Sadhana Panchakam, Instruction 8

Isvara, the Supreme Self

Translation and Commentary by Jayaram V

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1.8. Leave your home forthwith with dispassion

This instruction can be interpreted in different ways depending upon how we define the words griha and vinirgamyatam. “Griha” may mean your current home where you physically live or your body where the self-resides or the objective reality or the not-self where your mind and senses wander or this world (samsara) where you are caught in the cycle of births and deaths. Vinirgamyatam means “to go away from” or “to return to.” Therefore, it can mean that you must leave your current home and go away, or you must return to your true self, which is your true abode.

Both meanings are acceptable. Both meanings also point to the same instruction that one must give up attachment to the mind and body, to one’s home, to this world and to all things which one holds dearly, and return to the true self to abide in it. Spiritual practice is a transformative process in which you have to give up your old way of life and all the baggage associated with it and start anew as if all that happened was a dream you wish to forget.

The world is your current home. It is where your mind and senses dwell and where you develop attachments and remain bound. You must give up that home and withdraw into yourself to dwell in your own heart, which according to the Upanishads is the home of the self in the body. This is vinirgamya, the great return of the native self to its original abode or source. Truly speaking, spiritual journey is rather a retrogressive journey, in which you do not move forward, but return to the starting point from where it all began. You do not realize anything anew, but just remember what you forgot or lost sight of as if you woke up from a long and deep sleep.

A house is not a mere physical structure which is made of bricks and walls only. It is a living structure, which represents the life that happens there, all the past and present that happen in it and all that resides in it as its moving parts. It includes the family, relationships, memories, identity, comfort, security, status and belongingness. When you renounce your home and leave it behind, you are not just leaving its physical location or structure but everything that is associated with it. It is a permanent separation which if you are fully prepared can produce a lot of pain and suffering.

Renunciation can be physical or mental. The latter is superior to the former. When both are involved, it is complete and perfect. What needs to be given up is not necessarily the home, but your desire or attachment to it. One cannot truly escape from the world because the world exists everywhere, even in a forest. Your physical-self is also a part of the world only. You are never separate from it.

Therefore, renunciation is not about mere physical separation or the physical act of leaving the world behind and living in seclusion. It is about cultivating the attitude of indifference, detachment and sameness, giving up desires and attachment to all physical possessions and remaining equal to the dualities of life and the attractions of the world with abiding faith in God and in oneself. Liberation is a state of boundless aloneness (kaivalya) or oneness. It can also be achieved through aloneness only.   

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