Colours, feelings and emotions
There are different colours associated with our feelings and emotions: anger with red, jealousy with green, vibrancy and happiness with yellow, Love with pink, vastness with blue, peace with white, sacrifice with saffron and knowledge with violet. Each person is a fountain of colours which keep changing. Your desires, like fire, burn you. But if your life is like Holi where each colour is seen clearly, then they add charm to your life. Harmony in diversity makes life vibrant, joyful and more colourful.
Shiva Parvati and Holi :
According to legend, once Parvati was in tapasya and Shiva was in samadhi. In an attempt to facilitate the divine union of the two, Kamadeva, the lord of love, gets burnt to ashes by Shiva. Shiva had to come out of samadhi to join Parvati. `Parva’ is festival and `Parvati’ means `born out of festival’ - celebration! For samadhi to unite with celebration, the presence of desire was necessary. So, desire (Kama) was invoked. But again, to celebrate, you need to overcome desire. So Shiva opened his third eye and burned Kama. When desire in the mind is burnt, celebration happens and life becomes colourful.
There is no problem if you have your desires, but don’t let the desires have you. When desires arise just see whether it is beneficial for you or not. When desires come up and pass through the intellect, then it is good.
If it is just an unqualified desire, it could cause problems. It is like when the horse is in control of you, and you are not in control of the horse. There is a story of Mulla Nasruddin. He was on the horse. And the horse was going round in circles, on the same streets! So people asked him, “Mulla, where are you going?” He said, “I don’t know, ask the horse!” Most of the time in our life, we are in similar situations. Our desires have us and they ruin us. Instead, you should be able to drop desires any time you want to, and have them any time you want to! You should be able to get on to and off the horse when you want to, rather than getting stuck on the horse, or allowing the horse to throw you down. That is more misery. When desire in the mind is burnt, celebration happens and life becomes colourful.
Like Holi, life should be colourful, not boring. When each colour is seen clearly, it is vibrant. When all the colours get mixed, you end up with black. So also in life, we play different roles. Each role and emotion needs to be clearly defined. Emotional confusion creates problems. When you are a father, you have to play the part of a father. You can't be a father at office. When you mix the roles in your life, you start making mistakes. Whatever role you play in life, give yourself fully to it. In ignorance, emotions are a bother; in knowledge, the same emotions add colour. Tell yourself that you will do justice to all the roles. You can play all the roles: a good spouse, good child, good parent, good citizen. Assume that you have all these qualities in you. Just let them blossom.
Pralhad Holika & Holi:
The Puranas are full of stories and there is a story related to Holi as well. An asura king, Hiranyakashyap, wanted everyone to worship him. But his son Prahlad was a devotee of Lord Narayana, the king's sworn enemy. Angry, the king wanted Holika, his sister, to get rid of Prahlad. Empowered to withstand fire, Holika sat on a burning pyre holding Prahlad on her lap. But it was Holika who was burnt; Prahlad came out unharmed.
Hiranyakashyap symbolises one who is gross. Prahlad embodies innocence, faith and bliss. The spirit cannot be confined to love only matter. Hiranyakashyap is one who wants all joy to come from the material world. It does not happen that way. Love is not an emotion, it is our very existence. The individual jivatma cannot be bound to the material forever. It's natural to eventually move towards Narayana, one's Higher Self. Holika symbolises past burdens that try to burn Prahlad's innocence. But Prahlad, so deeply rooted in Narayana Bhakti, could burn all past impressions (sanskaras). For one who is deep in bhakti, joy springs up with new colours and life becomes a celebration. Burning the past, you gear up for a new beginning.
Celebration is the nature of the spirit and the celebration that comes out of silence is real. The joy you experience in life is from the depth of your Self - when you let go all that you hold on to and settle down being centered in that space. That is called meditation. Meditation is not an act; it is the art of doing nothing! When you meditate, you are not just bringing a harmony within yourself, but you are influencing the subtle layers of creation, the subtle bodies of all the different levels of existence in the creation. The rest in meditation is deeper than the deepest sleep that you can ever have because in meditation you transcend all desires. Only then we are able to understand the uplifted state of the being and see that the whole world is all spirit or consciousness. If sacredness is attached to a celebration, it becomes total, complete. It's not just body and mind but also the spirit that celebrates. Then celebration dawns spontaneously and life becomes a vibrant fountain of colours.
Do You Agree With Sri Sri Ravishankar?