Imagine yourself shipwrecked, not on a deserted island, but in the vast ocean of your own seeking. Like Robinson Crusoe making marks to track time, we often struggle with sustaining our Yogic practices long-term. But what if the way forward isn’t a lifelong trek at all – just a single, conscious step in the present moment?
In this article, Sadhguru dismantles our fixation with the future, revealing the surprising simplicity of sadhana. Forget the weight of a lifetime; what counts is only what you do here and now.
Question: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. I feel I really benefited from the Inner Engineering program, but I’m struggling to keep up my practices and maintain a balance between work and sadhana. How can I make sure I do my practices for the rest of my life?
Sadhguru: You are thinking like Robinson Crusoe. You probably know the story of this Englishman who was shipwrecked and stranded on a remote island, with almost nothing. You do not know whether you will be rescued in a day, a week, a month, the last day of your life, or never.
Just to know how long he had been there, he started counting the weeks, scratching marks on a piece of wood. Do not count your days like this. “How do I continue sadhana for my whole life?” Never continue sadhana for your whole life – just for today. Why do you burden yourself with things that do not exist and that you can never handle?
Can you ever handle a tomorrow? Can you eat tomorrow’s food today? Can you breathe tomorrow’s breath today? Can you do anything of tomorrow today? No. So why waste your time on things that can never be done? You cannot do tomorrow’s sadhana today – you can only do today’s.
Fortunately, creation is so magnanimous that in our life, there is only today to handle. We do not have multiple days to handle at a time. We can plan ahead, but we have to handle only one day at a time.
So why do you ask, “How will I do it for the rest of my life?” Who knows what the rest of your life will be? This thinking is based on too many assumptions and is not in touch with reality. No one, including you and me, is guaranteed tomorrow.
Just handle today’s sadhana. If you wake up tomorrow, it is today again.
There is a story about a healer in an African tribe. He would mumble and jumble, and people’s headaches would go away. One day, he asked, “Does anyone need any healing?”
One man said, “I need help with my hearing.”
The healer asked him to come closer, put his right hand on his head and his little finger in his ear, and did all kinds of things. After a few minutes, he took out the finger and asked, “How is your hearing?”
The man said, “It is not until next Thursday in the local courthouse.” Do not try to handle next Thursday now. We can plan for next Thursday, but we cannot handle it now. Similarly, do not try to repair yesterday because you cannot. You can observe and learn from it, but you cannot repair yesterday.
After observation, you can identify what is wrong with you so you can fix it today. You cannot fix a yesterday, nor can you fix a tomorrow. Life is simple: it is only today, in this moment. Do not make a mess out of it; this is your sadhana. The most important sadhana is to live in truth.
We start everything with Asatoma Sadgamaya. This is not just a chant. Asatoma Sadgamaya is a commitment you make to yourself to constantly move from untruth to truth. The untruth is that you can suffer a yesterday or a tomorrow. It is made up in your mind, and you believe it is true.
Life may fluctuate a bit here and there, but Asatoma Sadgamaya is a reminder for you to recognize when you are going into untruth in your mind by misunderstanding your thoughts and emotions as reality, which they are not. Reality is here.
We plan, prepare, and do whatever we have to do for tomorrow. Some things we will handle; some things we may not be able to handle. The more you take up in your life, the more will be unhandled. I took up so many of you; so many things are unhandled. But it is good that we can take so many; we show them how to handle things rather than us trying to handle all of it.
So, take this commitment: Asatoma Sadgamaya. How do you know whether you are in truth or not? A simple litmus test is this: If you are in any state of irritation, agitation, unpleasantness, or suffering, it means you are moving away from truth. If you are peaceful, joyful, and pleasant in your experience, it means you are in truth.
Truth means being in balance with life and in tune with creation and Creator. We could all be dead by tonight. We do not wish for this and would try to avoid it if we knew it was coming, but it remains a possibility.
This is the reality of life: death can come to anyone at any time. Whether a madman drives a truck into you, a tree falls on you, a thunderbolt strikes you down, or whatever else might happen, life is fragile, and we are here for only a short period of time. Holding life as the most precious thing is most important.
The length of life matters, but what ultimately counts is its quality. The length does not enhance your experience of life; the quality does. To enhance the quality, you must always be in Asatoma Sadgamaya.
If you constantly look at life in this way, knowing that if something did not work, it means you did not get it right, you will not be full of complaints. You will be a solution for your life and that of everyone else. May you be a solution for all, not a problem.
