UNFINISHED BUSINESS

"Unfinished business" is when we cling to something. Grasping, clinging, clutching to possessions, people, ideas, lust, ego, etc., guarantees that we will be reborn, reincarnated, into this world again and again.  To abandon all such clinging assures our liberation from this world.

Two ways exist for us to no longer cling.  The first is to satiate all that attracts us, to have our fill of them all, to the point that they no longer appeal to us.  Most of us do not do this, or are not in a position to do it, so that we return here again and again until this unfinished business is done.

The second alternative is renunciation, a method employed by monks, although one does not have to be a monk to practice it.   Jesus said “He who loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”  Renunciation is losing one’s life for something better.

Renunciation, however, does not mean depriving oneself of life experiences so much as inquiring into the real nature of those experiences, what is called in Vedanta discrimination.  Discrimination means determining what is abiding as opposed to what is transient in this life.

What do we put our stock in becomes the question.  Do we put it in that which is fleeting and unreliable or in that which is unchanging and reliable.  Naturally, we go with the latter.  And what is unchanging and reliable, eternal and abiding, but God.  By making this choice we cease to have unfinished business and are assured of freedom from this world.