Zinfo, a Dutch ‘alternative’ news site, recommends the movie Samsara which is broadcasted tonight in the Netherlands. It tells the story of a Buddhist monk who after spending three years in solitary meditation returns to the material world and falls in love. As I’ve understood it, the message of the movie is to explain that Enlightenment is difficult to attain due to our worldly attachments.
This reminded me of the Hindu concept of bhoga and tyaga. Bhoga means enjoyment and tyaga renunciation. Life runs on these two tracks and constantly switches between them. We enjoy (bhoga) material pleasure for some time and then abandon (tyaga) it to pursue some other taste. We switch because the nature of this material pleasure is capala-sukha, which means it is temporary. The monk’s life exemplifies this. First he lives in complete solitude and meditation. He renounces the whole world. Then his desires speak to him causing him to stand up and return to the world. He comes eye to eye with the difficulties of enjoyment. It is the idea of bhoga and tyaga captured in over two hours.
Humankind is in constant battle with these concepts and to me this begged the question; what to do about it? It eventually turned me to the bhakti rasa of the Vaisnava Hindus. This is the rasa, or the taste, that satisfies us perpetually, but due to our ever-lasting attachment to enjoy and renounce, this rasa is not cheaply attained. Our desires will cast us on either of two shores, but when we withstand the current, we will succeed.