So you think there can be no glory in dispassion? You're wrong

 

It is often believed that glory and dispassion are contradictory and cannot co-exist. Glory and luxury without dispassion is a nauseating pomp and show. Such glory does not bring fulfillment for anyone; it is shallow.


Alternatively, the dispassion that is afraid of glory is weak. True dispassion is oblivious to glory. The glory that comes with dispassion is something that is true; it is permanent and authentic. When someone chases after glory, they are shallow. Movie stars, politicians and religious leaders who try to hold on to their status, to their glory, are certain to lose it. If you run after glory, all that you get is misery. 


When you are dispassionate, glory comes to you. If you are afraid of glory, that means you are not well grounded in dispassion. In India the sadhus (ascetics) run away from glory. They think they will lose their dispassion and get trapped in the web of the world, in the circus. Their dispassion is so blissful that they get attached to it. They are afraid of losing their dispassion, the centeredness and the bliss that comes with it. This is weak dispassion.


Dispassion is a state of being and glory is the happening around it. True dispassion can never be lost or overshadowed by glory. True dispassion is glorious. Real glory is true dispassion.

What exactly is life?

 

Often when you are happy you feel life is a dream because you do not believe it is real. When there is misery you feel life is a burden, and sometimes your misery is because you take trivial things too seriously. But if you have really gone through pleasure, you realize that pleasure is a burden, and if you have thoroughly undergone misery, you realize that life is a dream.


When you realize that you have been carried through every miserable situation, then you know life is a dream. And in between the pleasure and the pain, life is all a joke. Life is very uncertain. Before it takes you away, realize it is a dream, a burden or a joke. 


What about life is a joke? You do not question a joke. If you question a joke, it is no longer a joke. Do not question a burden either. It is a waste of time to question life and its events. 


A burden makes you go deep. It takes you to the core of yourself. Awareness of dreaming wakes you up and seeing life as a joke makes you light. The only certainty is that life is a dream, a burden or a joke, and only when you realize this can you be centered.