of our life, we should become like Shiva; renounce the material world and move on.

विरक्ति = Is it the way it is? (Detachment) वैराग्य = It is the way it is. (Quietness) सन्यास = It has been & will be the way it is

Hinduism" and the "mainstream"; how frequently are these words juxtaposed, and made synonymous, with each other by the ruling political party! "Mainstream": the word that would mean, in a democratic nation, the law-abiding democratic polity, is cunningly conflated, in the newspeak of our present government, with the religious majority; and those who don't belong to that majority become, by subconscious association and suggestion, anti-democratic, and breakers of the law. Ironically, saffron is the colour of our mainstream. Saffron, "gerua": its resonances are wholly to do with that powerful undercurrent in Hinduism, "vairagya", the melancholy and romantic possibility of renunciation. At what point, and how, did the colour of renunciation, and withdrawal from the world, become the symbol of a militant, and materialistic, majoritarianism? "Gerua" represents not what is Brahminical and conservative, but what is most radical about the Hindu religion; it is the colour not of belonging, or fitting in, but of exile, of the marginal man. Hindutva, while rewriting our secular histories, has also rewritten the language of Hinduism, and purged it of these meanings; and those of us who mourn the passing of secularism must also believe we are witnessing the passing, and demise, of the Hindu religion as we have known it.

Freedom, that is to say direct experience of samadhi, can be attained only by disciplined conduct and renunciation of sensual desires and appetites. This is brought about through adherence to the ‘twin pillars’ of yoga, abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa

Old wounds heal within, because of moha (infatuation due to illusion). Otherwise, one would be overcome by dispassion for the worldly life (vairagya).

O King, just as a human being bereft of spiritual knowledge never desires to give up his false sense of proprietorship over many material things, similarly, a person who has not developed detachment never desires to give up the bondage of the material body. Pingala, however, rose above her false sense of existence that day. She experienced great vairagya, detachment, and ananda, bliss. She realized that she was already complete and didn’t need another man to fulfil her. That the one she should have loved, the one for whom she wouldn’t have to wait day and night, the one who would never abandon her, was already inside her – God.

Detachment is the path of Lord Shiva; it is the path of liberation; it is the path of Infinite possibilities.

Beloved Mahadev, Realisation cannot come to you as a miracle done by your Guru. Lord Buddha, Lord Jesus, Rama Tirtha have all done Sadhana. Lord Krishna asks Arjuna to develop Vairagya and do Abhyasa. He did not say to him “I will give you Mukti now”. Therefore abandon the wrong notion that your Guru will give you Samadhi and Mukti. Strive, purify, meditate and realise. Sivananda

Virakti Vairaagya and Vanvas are continuum along mindset that sets in some evolved people, when betrayed by people or circumstances.

Vairagya (renunciation) does not mean giving up your wife and children and running away to a forest. The removal of the bad qualities in you is the true meaning of vairagya.