Loosening the Chain of Attachments

Sanatana Dharma (SD) is a Sanskrit word that means eternal law. It’s also synonymous with Hinduism. Every Monday for the next few months, I will share some small stories from this ancient tradition of Sanatana Dharma and discuss its implications for our professional lives. I will also share the esoteric meaning of the story so anyone interested can delve deeper into the spiritual significance of the story.

All these stories are now available in the SD Wisdom At Work publication on Medium.

Today’s story is about the legendary bhakti saint Namdev. He lived in Pandarpur, Maharashtra, and prayed to Pandurang Vitthala (Krishna). His greatest strength was his devotion to Vitthala. However, the only obstacle to his liberation was also his attachment to Vitthala. He loved one form of the divine so much that he refused to consider the notion of the formless divine or plurality of the divine.

The Attachment of Namdev to Pandurang Vitthala

Namdev and his best friend, the legendary Jnanadev, were on a spiritual pilgrimage across India. Namdev’s world began and ended with the deity ‘Vitthala’ of Pandharpur, and he would not recognize any other Deity as the symbol of God. The pilgrimage lasted about five years. During this period, Jnanadev advised Namdev to adopt a Guru so that he could realize the manifestation of the all-pervading God. Namdev hesitated because he thought such action might alienate his loyalty and devotion to Vitthala and stated that Vitthala was his guru.

However, Jnandev and other saints felt Namdev’s view was narrow. They asked Gora, another saint, and a potter by trade, to ascertain which of them were half-baked, which means they have not realized the ultimate truth yet. Gora took a small, flat wooden board and began to pat everyone’s head. When it was Namdev’s chance, he cried aloud, thinking he was hurt. Immediately, another saint, Muktha Bai, commented that Namdev was only half-baked and had not realized the absolute truth yet. Everyone laughed at her pronouncement. Namdev grew agitated and bitterly complained to Vitthal. Namdev stated he did not need a guru since he had a relationship with Vitthal. Hearing this, Vitthala challenged Namdev that he could not recognize Vitthala if he appeared before him.

The Trial of Namdev

Namdev was resting in the evening when he saw a Chandala (scavenger) and his wife (Vitthala and Rukmini) cooking their evening meal. The Chandala told his wife that since the cooking pot was not full, they should add chickens to the pot. These represented the twenty-five tattvas. Namdev did not realize this and thought this was extremely violent, but this was also God’s will. Next, the Chandala asked his wife to cut four dogs and add them to the pot. Namdev watched, horrified, not realizing they were the four Vedas and thought these people were going to pay for their actions. Vitthal was teaching Namdev that when you butcher all Tattvas and Vedas, only the ultimate reality remains behind. This was the last lesson for Namdev because he was still caught in the duality of seeing Vitthal as different from the ultimate truth. Suddenly, the Chandala said, the pot is empty, so let’s cut up the man and add him to the pot. Namdev forgot all about Vitthal and took off at full speed.

A little while later, Vitthal appeared before Namdev and told him how he was the Chandala. After this, Vitthala directed Namdev to his Guru, Visoba Khechar.

The Challenge with Attachment at Work

The story highlights that attachment is a significant challenge even for the most distinguished saints. It literally required divine intervention to help Namdev get over his attachment to the form of Vitthal. Do you see attachment as a significant challenge at the workplace? I have always seen it manifest in various ways.

• Attachment to an Identity: One of the best examples I have seen recently is Netflix’s attachment to its identity as an ad-free channel. Netflix had a significant advantage in its first few years because it was the first company to build a digital entertainment subscription business at scale. However, Netflix knew this advantage would not last forever. Traditional media companies with significant content repositories would crack streaming, and behemoths like Amazon would surround them with a bigger platform that included music and one-day shipping. Also, Netflix’s most significant growth markets, such as India, are hard to crack because users prefer free services and don’t want to pay for content. Given all these realities, Netflix’s best options would have been to launch a cheaper ad-supported model or be acquired when they were at the top of their game. Since they were so attached to their identity as ad-free radical pioneers, they decided to spend billions of dollars on becoming a production company. How many specials or original content could they create in a few years to help them fend off companies like HBO or Disney sitting on decades of content? Their worst fears came true this year when their subscriptions declined, and their stock price tanked significantly.
• Attachment to Revenue Streams: There are many examples of how companies have died because they refused to acknowledge that the industry was shifting and had to move with it. Kodak is a prime example because they could not believe their primary revenue stream of selling camera rolls would soon become obsolete. The same goes for Blockbuster, which got steamrolled by Netflix. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, praised Steve Balmer for giving him the freedom to create a cloud business in Microsoft that would have significantly smaller profit margins than Windows in the short term but would be a strategic bet in the longer term. That decision was one of the key reasons for Microsoft’s rebirth in the cloud-driven software world.
• Attachment to Job Titles: I have known many people who have rejected excellent job opportunities because they did not like the job title. I have also known people to treat their job titles as their identities in life. They would walk into the house as a vice president, order food in a restaurant as a vice president, and carry the same identity everywhere. It becomes extremely unhealthy and even toxic sometimes because when you are no longer vice president one day, you don’t know what to do with your life.
• Attachment to Workplace and Colleagues: We all love having a comfort zone, and sometimes we get attached to a comfort zone. That’s when we start passing up internal opportunities for growth, stop taking out new challenges, and stop looking out for skills growth, which finally leads to stagnancy.

Esoteric Meaning of This Story

This section is only for individuals who are curious about spirituality.        

Instead of giving you a scripture-based interpretation of this story, I want to share my spiritual journey and how attachment played a key role.

I was born into a devout family and embraced faith for the first 25 years of my life. Then, I bumped into Ted.com and heard scientists and experts share life-changing ideas in twenty minutes. I became so attached to the acquired knowledge that my ego and belief in my knowledge swelled, and my faith retreated to a small corner of my heart. My intellect became sharp, but I had no support or anchor to deal with the truths it uncovered. Suddenly, borders between countries seemed like arbitrary lines people had drawn, nationalism appeared as a human construct, and I despised the lies people told each other just to get along. I saw everyone else as a lesser mortal caught in a web of deception, and instead of feeling compassion for them, I felt anger.

I was so attached to my knowledge that I could not give it up when I could clearly see it was making me a mean and small-minded individual. Finally, my spiritual and atheist selves clashed severely, leading to depression.

As I battled depression, I rediscovered my spirituality. I went through Buddhism, Art of Living, and Isha before finally finding my guru Om Swami.

Like a smith, who shapes iron, he ignited the spiritual fire in me and put me through various experiences that softened me so that he could reshape me. Over time attachments to all concepts and ideas gave way to surrender. I arrived at the same conclusions I did previously. People draw borders, but the earth is home to everyone. Nationalism is needed to live in the world today, but we are all children of the same divine. People do tell each other white lies to preserve relationships. This time instead of anger or disgust, these revelations led to compassion for my fellow beings.

My guru gradually reshaped me and removed the attachments that bound me in chains of ego, envy, greed, and pride. That’s why the guru has such as high place in Sanatana Dharma. Every other culture talks only about God as the ultimate reality. We are the only ones who openly say that if God and my guru were to come before me, I would bow to my guru first because he showed me the pathway to God.

I used Meditation and Sadhana to explore my inner world and work my way toward my truth.

These are my indvidual views and do not represent my current or any previous organizations.