Self-Discipline
Although it is our bodies that make us human, it is our conduct that should exemplify the glory of humanity.
Maharaj Sawan Singh89
An intriguing aspect of this path is that although the goal is lofty and much is required of us, discipline is never externally imposed. The master never demands that we do anything – we don’t have to leave our homes and live in a commune, we don’t have to wear uniform clothing, and satsang and seva are voluntary. Even the do’s and don’ts of the four vows are not enforced by anyone externally. The onus is on us. This is a path of self-discipline.
Self-discipline on the path means we are trying to align our mind with the Lord’s will. To this end, self-discipline includes the determination to overcome the resistance of the mind – which may manifest as laziness or fear. It includes the self-awareness to recognize bad habits and the resolve to replace them with good ones. Self-discipline includes the ability to say ‘no’ to temptations and distractions. It includes the self-control needed to refuse immediate gratification and, instead, to put in the time and effort needed to achieve the ultimate goal.
Someone once asked Hazur, “How is discipline connected with love, and what is the difference between discipline and love?” He answered:
Well, sister, to remain in the father’s love actually is to remain in his discipline…. Anything which takes us away from his love makes us undisciplined, so whatever keeps us within his love, within his devotion, that is a discipline for us that we have to follow.90
Self-discipline is a core element of
seva
Sometimes we may be tempted to drop our seva or to do a
half-hearted job because we think it’s not interesting enough, or not
important enough, or it involves too much effort, or because our friends
are doing seva elsewhere. But if we leave our seva when it doesn’t suit
us, how would the seva get done? And how would we please the master?
In Great Master’s time, a sevadar was assigned the job of serving water to the sangat. One day while he was doing his seva, he saw Great Master approaching in his car. Excited, he left the person to whom he was serving the water, left his post at the water-point, and ran forward to the edge of the road to see the master up close. Great Master noticed the sevadar leave his seva and run towards him. He commented to the person sitting next to him, ,“Lai! Rupaiya chhad ke chavanni lain aaya hai,” meaning: “See, he abandoned a rupee and has come to collect a quarter of one.”
What did Great Master mean? He was not implying by this statement that the value of seva is greater than the value of physical darshan, but that if we abandon our seva to follow the master we lose more than we gain.
During one of Baba Ji’s visits, sevadars were told that if he walked near them, they should continue with their seva in a natural way – not to stop their work to stare at him or follow him around. Some sevadars were working on a well in a field far away. They knew the chances of him coming so far out were non-existent, but they didn’t abandon their seva to go looking for him. And, of course, what happened? The master spotted them and walked all the way over to the well to talk to them. The master loves his sevadars. We don’t have to go looking for him. If we are disciplined and obedient, he will find us.
If the student is very obedient in the class, and very disciplined, the professor is always anxious to help him, with one excuse or another.
Maharaj Charan Singh91
Once at a satsang centre, sevadars were busy preparing for the arrival of the sangat – sweeping, cleaning, cooking. Suddenly, Baba Ji arrived. The sevadars were thrilled to see him, but they quietly continued to do their seva. The master was able to walk freely through the centre and inspect different seva projects under way. Impressed by their restraint, Baba Ji said to the sevadar with him: “With discipline like this, I would come every day.”
Just before he got into his car to leave, the sevadar asked if he would like to eat something. As if on impulse, Baba Ji said he wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. As it turned out, it was time for the sevadars’ tea break. At tea, sevadars who had just seen the master were recounting the story of his surprise visit to friends who hadn’t had the chance to see him. To everyone’s surprise, the master walked in again! He stood in line to get his tea, chatted with the sevadars, then gave a brief impromptu satsang. One of the things he said once again was: “With discipline like this, I would come every day.”
Why did the master make such a statement? Perhaps because we sevadars are not always disciplined. When we are in the master’s presence, why do we sometimes behave in ways that are inappropriate? There are several possible reasons.
Perhaps our behaviour stems from the mind’s age-old focus on all that is external. Many of us have come to this path from a religious background, where we may have learned to focus our devotion on physical objects. This habit has become so ingrained that we bring the same approach into Sant Mat. Hazur had to seal off the well built by Great Master because the sangat started to ritualize it. And Baba Ji has sealed off the satsang ghar, the old satsang hall in the Dera, because some people started revering it and referring to it as Sach Khand. Baba Ji often asks that if he were to place Hazur’s shoes on a pedestal today, which one of us would not bow before them? Our master is pointing to the eye centre, urging us to go within. But we don’t look to where he is pointing; we are too busy worshipping the finger he is pointing with.
A second reason for our lack of discipline in the master’s presence could be a misunderstanding about what darshan is and what we think we can gain from it. Some of us believe that the more darshan we have of the physical master, the more of our karmas will be cleansed. Intent on this misguided notion of reducing our karmic burden, we try to see him wherever he may go. And in doing so, we might be oblivious to the impact of our behaviour on the master. Hazur once said, “I cannot go out. I cannot walk on the roads in the colony, I can’t do anything.”92 But surely love doesn’t imprison the beloved!
If everybody starts running after the master, where will master hide? Where will he go? We have to remain in discipline. This outside running doesn’t lead us anywhere at all…. Running after him is not loving the master at all. We can’t control our emotions and we try to copy each other.
Maharaj Charan Singh93
The master is telling us that there’s a herd mentality at play here. We are simply copying each other. When we see other people running after him we start running, too, hoping to catch his eye, worried that we may miss something. We are following the dictates of our mind; we follow everyone and everything – except the teachings.
Sometimes even sevadars may get carried away. We too may ignore requests from sevadars; we too may push and jostle to be able to sit as far in the front as possible. Mystics tell us such behaviour does not befit a disciple:
Proper conduct is that a person who enters the saint’s assembly should sit down in whatever empty place he spies. It is not fitting, at the moment that one comes to visit the pir,* to be thinking: ‘Whom should I sit ahead of or behind?’ Wherever a person sees an opening he should sit down, since every visitor is on the same footing.
Sheikh Nizamuddin94
It is vitally important to understand the true meaning of darshan. Baba Ji tells us that we cannot do darshan; at this stage we only look at the master. True darshan is the fruit of true love; it is the helplessness of the disciple to look at the master. In true darshan there is no calculation about how near or far away we are from his physical form.
Darshan means the helplessness of the lover to look at the beloved. It is the pull which is within every one of us. That is darshan. Whether you are sitting near or whether you are sitting far away, it comes to the same thing.
Maharaj Charan Singh95
The master frequently asks if the master is giving us darshan or if we are giving him our darshan. He says that if the master is giving us darshan, then he gives the same darshan to the person sitting in the front and the person sitting at the back. But if we are pushing our way forward, maybe we are trying to give him our darshan – trying to be sure he sees us.
He also reminds us that if the master doesn’t want to give darshan to someone, then even if that person is right in front of him, he will not receive anything. But if the master wants to give darshan to someone, even if that person is seven oceans away, he will receive it.
Hazur used to say that if physical proximity to the master or frequency of darshan were determinants of spiritual progress, then wouldn’t members of the master’s family and residents of the Dera have reached Sach Khand by now? Yet they struggle with the mind just like the rest of us. The point is that we cannot grab darshan; we cannot take his darshan. Darshan is his gift, which he gives to whom he wills, when he wills.
Master is within every disciple – whether they are five or whether they are five million. Everybody’s master is with him.
Maharaj Charan Singh96
Once a young woman went to Beas to get initiated. The day after initiation, she happened to visit a resident of the Dera. When this old satsangi heard that she had just been initiated, he was delighted. “So, dear daughter,” he said. “What did you do today?” The young girl happily informed him that she had waited on the roads throughout the day and received master’s darshan five times! When the elderly disciple heard this, he explained gently: “This is not darshan. Running after the master like this is like running around with a camera and clicking the same photograph over and over again, but never developing it. You have to take the photograph just once, then take your camera to a darkroom and process the film. Once it’s developed, you can look at that picture whenever you choose.”
This is such beautiful advice. There is a vital distinction between darshan and running after the master. Darshan is when the master chooses to give of his grace – when he is on stage during satsang, or when we are at a sevadar meeting at which he is present, or when we are engaged in some activity and he happens to come by. After enjoying the gift of such darshan, why follow him around? Why not instead go into our own personal dark room, shut our eyes, and meditate? Over time, through incessant simran, we can process that image until it gets ‘developed’ and we are able to see the Shabd form of master within, at will.
Opportunities to be in the presence of the master are precious gifts, which deserve our reverence:
When you receive a moment from the beloved,
receive that moment as your portion in life.
Beware that you do not waste that moment,
for you will find few other moments like that.
Rumi97
Perhaps we may not be disciplined in the presence of the master because we may not completely understand who the true master is. Guru Nanak Dev puts it beautifully: Shabd guru, surat dhun chela, meaning: The true guru is the Shabd and the true disciple is the surat, the soul. Hazur explains:
This body has to be left here by both disciple and master. The soul of a disciple will never be abandoned by the Shabd, once it has been inwardly linked to it through the master. Drawn by the Shabd, it will definitely merge in the Lord. Thus, the Shabd is the real master and our soul is the real disciple.98
Everything we long for, everything we seek, is within. Hazur says that our urge to be as close as possible to the physical master actually stems from the inner longing of the soul to unite with the Shabd:
You see, everybody wants to come closer to the master, but that master is within. By doing our meditation, we are becoming closer and closer to the master…. So this desire to be near the master is the desire of the soul to become one with the Shabd within.
99
Another possible explanation for our lack of discipline in his presence is that we may have an incomplete understanding of love and how best to express our love for the master. There is a difference between emotion and love. There is a difference between the frenzied emotion of a teenage fan for a film star or sports hero and the mature love of a disciple for a revered master. The master tells us that emotion is unchannelled love. Hazur frequently used the example of a river flooding its banks when it is not properly channelled:
If the river flows within its banks, only then it is useful. But when the river floods, it overflows its banks and creates devastation everywhere. In the same way, emotion is very useful when it is channelled, when it is disciplined. But if your emotions get out of control, then they are just like the flood of a river which does more harm than good. So we should have disciplined emotions, disciplined love for the master.100
Baba Ji tells us so often that emotion channelled inward, through meditation, leads to devotion.
Mystics say that love has two qualities: bhav and bhey. Bhav denotes the intense love we feel for the mystic teacher who is showing us the way. But true love is always accompanied by bhey, fear of offending the beloved. Bhey is ‘awe,’ a sense of reverence and wonder that makes us behave with restraint, respect, and self-discipline in the master’s presence.
Love is always within. When you try to dramatize your love, you lose the depth of the love.
Maharaj Charan Singh101
When we are in the master’s presence, let us not get so swept up in our emotions that we create a scene that is uncomfortable for him or that simply doesn’t please him. Let us not whip out our smartphones to capture the moment. Let us not get so focused on having something exciting to tell our friends and relatives later that we lose the opportunity to be present in the moment, to absorb the gift he is giving.
The master wants us to express our love not through emotion, but through quiet, disciplined action.
Running after the master doesn’t mean that you have love. You may be empty within and still you may be running after the master. Yet, you may be filled with love for him and you may not move even an inch. You would like to remain in discipline, but that doesn’t mean you have no love.
Maharaj Charan Singh102
Self-realization may be our goal, but self-realization follows self-mastery. So discipline is a fundamental quality on the spiritual path. Of course, the mind will resist self-discipline; its nature is to constantly seek something interesting. When the master passes nearby, it is much more exciting to drop our seva and follow him than to continue working. When we are privy to a juicy bit of information, it is much more interesting to share it with satsangi friends than to digest it. But if we can’t control the mind and resist these small temptations in seva, how will we conquer the mind during meditation; how will we digest any inner experiences we have during meditation?
Although self-discipline begins with willpower, it doesn’t end there. Willpower is within the realm of the mind, and is therefore limited. Can the will of an individual ever be strong enough to achieve the goal we’ve set out to achieve? It cannot. If we study the lives of the masters, the amazing self-discipline they exhibit comes from a much deeper source – surrender. We too begin our journey with willpower, but slowly we grow spiritually until our self-discipline begins to arise naturally from love and surrender.
A disciple once asked Hazur about the dangers of being too hard on ourselves, and he replied:
There is no danger of being hard on ourselves at all. We have been too soft with ourselves all through – that is why we are part of the creation. If we had been a little hard or strong with ourselves, we would not be here today.103
In essence, the master is urging us to be a little more firm with ourselves. Whether it is in our way of life, in the way we do seva, in the way we conduct ourselves in the master’s presence, or in our daily meditation, self-discipline gives us the ability to channelize our love for the master in a way that pleases him.