The basics. The foundation. The bottom-lines.
Move attention from:
From a Sufi teaching story [1]:
"How much of my life is being wasted while I wait? Waiting for someone to tell me what to do, or for something to happen which will change my condition and frame of mind?"
Babuji: A truly happy man is one who is happy under all circumstances.
According to the Sufis, man has better and more reliable inner senses and the capacities to educate them than constant emotional stimulus. [1]
(Unpacked: According to the Sufis, man has better and more reliable inner senses than those arising from constant emotional stimulus. And man's capacities to educate or train those senses include better and more reliable ways than such constant emotional stimulus.)
Thus, my understanding of levels of peace:
(Normally, we move between the first two levels without knowing the other levels, or even absolute peace, is possible. With simple accumulation of spiritual practice one moves to deeper levels.
The fifth level is a siddhi from uninterrupted ahiṁsa per PYS 2.35 - ahiṁsa pratiṣṭāyām tat sannidhau vaira tyāgaḥ)
SAADI, THE SUFI author of the Persian classic, The Rose Garden, writes of a visit to the burial place of John the Baptist, in Syria.
He arrived there one day, exhausted and footsore. But then, as he was feeling sorry for himself, he saw a man who was not only tired, but had no feet. Saadi gave thanks to God that he, at least, had feet.
This story, on the obvious level, means "be grateful for small mercies." Its teaching on that level is found in all cultures. It is useful to help one to find a larger perspective in his situation when suffering from disabling self-pity.
The employment of such tales for emotional purposes - to switch the mental attitude and to make a person contented with, and perhaps even momentarily grateful for his lot - is characteristic of the conventional type of instruction.
Modern sophisticates say: "All that Saadi did was to inculcate so-called moral virtues - his work is outmoded."
Traditional, crude, sentimentalists may say: “How beautiful to dwell on the misery of others and one’s own comparative good luck.”
But Saadi, being a Sufi, included in his writings materials which had more than one possible function. This tale is one of them.
In Sufi schools, the piece is treated for what it is - an exercise.
The student may benefit from whatever "uplifting" moral may be the conventional interpretation.
But, without introspection, yet with self-observation, he should be able to say:
"I realize that changes in my mood are dependent on emotional stimuli.
"Do I always have to be dependent upon 'seeing a man with no feet' or reading about it before I realize that 'I have feet'?
"How much of my life is being wasted while I wait for someone to tell me what to do, or something to happen which will change my condition and frame of mind?"
According to the Sufis, man has better and more reliable inner senses and capacities for educating them than constant emotional stimulus.
The object of the Sufi interpretation of this lesson would be nullified if it caused people to start an orgy of self-questioning of an emotional kind.
The purpose of pointing out this Sufi usage of the narrative is for it to be registered in the mind, so that the student may in the future notice a higher form of assessment of his situation, when it begins to operate in him.
NOTES
[1] Idries Shah, Wisdom of the Idiots, pg.150, The Sanctuary of John the Baptist
[2] Daaji: therefore, zero desires => infinite peace
Turn the attention from always outward to inward long enough and deep enough, repeatedly, until it can effortlessly go both outward and inward at will or as needed.
Let all energy points/knots turn into chakras and then into lotuses and then into almost nothingness, so energy can flow freely at all levels.
Accept energy coming into you and going out of you. Then, turn all your outgoing energy inward and let it become subtler and subtler. At the subtlest it is Divine Love.
Repeatedly surrender all reactions to incoming energy consciously to the inner Master. They become lighter and lighter, until perhaps they are no more. [1]
Accept whatever comes peacefully and uninhibitedly, keeping the above in mind. [2]
Consciously let your inner peace and joy and Divine Love flow outward, at as many levels of subtlety as possible, as much as you can.
Change from mostly tamas and/or rajas to mostly, if not almost entirely, sattva. This happens naturally through repeated effortless surrendered meditation.
NOTES
[1] True vairāgya and a simple yet beautifully effective application of PYS 1.37 - vīta rāga viṣayam va cittam
[2] This is abhyāsa and, with [1], PYS 1.12 in its entirety - abhyāsa vairāgyābhyām tad nirodhaḥ
There is a set of learning levels described in What Did You Ask At School Today, Book 2 [1]:
1. Remembering what is taught exactly as it is taught.
2. Remembering it later (at least a year, or even a lifetime, later)
3. Being able to apply the learning/understanding to new problems
4. Being able to teach it to others (so they also reach this level - a recursive ranking)
Humans are all about experiencing, learning and understanding from their experiences, and sharing their understanding with others:
pratyakṣa, anumāna, āgama
But if you can share your understanding to the level that not just your understanding, but your very experience is evoked in another, that is true āgama. [2]
Doing it optimally, for a significant portion of the human species, such that the experience of one human then spreads effortlessly across the entire species, is the grand problem of spiritual evolution.
(Removing crud - mala, vikṣepa, āvaraṇa - from the internal and external senses of that significant portion of humanity, for an exact evocation of their experiences, is an antecedent grand problem!)
NOTES
[1] Mukunda, Kamala V. 2019. What Did You Ask At School Today: A Handbook Of Child Learning Book 2. HarperCollins Publishers India
[2] And that is the only distinguishing mark of a true teacher. A true spiritual teacher does this for her inward experience.
