Life and care go together. Life begins with care and ends with care. It begins with the care given by the parents, especially by the mother, to the newborn baby. It usually ends amidst the care given by the family and friends, especially one’s children, when the person moves closer to the time to depart.
In the early days and weeks after birth, it is the body that needs most care. In the years that follow, the mind needs to be cared for as well. Preserving the health of the body and the mind and, when they fail, nourishing them back to health are tasks that end only when life ends. The caregivers include a range of people in our lives, beginning with our parents, teachers, relatives, friends, doctors, therapists, and nurses. The importance of physical and mental health—and consequently the importance of the caregivers—is easy to grasp.
I am using the term “health” to mean a positive state of being, not merely the absence of clinical illness. To be mentally healthy means more than not being depressed or psychotic. A healthy mind implies the mind’s ability to think well, to discern wisely, to make informed choices, to restrain itself when needed, to let go when required, and to feel for others. In the same way, a healthy body is not simply a body without aches, pains or illness. A healthy body implies the body’s ability to use its energy well and to renew itself after rest. A caregiver is one who helps the body and the mind live up to their potential.
Why do the body and mind need constant care? Because they change, they grow, they get tired, they need rest and, when they fail, they need mending. Taking care of the body and the mind is a lifelong task. It might feel as if it ends with death, but not quite. What “dies” at death is the body, not the mind. The mind survives, gets another body, and a new body/mind combo is “born” again—and the caretaking chore resumes. The only way to begin the process of ending this chore once and for all is to become mindful of the need for spiritual care.
Spiritual care means taking care of the spirit. What is the spirit? This is the question that the religions of the world try to answer. They believe that there is more to life than meets the eye. They believe that beyond the visible lies the invisible, beyond the gross lies the subtle, and beyond the material reality dwells the spiritual reality. It is not merely a matter of “belief” though. It has also been verified by direct experience, over and over again, by at least a few in every generation. Everything that we perceive is material, but beyond the sensory world, there is also something or someone who is not material. The nonmaterial entity, which is not perceived the way we perceive everything else, is the spirit.
The Upaniṣads describe the spirit as eternal (nitya), pure (śuddha), conscious (buddha), and free (mukta). Why would something like this ever need “care”? And how does spiritual care end the need for the seemingly unending care that the body and the mind demand? These questions are easily answered once we know what the Upaniṣadic word for “spirit” is. The Upaniṣads refer to the spirit as the self (ātman). The spirit is not one more “thing” in addition to the body and the mind. It is the self. It is me.
Which begs the question, then what about my body and my mind, which I thought all along were “me”? The Upaniṣads say that they pretend to be me but, in reality, they are merely coverings (kośa) over the real me—the spirit. It’s a mistake to see the body and mind as me. The spirit has forgotten its divine nature—a veil of ignorance has clouded its understanding and it has begun to see itself as human, as a body/mind being. It is like the cover of darkness obscuring the identity of a coiled rope and making it appear as a snake. Identifying with the body/mind means taking upon oneself all the limitations of the body and the mind.
All the problems we face in life can be traced back to our body/mind identity. This is confirmed easily through our experience in deep sleep (suṣupti). In deep sleep, we are not identified with our body/mind and none of us has any problems of any kind in deep sleep. But problems of all sorts spring up when we are not asleep—and all of them involve either the body or the mind or both. All of this can be traced back to the spirit’s ignorance. When the spirit abides in its true nature, it needs no care. It is pristine and perfect. But when it is in the clutches of ignorance, it does need care. Everything that is done to “care” for the spirit comes under the purview of spiritual care.
Put simply, spiritual care involves removing the layers of ignorance (avidyā) and delusion (moha), so the spirit can “wake up” and know itself. Referring to the spirit as “it” is less helpful. Referring to it as “I” is better. The spirit is not someone or something other than me. The spirit is the self. It is the real me. I am the spirit. Spiritual care is meant to remove my delusion that I am a mortal, frail and vulnerable human being. Spiritual care is meant to lead me to the knowledge of who I really am. Once I know—not just theoretically but through direct experience—that I am eternal, pure, conscious and free, it is then that my body and mind lose the power to control me and define my life. I become free from their grip, their need for attention, their constant demands on my time and energy. When this happens, spiritual care reaches its fulfillment.
How does one care for the spirit? By removing all the obstacles in its path. The primary obstacle, as we have seen, is ignorance. What impacts my life more directly and tangibly is not ignorance but its result—the identification with the body and the mind. The more intense the identification, the greater is the alienation from my own spirit-identity. This sort of wrong self-identification is a form of spiritual illness, the “disease of becoming (someone else)” (bhava-roga). The cure for this illness moves along two parallel tracks: (1) Loosening the hold of the false me (“body/mind”) on myself, and (2) tightening the identification with the real me (“the spirit”).
The body/mind keep me tied to them by demanding attention. One way to minimize their hunger for attention is to keep them healthy. When they are healthy, they generally get out of the way most of the time. They need good nourishment when hungry and good rest when tired. Other than that, they generally keep to themselves. When they are not healthy, it’s a different story. Then they distract us and drag us away through their aches and pains, stress and strain, anxieties and worries, hopes and fears.
Some simple common sense methods to keep the body and the mind healthy are generally enough. What distinguishes spiritual care from what looks like simply care of the body/mind is intentionality (niṣṭhā). If I care for the body for the sake of the body, it is physical care. If I care for the body for the sake of the spirit—with the primary purpose of strengthening my spiritual life—it is spiritual care. The same applies to the care of the mind as well. What supports intentionality is discernment (viveka). Without discernment, it is easy to lose focus. The care for the body can, without discernment, easily change to obsession with the body. Rather than loosening the hold of the body on me, it then reinforces it, making me even less free.
Our relationship with the body and the mind is complicated. We are trying to disentangle ourselves from the body/mind identity. But this can be done only with the help of the body and the mind, for they are the only instruments we have at our disposal. We need a reasonably healthy body and a more than reasonably healthy mind in order to go beyond the body and the mind. When they are healthy, they can help us go beyond them. When they are not, they cling to us like leeches.
Not viewing the body and the mind as me is one process, while learning to see the spirit as me is another. The two processes are related: the more I learn to see my body/mind as only a covering over me—a natural body/mind armor I acquired at birth—the easier it gets to identify with the spirit. Subjectively, this usually takes the form of reminding myself as often as I can, “until I sleep, until I die” (āsupteh, āmṛteḥ), that I am in reality birthless and deathless, infinite and free. Objectively, it takes the form of developing a relationship with the spirit viewed as a divine Person (“God”). Both the ways are equally effective and are not really a matter of choice but of disposition. Nor is it necessarily an either/or choice. The practice of prayer, worship, meditation, scriptural study, and selfless service—in short, the practice of the “four yogas”—is most helpful in regaining my apparently lost spirit identity.
Sooner or later, most people recognize the need for taking care of the body and the mind. But spiritual care is a different story. If only people realized how vital spiritual care is! Just as there are people who specialize in giving care to the body and the mind—health professionals, for instance—there are also those who specialize in caring for the spirit. This group generally includes the clergy and the spiritual teachers, known variously as priests, ministers, pastors, lamas, rinpoches, chaplains, rōshis, startsy, imams, rabbis, acharyas, and swamis. The designation varies depending on the traditions they represent, the work they do, and the places they serve in. It is not necessary to be a “professional” to be a good spiritual caregiver. Every one of us can be a caregiver.
The most important qualification to be a good spiritual caregiver is the ability to take care of one’s own spirit and the attainment of substantial success in the practice. If I cannot take care of my own spirit, how can I help someone else take care of theirs? If I cannot swim, how can I help someone who is about to drown? It would be “like the blind leading the blind” (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.2.5). The other requirements—empathy and the urge to serve selflessly—get naturally fulfilled when one begins to take one’s own spiritual care seriously.
Caring for the body, caring for the mind, and caring for the spirit are all important. Wisdom consists in doing it in such a way that they become not a hotchpotch of random practices but a harmonious, unified practice that brings together the dispersed parts of our life and personality.
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Three Things to Do
Ask yourself: “What am I doing to take care of my body? Is that enough—or should I do something more or something different?” Your answer should lead to a definite plan of action. Set a goal and act upon it.
Ask yourself; “What am I doing to take care of my mind? Is that enough—or should I do something more or something different?” Your answer should lead to a definite plan of action. Set a goal and act upon it.
Ask yourself: “What am I doing to take care of my spirit? Is that enough—or should I do something more or something different?” Your answer should lead to a definite plan of action. Set a goal and act upon it.