105. Integrity – the trait of a *sannyasi!*

The word 'penance' means nothing but integrating yourself, making yourself a single entity. You may ask, 'Are we not like that now?' If you look closely, you will see that we exist as different entities, never as one. There is everything else in our life, except integration.

If you look deeply inside, you will understand, there are hundreds of voices continuously talking inside you. The moment the mind says, 'Let us do this,' the very next moment the thought will arise, 'No. Let us not do it!' After thinking of the side effects and after effects, the mind starts oscillating.

Integrating the fragmented parts of the mind is the very essence of life. Integrating the feelings and the mind, integrating your face and your mind, ensuring that your face shows the same thing as what your mind thinks, is the essence of life.

If you study the lives of great masters and try to search for one basic essence in all of their lives, you will find, it is not knowledge or devotion. It is integrity! What they believed in, they lived. That's all! Their integrity was solid. They were ready to lose even their very lives, but not their integrity.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu* , the great enlightened master from India, used to move around on the streets just singing devotional songs. He never bothered about what others said about him. What he felt, he expressed. He was thrown into the sea because of the way he walked the streets, but it didn't stop him. To be like this requires a deep sense of sacrifice. It takes the courage to sacrifice anything to live with integrity!

That is why anything that these great masters did in their lives always culminated in eternal auspiciousness! Everything they did was an effort to integrate themselves with deep sincerity and devotion. The intense effort to integrate oneself completely is what is called penance. Penance always ends in auspiciousness. There will be innumerable things happening in your life all the time. Enduring all those things and intensifying your integrity with them - that is called penance. On the other hand, if you allow life's happenings to shake you, then you land in disgrace. Which ever way you wish to go, is up to you.

Everything master did was an effort to integrate themselves with deep sincerity and devotion.

Adi Shank-

ara was a great enlightened master from India. As a young boy, he was caught in a dilemma when he wanted to pursue the path of sannyas. He wanted to leave home with the permission of his mother, but she was unwilling to let go of him.

One day, he went to bathe in the river. Suddenly, his mother heard him crying out loud for help. She ran out and saw that a crocodile had caught his leg. He was struggling to be free.

Suddenly, by a flash of thought, he cried to her, 'Mother, if you give me permission to become a sannyasi, I will be freed from this crocodile now to continue with my life.'

The mother was surprised and asked how. He explained, 'According to the Vedas, if I enter a new ashrama (stage of life), it is equal to being born again. So, if you give me permission to enter into sannyas, then maybe god will give*

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu - A mystic from Bengal, India steeped in devotion to enlightened master Krishna. His followers are known as Gaudiya Vaishnavas.

Ashrama - The four stages in one's life: brahmacharya as a student, grihastha as a married householder, vanaprastha at the end of a productive married life and sannyasi as a person who renounces all material aspects in life.

me a fresh lease of life!' Once you integrate, you know who you really are.

The mother was totally

helpless. She quickly made up her mind. It was better to have her son as a sannyasi than see him dead. She agreed.

Immediately the crocodile released the grip! Sankara ran to his mother with great joy. He had lived the truth he sought at that moment… and it worked.

See, there are three things:

Thinking the Truth

Speaking the Truth

Living the Truth

The first two are easy to follow. But the third, living the Truth all the time, is difficult. It is very rare. Sannyas is the courage to live what we think is the Truth. We give importance to speaking the Truth. But living the Truth is most important. If you start living your Truth, your respect for yourself will increase. That is the beauty of it.

When you come to me with a problem, I sometimes give you consolation and tell you that it is alright. You see, the very fact that you are coming to me with the problem shows you don't have the integrity to live with it and solve it! So, I have to console you. Anything can be lost, but not integrity. With integrity, your own evaluation of yourself goes up. When your own unconscious mind starts to believe you it is the most auspicious thing that can happen in your life. The gates of heaven are then open!

When you integrate, you drop hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is pretending to be what you are not. Hypocrisy is hiding in many places so people can't see who you really are. The fragments in you dominate over each other and make you hypocritical. When you fight with your own fragments and win, you are a dheera, a courageous one! It is easy to fight with others and win. When you fight with others and win, you are a veera, a warrior. But fighting with yourself requires more courage. You don't fight unless you are tired of yourself. Only when you are tired, you accept that you need to start the fight.

Once you integrate, for the first time, you know who you really are. All the masks drop. You are ready to expose yourself in relationships. You become more authentic. You suddenly realize that you were missing things because of you! Sannyas is all about becoming more authentic. When I say authentic, I mean that you will radiate your individuality instead of your personality. With fragments, you are a personality. With integrity, you are individuality. Individuality is seeing your authenticity through your own eyes**.** Personality is a built up image in the eyes of society. The master's work is to create a space in you where you don't have to guard your personality, where you can be free, where just understanding can cause transformation.

Buddha used to tell his disciples, 'Count your life only after you have taken sannyas.'

Someone asked me if taking the vow of brahmacharya* or sannyas will lead to enlightenment. Whether taking the vow leads to enlightenment or not is secondary. But if you observe the vows strictly for one month, successfully, the respect you have for yourself will tremendously increase. That is enough! It is called asaadhya sadhana – doing the seemingly impossible task successfully. It is making you do whatever your mind says you cannot do! Techniques like fire walking are in this category. Ordinarily, the mind will say that you cannot walk on a fire bed. Once you do it, the respect you have for yourself will increase! Then you will come into integrity.

Integrity needs to be understood in two ways.

The first part is integrating the fighting parts of the mind into one. See, the very life gets wasted in the oscillation of the mind. If you can follow any one path, you will attain it. For example, let us suppose there are two paths to reach Bangalore. One path is 30 kilometers while the other is 30,000 kilometers. You are oscillating between which path to choose. If you choose any one path and proceed, you will reach Bangalore.

But if you keep oscillating, if you go on one path for half hour, and then change your mind and go on the other path for the next half hour, what will happen? You will never reach Bangalore! At least if you decide and take the 30,000 kilometer path, you will reach Bangalore, even if it takes you one year! But if you keep oscillating between these two paths, even if it takes thirty years, you will not reach Bangalore.

Even if the chosen path is wrong, the one who moves with integrity automatically comes to the correct path. He achieves what needs to be achieved. Understand clearly: there are only two types of people on planet earth, those who live with integrity and those who live without integrity, that's all! The scale to measure a person is not the path on which he went but whether he lived with integrity or not.

Integrity is the strength to live your belief, come what may.

Second, not getting diluted by external influences, is also integrity. It is the ability to not alter our integrity or dilute ourselves

Brahmacharya - Literally means walking in reality. The first stage of life in the vedic tradition as a celibate.