Sankalpa

The New Year should be celebrated continuously through to spring. Spring brings joy; spring nurtures life. In nature, what lies beneath the ground during the winter months remains protected, and when the warmth of spring arrives, the seed grows. The grass may lie under ice and snow, seemingly dead, but when the snow melts and sunlight penetrates, the frozen, barren earth suddenly turns green.

On New Year's, people make resolutions. The seed, the resolution, the sankalpa, may lie beneath the ice and snow of winter. When the light of wisdom, the light of knowledge, shines and clears away the ice and snow of ignorance, the seed can become what it is meant to be.

One must make a sankalpa; one must sow a seed within it. Just as the beauty of creation manifesting in nature can be experienced in a plant, so too can the possibilities of creation be visualized by sowing a seed. A new seed offers a vision of the possibilities of creation that are just as auspicious, uplifting, inspiring, and encouraging as the plant, once grown and visible.

The seed, the resolution, the sankalpa, must have an effect on your entire life. It must become part of you until you leave this body, not remain merely a passing thought of the day. Otherwise we confuse our sankalpa with our desires and dreams. Desires and dreams can lead us in the right direction, but also in the wrong one.

Sankalpa must be grounded in the reality in which we live. It should be shaped so as to achieve, to reach, to lead to the experience of change and transformation. When you hear, feel, know, or see something pleasant or unpleasant, you notice a shift in your mind and emotions. You should not only notice and experience this, but truly live through that transformation. If you have ever, even once in the past, experienced bliss for just one second, that experience can be extended. Gaining the ability to extend the length of that experience is the goal of tantra, whether in the form of shaktipat, yoga, lifestyle, thought, faith, ritual, or philosophy.

So make a resolution that will have far-reaching consequences for your life and for the good of all concerned. The resolution should express your creativity, compassion, sincerity, and simplicity.

Swami Niranjananda Saraswati

Piyush Mittal