Slokam 1

Ajmila is a Brahmin who follows the traditions of his family.  In the days when the pursuit of a Brahmin were purely spiritual,  elders in the family initiated the children at an early age to set them on the right path.  Ajmila’s family did the same.

Ajmila goes to the forest one day to collect wood for his father and falls victim to worldly desires that are induced by the sight of an attractive woman.

Ajmila was not yet mature enough, spiritually, to resist worldly temptations.

Life subjects all of us to exposure to its different aspects.  We should never shy away from this exposure.  Avoiding life is not the way to grow.

Brahma instructs his four sons to go forth and raise families and spread the human race.  The four sons,  being endowed with the ability to see what lay in store in terms of hurdles in the form of temptations, pleasures, conflicts, and contradictions,  decide to opt for the pursuit of an ascetic life.  They by-pass their fathers wish and become sanyasis. 

A sanyasi wants to stay sin free.  They don’t want to be entrapped.   So they subject themselves to the pain of isolation. When this is successful,  they never return to normal everyday life.  They forego the comfort and assurance of a family life.

As Dhruva and the many maharishis who practice tapas with the singular intent of attaining liberation,  the rest of us take on the challenges of everyday life and try to overcome the hurdles.  Both paths take multiple lifetimes for success. Oneis not easier than the other.  Many of us in the modern day face the compulsion to lead a career oriented life that provides for income and material benefits for self and family.

Just as a sanyasi should not veer away from his chosen path,  it is important that a grihastha should not deviate from leading a dharmic way of life,  although the pressures to do so may be severe.  Once the grihasta veers away,  it will be very difficult to recover and retrieve the path to liberation.

The only way to attain that objective for grihastas is constant and sustained meditation on the Paramathma. Otherwise we will be pulled and trampled into extinction by the pitfalls and traps of life.

May we Grihastas lead a productive but detached and dharmic life, by invoking the Paramathma