How can we break material attachments? There are many ways to break the attachments to things other than God.
When Dhruv’s step-mother told him, “You cannot sit on your father’s lap unless you are born out of my womb,” he immediately snatched that opportunity and went to forest to get what he desired.
There was a great king named Gopichand. When many servants were bathing him in a grand water pool, his mother saw him from top and started weeping. When he was taking bath with cold water, a few warm drops of tears fell on him. He turned around to see his weeping mother. The King started thinking on why she would cry when she was well taken care of?
After the bath, he dressed up and went to his mother.
He asked, “Mother, why were you sad? What is troubling you? The whole kingdom is at your service.”
His Mother replied, “I do not have any trouble, but I couldn’t control my tears.”
“Mother, please tell what made you feel bad.”
“Whether I tell you or not, you are going to feel bad. So, I am going to tell you. Your father’s body was more handsome than you. In my presence Yamraj took him away. Thinking that Yamraj might take my dear son too, I started feeling very bad.”
King Gopichand said, “What shall I do now?”
His Mother replied, “I want you to be free from death. Go to forest and start worshiping God.”
King Gopichand snatched the opportunity that broke the attachment to kingdom, family, and other relations to realize God.
Such attachment breaking incidents occur in everyone’s life. But we don’t utilize those opportunities.
Similar incident was in the life of Lord Buddha. When Lord Buddha was born to the King, the astrologer saw his birth time and stars, and reported to the King that he would either become a great Saint or a great King. Then the King had made arrangements to avoid his son Buddha (also called Siddharth) becoming a Saint. Gradually the kid grew up enjoying the luxuries of the kingdom and was restricted to the palace.
One day he got the chance to walk outside the palace along with a minister, and on the way he found a very old man walking with the support of a stick, his jaws and head were shivering, and his cloths were torn and dirty.
He asked the minister, “What is that?” pointing to that old man and thinking that it must be some weird creature.
Minister replied, “He is an old human being.”
As he has never seen an old man, he doubted “Is he really a human being?”
“Yes. Everyone becomes so at old age.”
“Everyone becomes so?”
“Yes. No one is excused.”
They continued to walk. On the way there was a dead body being taken away by few people.
Siddharth asked, “What is that?”
Minister replied, “It is the dead human being.”
As the conversation continued, Siddharth understood how much we are compressing ourselves in this short life. He grabbed that opportunity to get away and became Lord Buddha.
Maharaj says that attachment is with everyone. There is no one who doesn’t have attachment. Until the death of the person, there would be beatings with the whip of time trying to break your attachments.
Nishkulanand Swami says that it is good if one understands and break the attachments beforehand. Otherwise anyhow the whip of time is going to take care of it. Maharaj says that some people would snatch the opportunity that breaks the attachment. Rest of them are blinded.
In Srimad Bhagwat there was a story of King Chitraketu. King Chitraketu married millions of wives but couldn’t get a child. Once Narad Muni and Angira Muni visited King Chitraketu.
Chitraketu said, “Narad Maharaj and Angira Maharaj, I do not have kids. Please help me.”
Narad and Angira considered the King’s astrology and said that, “Maharaj, in your horoscope there are no kids for you.”
Chitraketu said, “Still, please bless me with a child.”
The Munis said, “Maharaj, if it is not there in your life, how could we bless? Everything is done by the Lord. Everything happens with His wishes.”
“No Maharaj, please do something and get me a kid.”
“Okay. We prayed to the Lord. We will get you a kid on the condition that we have to name the kid.”
The King replied, “For sure Maharaj.”
Then a queen become pregnant and gave birth to a boy. Munis named the kid as Harshashokh (meaning: joy & misery) and left the palace.
There were grand celebrations all over the kingdom.
The other queens who had not become mother became too much jealous and killed the baby.
Soon the whole kingdom was filled with sorrow and misery. The King and the queen wept on the floor vigorously.
Again, Narad and Angira appeared.
King prayed to them, “Maharaj, you blessed us the boy. Now he is dead. Please bring him back.”
Narad Muni replied, “Maharaj, it is as wished by the Lord. Please accept.”
King replied, “No Maharaj. Please bring him back once. Only for some time.”
The Munis replied, “Okay. We will bring him back for some time.”
The Munis brought the kid back to life with their spiritual strength.
The kid came back to life, woke up, and spoke to King Chitraketu as follows: “Why are always telling ‘my kid’, ‘my kid’? I have been your son thousands of times, and you have been my son thousands of times in our millions of births and deaths. Still you haven’t broke attachment with me?”
It instantly broke the attachment the king had with the kid. The Munis went back to their place. King went to the forests and became a great Yogi and Siddh.
Everyone goes through such incidents. Few of them catch the opportunity and realize the ultimate good. Others don’t. The others are like the cat living in a noisy market. A cat used to live in a noisy market-place for many years. After some time for personal reasons it had to move to a village. It found a house where it could secretly drink milk at night. The family found that a cat is drinking all the milk. The boy living in that house made a small bell to scare away the cat when it arrives.
One night when the cat arrived and was drinking milk, the boy suspected and started belling ‘Tin…Tin…Tin…’
The cat replied, “I used to live in the busy market where lot of sounds and noises would come all at once. What would your ‘Tin…Tin…Tin…’ noise do to me?” The cat continued to drink milk. The cat continued to say, “I will complete the milk and then leave.”
We are all like the cat that live in the noisy market place. We don’t care about the ‘Tin…Tin…Tin…’ sounds that come in the form of opportunities to break attachments. We do not mind them and continue to strengthen our attachments.
References:
16th July 2017: Los Angeles, CA
Vachanamrut Karyani 7