“Nirasha” - Marco M.

Nirasha

Nirasha is a Vedic term that literally means “without hope.” The attitude toward hope is one of the many subtle lines that distinguish a conscious being from, on the one hand, the common understanding, and on the other from the blockheads who inform themselves (study Vedic texts) without ever managing to understand a thing. The latter are, without a doubt, the most distant of all, because they believe they know.

The absence of hope, both in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Upanishads, is one of the prerequisites for liberation (Mukti in the Upanishads and liberation from Samsara in the Gita).

However, the absence of hope has nothing to do with Western nihilism. Those who walk along the subtle line of awareness make plans, and in making them they hope that they will come true. At the same time, they are able to live this superficial attachment to the project, which is a form of hope, with ascetic detachment (askesis), and they are ready not merely to accept but to take the non-occurrence of what they hoped for as a great opportunity and a new challenge.

This new challenge also includes the future relationship with the original project, in a kind of attempt to find balance between succumbing and giving up immediately and persisting excessively. Those who need instructions on how to move along this subtle line belong to the blockheads who fail to understand that it is feeling that must guide us, not knowledge. Knowledge is experiential: it is learned by falling off the wire, not intellectual, because no one can explain to you what you must feel.

m.m.