The Name of the Game

Part of Vedanta’s final stage, a stage that includes ongoing meditation on the teachings, is acceptance of the world as it is. It’s easy to read the news headlines and get sucked into the world’s drama. It all seems so real and tragic! We complain to ourselves and to others about the incompetence and dysfunction at government’s highest positions, but what do you expect when 99.9% of the world is driven by forces they’re not even aware of? Blame it on karma, the gunas, or even God. This is not our show after all. 

A sign of a mature being is one who has developed a dispassion for society. Why? Because ultimately, he or she knows that it’s senseless to worry about something you have no control over. As much as we wish for the world to be different, we just don’t have control over how this plays out. Even leaders of state, with all their influence, are limited in what they can do. At the end of the day everyone must play by God’s rules. Every thought or action in this world has its price. It’s called karma, and it works.  

The wise know this about the world and that the ultimate goal for any human being can only be liberation from the world while still alive. After all, everything we do, consciously or unconsciously, is for freedom. We may pursue a better paying job to be free from debt, or pursue a relationship to be free from loneliness. As humans, we pursue objects and experiences for happiness, but it’s only by the power of maya that I fail to see that the happiness I seek lies within me and not “out there” somewhere.  

The richest and most powerful may generate great envy among us, but theirs is all just a passing fancy—here today, gone tomorrow—leaving them broken and disillusioned when the experience dissipates. Those who lust for power and money are trying to fill a hole they can never fill. On the surface it seems glamorous, until one recognizes just how discontent such beings really are. No amount of profits, property or pretty friends can make them happy. 

Society’s idea that power and riches is the apogee of success is just a silly belief. It’s a bizarre conjecture that says riches and power bring absolute security and absolute happiness—and most of all—that with absolute power and riches “I” will be complete. It’s maya’s most irresistible trick. What are money and power but a pleasure-inducing drug that requires a greater and more dangerous dosage each time in order to experience the same high? This, of course, is a description of samsara—a system built purposely to frustrate human beings and ultimately, break them so they might get a glimpse of the truth. Thus, what appears to be a cruel setup is just God’s way of pointing us toward freedom. 

So by practicing the last stage of Vedanta we stay focused on the teachings and let the world be as it is. For reasons we’ll never know, God has created this strange, virtual classroom for the Self to discover and learn of itself. The world is a university and you don’t get to graduate until you learn the name of the game: moksha. 

From "The Broken Tusk - Seeing Through the Lens of Vedanta"