If you aspire to attain emancipation by becoming an ideal householder, don’t become greedy, infatuated or conceited, considering your home and family to be yours. Realise that home, family and wealth are meant for you, but don’t consider them to be yours; for they all belong to this world and not to you. Whatever is currently with you are there according to your destiny, and will not continue to exist forever; nor shall you stay forever with your present body.
Whatever beautiful, favourable and pleasant things you have got are verily the results of your austerities and meritorious deeds of the past. Therefore, the more you enjoy the auspicious and beautiful things the more you exhaust your own stock of merits. If you don’t do charity, penance and meritorious deeds while enjoying the pleasures, a time will come when the entire stock of your past merits will get exhausted and thereby their resultant enjoyments will end.
Give happiness to others while enjoying the same yourself, so that you may continue to also get happiness later on. However, don’t give pain to others while experiencing the same yourself, so that you don’t have to face misery in the future.
It is not forbidden to use objects of enjoyment as we use medicines. Indulgence in sense pleasures is harmful. It is the sign of base mentality and mind to get attached to the objects of enjoyment, to become sad and restless in the absence of favourable conditions, things and loved ones. To remain ever established in one’s witness consciousness being equal in pleasant and painful, favourable and unfavourable conditions is the glory of Jnana Yoga. Lord Krishna says in Gita:
Sukham Va Yadi Va Dukham Sa Yogi Paramo Matah.
“O Arjuna, that yogi is considered the best who remains equipoised in happiness and sorrow….” (The Gita: 6.32)
He/she alone is the ideal householder who becomes averse to sense enjoyments and treads the path of Yoga whilst being charitable, contented, humble and polite.
Whatever intellect, ability and power you have as a householder, use them only in such acts which would develop your virtues of kindness, generosity, tolerance and humility. Do not use your obtained power in a way that would foster vices like anger, cruelty, violence, attachment, possessiveness, conceit, jealousy etc. Don’t ever use your power to commit the crime of using helpless people to your advantage.
He who fails to rid himself of domestic worries, duties and bondages in his lifetime is not an ideal virtuous householder. He must have resorted to acts that should not be done or injustice. All the acts of a duteous, virtuous, righteous and just householder will be completed right in time. He will certainly get emancipation and achieve the highest Goal. If you intend to worship God alone through your thought, word and deed, then think that whatever you are doing is for the sake of God. If some divine lover starts running and considers that he is running for God, this running too will become a devotional practice for him in effect. If someone serves his family with the feeling, ‘I am serving the family for the sake of God alone’, then his service will become worship. Verily, firmly abiding in the Bhagavadakar Vritti (the sole ultimate thought of God alone to the exclusion of all other thoughts) is devotional practice or worship.
If you aspire to break off with the illusory householder life, consider everything you have as not actually yours. Do not covet for anything that you do not have and you have heard about it or seen it. If you want to please the beings of this world, serve them. If you intend to please and satisfy your Gurudev, turn your attachment of sense enjoyments into detachment towards them; selfishness into a selfless service; thoughts of relations into thoughts on God; and egoistic attachment to your body into Self-knowledge. If you wish to keep your mind steady, totally renounce desires for enjoyments along with greed, infatuation and pride by all means.
If you aspire to experience the benign grace of your Guru and God constantly, don’t cling to your false notions after getting Satsang, do not work like a self-willed person who follows the dictates of his mind, do not waste energy out of negligence, and do not squander time in idleness, and abandon your attachment to worldly enjoyments. Abandonment of sense enjoyments is essential for physical growth, mental progress, and spiritual advancement.
