I am here in India presently, the booming bustling messy city of Hyderabad.
Every morning, I walk back from the temple after the morning program. I admire the cleaners busily cleansing the streets of all sorts of garbage… pieces of paper, plastic wrappers, cigarette butts, and more.
They work quite hard, actually. They diligently sweep and clean up everything. They collect it all, put it into their carts, and take it all away. At about 8 AM in the morning, everything looks so neat and clean!
But come the afternoon, the streets look almost the same as they did before. This, despite all the hard work by the cleaners of Hyderabad!
What just happened?
Litterbug city
The culprits are the citizens (no offense intended) of Hyderabad! Most of them are chronic litterbugs… I saw one man on a motorcycle. He opens up a sachet of tobacco. He pops the contents into his mouth and discards the wrapper right there. All this while he is stopped in traffic.
A child peels the wrapper off a sweet. She pops it into her mouth. Then she discards the wrapper.
A street vendor is preparing some fruit for sale… He discards all the peels in a heap behind his cart.
A housewife has just swept her home, and she dumps the rubbish right on the street outside her house.
A man in a business suit is in a chauffeured car. He rolls down the tinted window of his fancy car. He out throws out an envelope, carefully torn into tiny bits. He spits out a stream of red tobacco induced liquid.
Boys light firecrackers on the street – it is a few weeks to Diwali. They’re getting a head start on the merriment… Every firework is left right there on the street where it went off… Bits of plastic, paper tubes, shredded paper.
Multiply that 11 Million times… the population of Hyderabad. It’s a recipe for one messy place!
Then the next morning, the cleaners will be at it again… sweep, collect, throw.
But Hyderabad looks as messy as ever, day after day. The rivers are open sewers, drains are clogged with plastic film… People have been spitting all over the place.
The cleaners don’t stand a chance, they are outnumbered!
Spiritual Cleansing, Materialistic Littering
On the spiritual path, people often engage in cleanups… Prayers, Purificatory rituals, penances, austerities… But sometimes we feel discouraged when there is no progress.
Let’s say someone prays or meditates (cleansing the consciousness) for 5 minutes, 20 minutes, or even two hours every day. Or more. What happens for the remaining time during the day?
It’s the same thing – gotta’ stop littering for the effects of the cleaning to show!
The streets of Hyderabad are cleaned each morning. But the actions of the chronic litterbugs make it seem futile. Similarly, our consciousness can be littered by where we choose to focus our attention.
It is important to focus our consciousness in a way that doesn’t litter our consciousness with more materialistic garbage.
The elephant’s bath
In a picturesque analogy from the Bhagavatam, King Parikshit makes this astute observation. He observes the souls passing in turn through regions of enjoyment and purgatory throughout the Universe. Souls are rewarded with heavenly pleasures for their pious activities, and punished for their sinful activities.
These pious and impious activities don’t cancel each other out. The after-effects of both must be experienced separately. Enjoyment for pious deeds, and suffering for the impious. And every such activity leaves behind a seed of future entanglement.
Many of us on the spiritual path are very keen to avoid the sinful activities. But all too often, we still fall victim.
क्वचिन्निवर्ततेऽभद्रात्क्वचिच्चरति तत्पुन: ।
प्रायश्चित्तमथोऽपार्थं मन्ये कुञ्जरशौचवत् ॥ १० ॥kvacin nivartate ’bhadrāt
kvacic carati tat punaḥ
prāyaścittam atho ’pārthaṁ
manye kuñjara-śaucavatSometimes one who is very alert so as not to commit sinful acts is victimized by sinful life again. I therefore consider this process of repeated sinning and atoning to be useless. It is like the bathing of an elephant, for an elephant cleanses itself by taking a full bath, but then throws dust over its head and body as soon as it returns to the land.
Many of us do the same… we engage in purification, and then we cover our consciousness with dirt.
What is that “dirt”… It is activities which cover our spiritual consciousness with material contamination. Think television, newspapers, mundane movies, games of crickets and soccer, video games, internet gossip and worse.
Why?
It’s so important to lose the habit of littering our consciousness!
Lord Krishna says this in His Song, the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of God…
विषया विनिवर्तन्ते निराहारस्य देहिनः ।
रसवर्जं रसोऽप्यस्य परं दृष्ट्वा निवर्तते ॥ ५९ ॥viṣayā vinivartante
nirāhārasya dehinaḥ
rasa-varjaṁ raso ’py asya
paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartateThough the embodied soul may be restricted from sense enjoyment, the taste for sense objects remains. But, ceasing such engagements by experiencing a higher taste, he is fixed in consciousness.
You see, the taste for sense objects remains. There is facility, there is time, and so, we fall headlong.
But is there a way to prevent this? How to avoid the fall?
केचित्केवलया भक्त्या वासुदेवपरायणा: ।
अघं धुन्वन्ति कार्त्स्न्येन नीहारमिव भास्कर: ॥ १५ ॥kecit kevalayā bhaktyā
vāsudeva-parāyaṇāḥ
aghaṁ dhunvanti kārtsnyena
nīhāram iva bhāskaraḥTranslation
Only a rare person who has adopted complete, unalloyed devotional service to Kṛṣṇa can uproot the weeds of sinful actions with no possibility that they will revive. He can do this simply by discharging devotional service, just as the sun can immediately dissipate fog by its rays.
The process of Krishna Consciousness is so sublime. There is Krishna Consciousness activity to immerse ourselves twenty four hours a day.
24/7 Spiritual Engagement
We can start with rising early for Mangala Arati. We can engage in a full morning program of hearing, chanting, and worship. Our consciousness becomes charged up with Krishna. We can then insert Krishna Conscious thoughts, words, and deeds throughout the day as we go about our duties.
And of course, someone who rises early is also forced to rest early. So much trouble avoided!
And of course, genuine spiritualists do not litter. Not their consciousness, not their homes, nor their streets.
Let us take advantage of this process! Want to avoid littering your streets of your consciousness? Want to know how?
P.S: I have nothing against the city or the people of Hyderabad. It is practically the same story in every village, town, or city in the world. It is the terrible practice of littering, both spiritual and material, but especially the spiritual littering that I’m advocating against.
Freedom through Genuine Spiritual Progress 