A discriminative awareness

The most profound concept in Vedanta is about cultivating ‘a discriminative awareness’ in our life time. Some people are born with this awareness and some people cultivate this as they grow and some people can understand only after many years of experience and some people never learn in their life time. This is based on the gift of grace and our past ‘karma’. We face challenges in our every minute and every hour of our life and we are forced to make decisions on way or other, on each and ever issue of our life and act accordingly. This decision making process is critical; and it varies from person to person. Such decisions can vary from one extreme to another extreme, differentiating each individual, in their steps of ascending the path of evolution, culminating in salvation. Each and every decision we make in these steps of our ascent in the ladder of evolution, leaves a residual impression in our conscience we call ‘karma’. These decisions are not simple because they are not just black and white decisions, but every shade of color between black and white and often difficult. The word ‘discriminative awareness’ is a unique word, and it is the most fundamental to our understanding of our ‘shelf’. It is the core concept of ‘Swadiyaya’ (self-study) which make up ‘Kriya yoga’ according to Patanjali.To understand who we are, where we came from, and where we will be going and what is the purpose of this life, all these questions will be answered, as we study our ‘self’. Discriminative awareness is the tool by which one can master ‘swadyaya’. One should be able to discriminate between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as a basic step. Sometimes right decision at this moment may be proven wrong in the long run, at a different point of our life. If these decisions are based on yogic principles, then decisions we make are always right. Such decisions my affect somebody known or unknown to us but that should not hinder our decision making and we should go ahead and do it. Such decisions are based on moral values and they create good karma. Personally I am often confronted with such decision making in my profession. Supposing a company is planning to invest on a large mining project to extract some valuable minerals from earth and I have to offer my opinion, I will unequivocally deny my support to such a project. It may create thousands of jobs directly and indirectly, support local communities, generate tax revenue for the country. But how long? It may be for few generations and after that what happens? Such mining activity may leave permanent scars on the earth, sometimes several hundred kilometers area; it may pump out millions of gallons of saline water, which may not be suitable for drinking or to irrigate plants. It may pose a serious health hazard to the people living around that area and waste water storage may create many diseases. We cannot support such projects for short term gains. We cannot scar the earth, the gift of Nature to mankind. We have to preserve Nature and we have to pass them on to our future generations. These decisions are based on ethics and morals and we have no right to scar the earth in the name of science and prosperity.They are short sighted decisions and unethical and we will create a ‘bad karma’ that will haunt us in many births. The highest aspiration of a ‘yogi’ is to discriminate between the good and evil and create always a good karma so that he can escape from the eternal cycle of birth, life and death. We have to use ‘discriminative awareness in everyday life on matters of trifling importance or great importance.Everytime you make a decision you create a karma, either good or bad based on the outcome of your decision.