Retreat to Conquer

 

In Ramayana there was a very powerful King called Vali who used to rule Kishkindha. He had a quarrel with his brother Sugriva. Vali abused and dethroned Sugriva and also seized Sugriva's wife. On the request of Sugriva, Lord Rama came for Sugriva's help. It was mentioned that Vali had special powers in combat. When any opponent comes face to face with him, Vali used to drain off half of his opponents energy and merged it with his energy and used to grow more powerful. Rama knew about this very well and he made sure that he doesn't fight face to face with the King Vali. He shot an arrow standing behind a tree aiming the back of the Vali and killed him. Even a great warrior like Rama has to change his approach while dealing with the one who grab off opponents energy. 

When our attention comes across a thing outside us or a thought arising within us two things happen parallelly. We experience a thing or a thought . At the same time we  give off some energy to it in the process of evaluating, judging, concluding, enjoying, hating or fighting with that thing or thought. Swami Vivekananda says any experience or thought how small it may be make us react to it. Each such reaction ends in losing some amount of our energy. This happens consciously or unconsciously. The energy lost may be very minimal or substantial.  This energy loss becomes substantial if our thoughts continuously keep coming in the way of our attention and drains off the energy continuously by generating pleasurable or painful emotions. We entertain thoughts with the objective to gain the pleasure or avoid pain but in that process we end up  giving off our energies to them.

Lord Rama made sure that he don't face the King Vali to protect his energy. In the same way the effective way to protect our energies from the thought is to not react to it. When we try to meditate on a point, a series of thoughts dwell around our focus and capture our attention. We get entangled in them by reacting to them while evaluating, enjoying or resisting them. In this process we lose our onepointedness and drain away our energy to the thoughts and emotions.

What do we do when we want to avoid any thing?

We turn away from it or we distance ourselves away from it.

Turning away from the thought : (changing the Orientation)

There was a cow who was grazing near the jungle. It was worried about its calf waiting for it in the village. The cow was deeply thinking about the calf . When it was about to return back a tiger came right infront of it threatening to kill it. The worried cow told the tiger, " I am not bothered about my death. I am only worried about my calf who is waiting for my milk. Please let me go and comeback after feeding my baby". The tiger gave the cow a chance. It went back fed the calf, kept the calf in safe hands and returned back and offered itself to the tiger. The tiger was impressed by the commitment of the cow to its offspring and its sincerity. It freed the cow. 

The attention of the mother is towards her child all the time and in all the situations. She never bothered about anything around her not even about her life. The attention was not on herself nor her surroundings nor on the thoughts about the past or future . The attention was oriented only towards the calf. Orientation towards something is beyond concentration. While concentrating we focus on a thing which is infront of us at that moment. Orienting towards something means concentrating on it continuously even when a thing is not infront of us. Swami Vivekanada says " meditate for few minutes in a day but live the rest of the day for that few minutes." Being  meditative  all the day is much more important than meditating for few minutes in a day. The meditative mode may be like focusing on ones own breath (Raja yoga), on a favorite deity(bhakti yoga), or pondering continuously over a learning process, creative idea or contribution (karma yoga). If our attention is oriented to a particular idea it tends to neglect all other thoughts not related to that idea.

 Distancing from the thought:

During the entire combat between the Vali and Sugriva , Sri Rama made sure that he remained at a distance from Vali in order to conserve his energy. In the same way the closer we move to the thought more we tend to associate with it and get lost in it. When ever we meditate we get disturbed often by the thoughts. In the physical world we tend to push away any  thing which disturbs us.  However if we want to try to push away the cloud or smoke what will happen? we will get more into it . Trying to push away a thought is like dealing with a cloud or smoke. The more we maneuver it the more we entangle with it. Only way to deal with a thought is to distance from it but not to maneuver it. 

Our thought is like Vali. Vali draws away the energy even from a more powerful opponent and overpowers him. In the same way our thought draws energy from our consciousness and makes the consciousness entangle more with it. In this process our consciousness loses more and more energy to the thought and finally the attention get lost in the thought. In this way the thought stands between the consciousness and the reality. 

Patanjali defined Yoga as " Yogaha Chitta vritti Nirodhaha". It means Yoga is nothing but cessating the thoughts. If we consciously try to push away the thought , you tend to energize it by giving energy to it. The only way to deal with the thought is not to react to it. If we don't react to it we tend to distance from it. This leads to degeneration and cessation of the thought. If we invade the thought we will lose ourselves into it. If we  retreat we will conquer it.