Swami Tejomayananda

Every January 1 we welcome the New Year with bonhomie and joy. As we bid farewell to the old year, we generally introspect the year past and make new resolutions. Our intentions are good, but as the year progresses we find that most resolutions fall by the side. We slip back to our old habits and find that slowly the enthusiasm with which we began has petered out.

Our daily life is typically a routine of waking up, freshening up, going about our daily chores or work and then rest at the end of the day. If we analyse our daily life, we realise that we are mostly dealing with people, material things and situations or events. Put differently, life can be defined as perceptions from these three sources and our responses to them. Everybody has to respond, there is not escaping that.
Further we find that our responses to these perceptions tend to be different at different points of time. And different people tend to respond differently to the same situation. Most times we realise that there is a gap between knowledge and our responses. Though we know what we should or should not do, we are unable to act in accordance with this knowledge. This is because we have not been able to assimilate the knowledge.
Our scriptures are replete with guidelines on how to act and live life fully. The Bhagavad Gita gives us a vision of total life. However, nowadays, it is read only when someone is on the deathbed or we see it chanted on TV when some leader dies. But most of us do not know what the Gita teaches — it teaches us how to live in this world. Some people even worship the Gita by wrapping it in a silk cloth so tightly that its spiritual knowledge is securely tied up and not allowed to escape! With all the spiritual knowledge we remain where we are, because this great knowledge is only in the books! This knowledge can only help us if we understand it and apply it to our lives.
The message of the Gita can be understood by a very simple sloka, from the Gita itself:
Uddharetaatmanaatmaanam naa’tamaanavasaadayet
aatmaiva hyaatmano bandhuraatmaiva ripuraatmanah.
(You raise yourself to great heights by your own efforts. Do not degrade yourself or look down upon yourself. You are your best friend and you are your worst enemy.)
If living in India our condition is pathetic, we cannot blame any outsider for it. We have effectively made ourselves like this. People say that the British came here and adopted the policy of divide and rule. The fact is that we divided ourselves and they ruled over us. Even now this is what we are doing, and we are very good at it. We divide ourselves into smaller and smaller groups, act against others, score points against them and feel that we are successful.
We neither have a clear idea of success or happiness nor a clear vision of life. We have divided life into many parts. Our idea of happiness is very limited. We may be successful in a particular field, but have failed in the totality of life. On the cricket field, a successful batsman is the one who is able to play against all kinds of bowling and is not intimidated by different field settings.
Lacking a complete vision, we can only play in particular field settings. A doctor may be competent to handle a medical problem, but is unable to deal with the emotional problems of his erratic and temperamental son. His knowledge of medicine is of no avail against his son’s constant outbursts of temper.
How can we achieve success? Our idea of success is the fulfillment of various desires and ambitions that we have or the success of the group to which we belong. But we have no idea how this success is related to others or to the nation as a whole. Nor are we bothered to know about it. If I have money for myself, I don’t care whether others have it or not.
A man with the right vision is concerned not only with how he can gain success for himself in a given field, but also with how he can include others in his success.
So in the New Year let us broaden our vision, making it all encompassing to live life successfully, completely and joyfully.

— Swami Tejomayananda, head of Chinmaya
Mission Worldwide, is an orator, poet, singer, composer and storyteller. To find out more about Chinmaya Mission and Swamiji, visit www.chinmayamission.com.
© Central Chinmaya Mission Trust.