JOIN USDispassion starts happening naturally. When you grow up, your mind doesn’t get stuck to small things. Like, you were attached to lollypops when you were small. Yet, when you reached school or college that attachment naturally dropped.
When you grow up, you still have friends but you rise above that entanglement. Similar is the case with mother and child. Entanglement starts leaving you naturally. If dispassion doesn’t happen, then you experience sorrow. We get into the cycle of sorrow thinking – ‘Oh, I did so much. I did so much for my kids and see what they are doing now.’ What responsibility you were supposed to do, you have fulfilled.
There is no restriction on others’, your children’s feelings. We can’t ask anybody to express feelings forcefully. Feelings naturally arise in anybody’s heart whatever those feelings are. Feelings don’t ask for permission before arising. But if you live in knowledge then negative feelings are almost negligible. Also positive feelings exist not as craving but love. People say knowledgeable is the one who kills one’s feelings.
No, it’s not like that. Sadbhav, saintly feelings continue to exist. Lord Krishna also said in the Bhagwad Geeta ‘One who is not tied to me - the Consciousness, Higher Self - neither has intellect nor feelings. Without feelings and intellect, there is no question of peace or happiness.' Transforming craving and aversion into love is dispassion. Lord Shankaracharya also said there is no happiness in the world which can’t be attained through dispassion. Dispassion doesn’t mean going to forests. It has been so wrongly interpreted. Bliss and happiness are there in dispassion. Like the lotus resides in water but still remains free from getting wet. In the same way while living in society one is not to let society enter one’s mind. Birds fly above you that’s ok, but don’t let them build a nest in your head. Sanyas is getting established in the Self. One who is unshaken by anything is a sanyasi. Sanyas is 100 percent dispassion and 100 percent bliss and has no demand. It’s very good if sanyas happens after the fourth ashram, the vanaprasth ashram. So much satisfaction in the mind that ‘Nobody is my own’ and ‘Nobody is the other’, or ‘Everybody is my very own’, or even ‘this body is not mine’ is the state of sanyas. Sanyas is total happiness in the mind. Leaving clothes and going to forests is not sanyas.
Your true nature is bliss. But trying to enjoy the bliss, you step down from is-ness to am-ness - "l am peaceful", "I am blissful". And that is followed by "I am miserable". "I am" is dispassion. You can be anywhere and be dispassionate. Dispassion is welcoming everything. Centeredness brings energy, a spark. Enjoyment of bliss brings inertia. If you are dispassionate, the bliss is still there. When the freezer is full of ice cream you do not bother about it. Dispassion takes away the sense of scarcity. Passion is a sense of lack of abundance. And whenever everything is in abundance, dispassion happens. And when dispassion is there, everything comes in abundance.