Going the Distance in Spiritual Life — Part 12:
Freedom from Worldliness
From the Vivekachudamani, The Crest Jewel of Discrimination, by Shankaracharya:
Six Solutions for Lack of Spiritual Success: 1. Renounce Cravings, 2. struggle/Self-Effort, 3. Refuge in a Path & Preceptor, 4. Absorption in Love of Truth, 5. Devotion to Discrimination, 6. Freedom from Worldliness (These points can be found and/or inferred in verses 8–10 of the Vivekachudamani.)
By the power of the Atman, let one rescue one’s own soul which lies drowned in the vast waters of worldliness. Let the wise, who have grown tranquil and who practice contemplation of the Atman, give up all worldly activities and struggle to cut the bonds of worldliness. — Vivekachudamani, verse 9 & 10, translation, Swami Prabhavananda
Worldliness is the chronic disease of this Age. — Sri Ramakrishna, 19th Century
The greatest problem of today is distraction. — Jamgong Kontrul Rinpoche, 20th Century
Outright apathy is the problem today. — Babaji Bob Kindler, 21st Century
Sri Shankara states in these first few verses of his Crest Jewel of Discrimination that we need freedom from worldliness. Why isn’t it an expression of freedom to court pleasure, throw off the strictures of religious disciplines and just be free to do whatever one wants? Swami Aseshanandaji would thunder from the podium that we want freedom from the senses, not to the senses. There’s a lot to unpack in that piquant turn of phrase. Swami Vivekananda was careful to explain in the late 1800’s, when Vedanta was brand new to the U.S., that we are not free until we have the power to resist the joining of the senses with their objects and resist the reaction of the mind to negative and pleasurable occurrences. There is a great difference between the freedom to the senses and freedom from the senses. There is always a price to pay with seeking pleasure and avoiding pain
“I am speaking to the western people.” This is how Swami Aseshanandaji began many of his Sunday lectures. Likewise, this article is directed to those in the U.S. and those influenced by western material values. It is especially directed to those who are still in school, entering their work lives, starting families or raising a family. “What is worldliness?” one might ask. “Why is it set so strongly against an opposite, ‘spirituality’?” “If we and all things are one in the supreme Self, doesn’t such a distinction cause more damage than good?” “It sounds so judgmental.”
Many of us, just stepping into spiritual life, are naïve about these questions. We have grown up with such terms as “worldly wise,” or “man or woman of the world,” stated in a positive way. We are raised to “go have fun,” which is simply occupying ourselves with the external world; we are raised to go to school so we can make money and enjoy the world of material objects, relationships, money, power, and hopefully avoid as much suffering as possible. But now we come up against the Dharma, and this view gets turned upside down. We begin to learn about maya, how this inscrutable power of the nondual Reality, Brahman, hides the nature of that Reality, and then distorts It. Indivisible Existence, Awareness, and Bliss appears to us as increments of time and space, as ideation, worlds, living beings, and other objects all teetering between the poles of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, life and death. We learn that Existence itself is the Real, the True, the Unchanging, and that everything that has beginnings, middles, and endings are just projections on That Ineffable Reality. We are thrilled by the absolute Purity and Freedom and Peace this portends as our innermost Self.
What prevents us from experiencing That? Worldliness is a major factor. We can define it simply as preoccupation with external phenomena, objects made of atoms and objects made of thought. Only Discrimination between the Eternal and the noneternal, the Unlimited and the limited, will break us free of its thrall. This is not judgmentalism, but discernment. Unfortunately, beings who are not ready to wake up from maya, and often those just waking up, cannot distinguish between these two and can fall into the philosophically vague and sentimental position of “my truth and your truth,” which makes it difficult to take a strong inward stance on the evil of worldliness. It is a detriment not just for the spiritual aspirant, but for everyone because pleasure- and power-seeking saps the virtue and energy of a society. The fact remains: if we are focused on the external, we are not seeing the Eternal, which is the essence of all phenomena, the Source of all strength. The Eternal is the essence but is never the name and form that separates one object or thought from another. As Babaji Bob Kindler often states in classes, “form covers Formlessness.”
At its foundation, worldliness is the desire for worlds — this physical earth and heavenly realms. There is no reason for desiring worlds unless one is also desiring a body to enjoy these worlds with, and enjoying these worlds means seeking various kinds of objects with which to gratify the senses. Later in the Vivekachudamani, Sri Shankara also states that desire for religious rituals, for the purpose of going to heaven, completes this list of Three Great Desires: desire for worlds, for bodily satisfaction, for religious rituals to gain heaven.
Worldliness is taking the world, activities, and objects therein, to be the goal of life and the source of one’s happiness, security, and acceptance. All of one’s physical and mental energy gets directed outwardly to things of no lasting value — a fact that is generally overlooked — and then one’s life becomes hopelessly entangled. Sri Ramakrishna gave this syndrome the terse expression, “lust and greed.” Lex Hixon interpreted it for the contemporary West by calling it “mundane human convention.” (Mundane: characterized by human affairs, concerns, and activities that are often practical, immediate, transitory, and ordinary. Convention: usage, custom, or practice generally agreed on and followed especially in social usage or moral matters. — Websters) Hence, by the force of desire, ingrained in the mind for transitory satisfactions and the wealth needed to secure them, people become bound, not just in one life, but for lifetimes — “living in pallid imitation of everyone else, hoping to find the true way,” as the poet saint Ramprasad sings.
Swami Vivekananda, a sannyasin, a free Soul, who brought the Vedanta to the West in 1893, exhorted us to understand that the most important condition necessary for growth is freedom. But society, via parents, relatives, friends, and institutions are mostly telling us that our security and freedom lies in all that limits us: conjugal unions, children, work, desires for pleasure, success, heaven, etc. Granted, some are satisfied with this and are not interested or willing to seek for more. That is their choice.
For spiritual aspirants, freedom from worldliness is not just a matter of being free from one’s own attachment to mundane human convention. These can be transformed via spiritual practices like study of Atmajnan scriptures (scriptures that focus on Self-Realization), meditation on the indivisible nature of the true Self of all beings, worship of God in a universal spirit of Oneness, and actions performed selflessly as worship of God in all beings. These cover the Four Yogas, which Swami Vivekananda highlighted as the Religion of this Age — one that can support and strengthen all existing religions and their adherents. It is also important that the spiritual aspirant, in the early stages, take a stand on freedom from the worldliness of others who want to distract one from dharmic pursuits, and in various ways try to undermine it. This can be insidious and hard to deflect if they themselves think they are trying to save you from financial or social disaster. They cannot see beyond the walls of their own narrow well. “I’m successful, wealthy, having lots of fun,” etc.; “do as I do…” The experiences and examples of the worldly can be persuasive if one is not armed with the teachings. This is another reason why it is important to keep one’s spiritual life private while it matures over time and spend time in Holy Company.
To conclude, one needs freedom from one’s own worldly habits, freedom from the worldliness of others, and freedom from the worldliness of the subtle worlds. This is because worldliness, mundane human convention, is all based in desire, and desire-based actions result in karma. Not all karmas created in one lifetime will come to fruition in the same lifetime, thus future lives are seeded. Beings with unfulfilled desires, abiding in subtle realms like the life heavens, will have to be reborn in a physical body and try to fulfill or transcend desires. Their desire for worlds and bodies is part of what maintains the status quo in any given region and culture. Embodied humans and disembodied ancestors are rotating on the wheel of birth and death. In our SRV classes, Babaji Bob Kindler reminds us frequently that Lord Buddha got out of the river of time and broke free from the hold of the ancestors, got free from the karmic bonds. The sannyasins of India renounce the world, the subtle realms, and bodies, and practice spiritual disciplines to break the karmic hold of families, past, present, and future. Perhaps for this reason it is said, in the case of one who attains Liberation, that 7 generations backwards and forwards of one’s family get liberated. <>
“Desire is at the root of all sorrows, the cause of repeated births and deaths, and the main obstacle on the path of liberation.” — Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi
Notes from SRV classes with Babaji Bob Kindler:
“In the time of Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master noted that the main problem of the day, spiritually speaking, was “worldliness” — the tendency of living beings to forego religious and spiritual activities and practices and default to comforts and pleasures, full time. In more recent times, in the 1970’s, the great Tibetan master, Jamgong Kontrul Rinpoche, stated that “distraction” was the main problem of the day, the taking of people’s attentions away from crucial spiritual concerns and practices. Today, the problem has shifted once again, and we see that outright “apathy” is the problem, that there is simply no interest in what makes for a healthy and wholistic spiritual life that includes physical exercise, purification of life-force, mental focus on selfless service, intellectual study of philosophical texts and scriptures, and worship of and meditation upon Divine Reality — a Reality that both outstrips and improves the world of relativity that people cling to despite illness and suffering.”
You speak of the Indian Rishis? They were mainly householder rishis. Their whole life was Dharma. They did not approach it by practicing and then giving up, or running hot and cold, or by giving way to complacency, but by sincere, adamant self-effort followed by attainment of the highest order.
Constancy, fealty to the Ideal, imperviousness to complacency, freedom from boredom, remaining enthused — these make up a successful spiritual life.
If you want to see Brahman you have to dig out of maya — that’s sadhana, spiritual effort. Without this, you only have spiritual complacency in the world.
In Part 13 of this series we look into The Five Signs of Spiritual Success: right action, correct discernment, knowledge of Reality, non-reliance on physical/moral practices, and the will to practice.
