An important teaching of Hindu religion is to be happy irrespective of the external circumstances.
The first mark of a sthitaprajna, one of steady wisdom, is casting off all desires and delighting and being content in one’s own true nature, Brahman. This person is always happy irrespective of the external circumstances.
The Bhagavad Gita states that after attaining this state, a person ‘is not disturbed even in the face of great sorrow’. This withdrawal of senses is compared to a tortoise retracting its limbs into its shell. The person of wisdom in the same way withdraws one’s senses from the worldly sense objects.
This person is above all injunctions and prohibitions, above good and evil, virtue and vice, and endowed with an equanimous vision and balanced mind, and does not identify oneself with the body. The mind is neither shaken at the time of misery, nor attached to happiness; it is totally free from desires, fear and anger, neither excited nor disturbed while beholding good or bad.
This is a struggle between the lower and the higher, between the animal and the divine in the human.
Attaining this sthitaprajna state is the goal of human evolution. If a person is surrounded by inferior instinctive forces, one will struggle provided one has an ideal. The aim is to free oneself from the influence of one’s surroundings, hence the struggle for existence. The human being, a superior animal, highest on the evolutionary scale, has two heritages: biological and divine.
The desire to escape from danger gave the carnivorous fish wings that enabled them to fly from surroundings. Another illustration is an insect in the presence of a wasp. One should not return hatred for hatred. If one maintains an intense desire for this state with perseverance, effort, and fervour, one can eventually attain it.
Source – Excerpt from an article titled ‘Wisdom or Eye of Knowledge by Gopal Chandra Bhar’ published in Prabuddha Bharata magazine December 2018.