Quite a while ago, I used to conduct Vedanta classes at several yoga studios.
After one session, an attendee told me that she had practiced both hatha yoga and meditation
for many years and as a result, she felt very calm and peaceful most of the time.
But in extremely stressful situations, she still felt overwhelmed by fear and anxiety.
She asked me how she could remain calm and peaceful even at those difficult times.
It's clear that the time and effort she devoted to her practice had already helped her a lot.
She had an especially demanding job and a family to take care of as well.
She barely had enough time each day to get everything done.
But she learned that, by taking some time away from her responsibilities to practice
yoga and meditation, she was actually able to accomplish more each day.
How can that be?
Well, tension and stress can drain away your mental energy and rob you of enthusiasm, leaving
you weary and less efficient.
Her daily practice prevented all that and enabled her to accomplish much more.
You might know that many clinical studies have shown that the practice of hatha yoga
and meditation helps calm your sympathetic nervous system, the system that triggers your
fight or flight response.
Regular practice reduces your body's production of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol,
triggered by your nervous system.
When you feel threatened, stress hormones flood into your bloodstream, making you breathe
rapidly and making your heart pound.
And when cortisol reaches your brain, it makes you more tense, anxious, and fearful.
Of course, this fight or flight response evolved millions of years ago to protect us from harm.
But the problem is, it evolved at a time when it was only triggered infrequently, like when
a dangerous animal is prowling nearby.
But in modern times, we are quite frequently subjected to threats.
Each time you drive your car, you're threatened by careless drivers.
Each time you read your email, you're threatened by scams and computer viruses that can let
hackers drain your bank account.
Each time you go to work, you're subject to the threatening behavior of angry managers
and backstabbing coworkers.
Each of these threats can trigger your fight or flight response and flood your body with
stress hormones.
When this happens again and again, year after year, it can be extremely harmful to your
physical health and mental well-being, leading to heart disease, sleep disorders, depression,
and other problems.
Recent studies have even linked chronic stress to the development of Alzheimer's disease
and other kinds of dementia.
How can you avoid all that?
Well, you could move to a tropical island and live in a thatched hut on the beach.
But if you can't do that, like most of us, then you could practice hatha yoga and meditation,
as we just discussed.
To counteract the harmful, stressful effects of modern life, regular practice is perhaps
more important today than ever before in history.
But like everything in life, this approach has some limitations.
We all seem to have an internal set point or threshold when we find ourselves in stressful
or threatening situations.
When a threat is below that threshold, you can cope with it calmly and skillfully.
But in extremely threatening situations, like in times of crisis, your threshold gets exceeded
and it's no longer possible to remain calm and clear-headed.
You can raise your threshold by practicing even more yoga and meditation, but no matter
how much it's raised, your threshold can still be exceeded in extraordinary circumstances.
This seems to be a basic limitation of the human condition.
Our bodies and minds can never reach a state of perfection.
Yet, you've probably heard stories of great saints and enlightened masters who could never
be disturbed by a crisis, no matter how terrible.
There's a famous story about Janaka, the King of Mithila, who had gained enlightenment.
While he was talking to his guru, a minister burst into the room and frantically told him
that his palace had caught fire and was in danger of burning down.
Instead of jumping to his feet, Janaka calmly reflected on the situation for a moment, then
he told the minister what to do and returned to his conversation.
The enlightened king demonstrated an important principle: don't just do something, sit there!
At times of crisis, you might leap into action and act impulsively to address the situation.
But the first idea that pops into your mind might not be the best way to respond.
It would be better to reflect on the situation for a few moments, so that you can choose
the best possible course of action.
The king remained perfectly calm because enlightenment is a state of perfection.
But if your mind can never reach a state of perfection, then how is enlightenment possible?
Well, even though there's no such thing as a perfect mind, the fact is, knowledge can
indeed be perfect.
Think about it.
You know your phone number and email address, and that knowledge is perfect, complete.
In a similar way, an enlightened person has perfect, complete knowledge of his or her
own true divine nature.
According to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, your true self, atma, is pure consciousness,
the consciousness that makes you aware of everything you experience, the pure consciousness
that can't be touched or affected in any way whatsoever by the problems of your body and
mind.
This statement is not a matter of belief; it actually expresses an already existent
fact, a truth about yourself that you can personally discover through the teachings
of Vedanta.
Discovery of your true nature as pure consciousness is what's called enlightenment.
An enlightened person knows that, "I am pure consciousness, so nothing can threaten me.
Nothing can affect me."
But an unenlightened person wrongly thinks, "I am constantly affected by the problems
of my body and mind."
Unfortunately, your body and mind are subject to all kinds of problems, from mild headaches
to terminal cancer, from sadness to suicidal depression.
So, how would it feel to be enlightened and no longer threatened by all those problems?
Try this.
Suppose you went to bed tonight and had a lucid dream, a dream in which you know you're
dreaming.
If a hungry lion chases you in the dream, you'll know that it can't really hurt you.
You might even enjoy a game of cat and mouse, trying your best to evade the hungry beast.
But you won't feel threatened.
In your dream, you know that the lion is not as real as you are.
And, you know that the lion will disappear as soon as you wake up.
The teachings of Vedanta can lead you to realize the profound spiritual truth that nothing
in the world is as real as pure consciousness, the consciousness that's your true nature.
With this realization, you will know, like King Janaka did, that nothing can truly threaten
you.
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