The Importance of Sadhana

Hari Om,

A person in poverty sitting in a miserable hut is told by a spiritual personality endowed with intuition: “All your poverty can vanish, for there is a buried treasure twelve feet beneath the place where you are sitting, right here in the centre of this hut.” Now, the treasure is right there. It has not been created, it has not been brought into being. But will it make any difference to this man’s poverty, will it buy him a morsel of food notwithstanding the fact that the treasure is already there, it is inside the boundaries of his hut, he is sitting over it? 

No. He will have to start digging, straining every limb, wiping perspiration. He has to exert, dig and dig and dig. The treasure may be there, but he is the same poor man until he digs and digs and penetrates the twelve feet of earth. Even if he has dug eleven feet, eleven inches, he is still the same poor man. It is only when he has gone the full twelve feet that he is able to put his hand on the treasure and lift it up. Then alone his poverty vanishes and he is wealthy beyond his dreams. Exertion alone allowed him to attain the treasure. Exertion alone could bring him into living contact with what already existed in all its fullness. 

This is the way you can understand the necessity of exertion to attain that which is already there in close proximity. Tulsidas says: “You can create a blaze of fire from a block of ice, you can squeeze dry sand and make oil drip out of it, but this is sure, without sadhana, without worship, without adoration, you can never cross this ocean of samsara.” This rule will never vary—therefore, exertion, exertion, exertion, sadhana, sadhana, sadhana. 

“Do real sadhana my dear children,” sang Gurudev. Upon the spiritual path a happy-go-lucky temperament is no good. Laziness is no good. Vain excuses for not doing sadhana are no good. And fanciful notions that without sadhana you can get realisation are no good. Sadhana is the one thing necessary; effort is indispensable. Through effort you attain that which needs no effort to actually be experienced. But effort is needed to remove all that is intervening without and within. 

Excerpts from Swami Chidananda's book Ponder These Truths

Om Namoh Bhagavathe Sivanandaya !

Om Namoh Bhagavathe Chidanandaya !