Life

Are we the roles playing in this world, or are we the souls who are capable of playing different roles? This is a fundamental question because all subsequent questions, such as those about morality, responsibility, guilt, right, wrong, and the like, flow from it. Generally, while living our lives, we take guidance from our roles. If we are in a family, we want to protect our family. Similarly, we define different roles and rights and wrongs associated with them. I was reading Jurisprudence yesterday for my law examination, and I came across a beautiful concept called the " Grudge Informer Dilemma ," proposed by the German legal philosopher Gustav Radbruch . A lady passed on the information to the Nazi government, and the husband was executed by the Nazi's. Post the change of the Hitler regime, a prosecution was launched against her, and she argued that she complied with the law of the land, and that's why she should not be held guilty. Radbruch argued that when positi...

All of us are quite aware of the role we play in this world. I am a father, mother, son, daughter, employee, student, teacher, boss, friend, and so on. But do we remember that we are somebody else behind these identities? Today, while sitting in meditation, I realised that these roles carry so much weight on our soul that even when we close our eyes to begin the inner journey , the journey of "who am I?", these roles continue to play in our minds. The thoughts about the future, office, relationships, etc do not leave us.  Then what is the way out? How do we get to see the reality beyond these roles ? While interacting with each other in this world, we obviously have to stick to these roles. When we interact in society, we have to remember these roles. While doing our work in the office, we can't suddenly say, "I will not treat my boss as a boss because that's just a role." Since we play these roles day in and day out, we become confined to them. Our existenc...

I wonder if we give away the most precious things in this just to get something that has little utility. I feel pained to see the way precious resources are being wasted. We have made our rivers so dirty just because we do not want to make the effort to treat effluents before dumping them into the rivers. We keep throwing the garbage everywhere, and literally all the roads are full of polyethene and packaging papers. All the cities are full of the stench from dumping grounds at their entrances. Groundwater is getting contaminated. Due to our foolishness, we have given away the most precious things, such as clean water, air, and the ecosystem, to get that extra comfort. All these things are still visible. One thing that hardly catches our attention is the freedom of leisure . Earlier, we used to have that time to talk to friends, sleep under the stars, and sit silently in our own company. Nowadays, we don't have time for two reasons. First, we are busy chasing our dreams. The dre...

Can slavery ever choose freedom? Can the ego choose love ever? Can a servant choose to start entrepreneurship? Yes, of course. They can. However, it does not generally happen. People who get used to the security of a job find it extremely hard to set up their own ventures, and only one out of many thousands dares to do so. Similarly, it is very difficult for the slaves to get the mindset of freedom. Only a very few Indians could dream of being free in British-ruled India. Years of slavery kill their dreams also. Slavery gets into the blood of a human being, and he accepts his fate to be a slave. He does not think of something like freedom; day-to-day survival is the most important thing. Similarly, years of living with the ego at the centre of our lives leave hardly any scope for us to be free.  Can "I' ever love? It seems almost impossible. So long as "I" and "you" exist, where is the question of loving? Love means merger . How can two people merge while...

What is our greatest fear? Different people will give different answers. A child may answer that his biggest fear is losing his parents. A student may answer that his biggest fear is failure in the examination. In fact, many of us dream of failing examinations even after getting into the job. An adult may have the biggest fear of losing his job. Somebody may have a fear of losing a relationship. Some of us may have the greatest fear of being turned into a laughing stock at a social gathering. An industrialist may have the greatest fear of losing his business empire. A politician may have the greatest fear of losing power. A person fighting against cancer may have the greatest fear of death. But how many of us have the fear of wasting life ? As discussed above, we are afraid of different things. As children, we feared losing the toy we considered our most prized possession. While playing cricket, we were afraid of losing the ball. Today, we understand the futility of that fear. As a chi...

 Yesterday, I had an opportunity to interact with a few children and women at an NGO in Nagpur . I went there for the second time. It was really a thought-provoking session for me. The girls there are away from their homes, and in most cases, they either do not know their families' whereabouts or, even if they do, their families are not willing to take them back. They are struggling to be on their feet somehow. They have real problems. Some of them are unable to read or write. Some of them are not in good mental health, yet all of them are determined to do something and improve their lives. 3-4 girls are preparing for a nursing course , one girl is doing a B.Sc., and one has done a  BCA . Some are doing the beauty parlor course . I told them that their story is actually inspiring for so many people living in the world of bureaucracy , which I belong to, and who feel depressed over small issues without having an iota of an idea of the real problems of the world I asked the gir...

While walking, I just saw a couple sitting on the pavement. Slight disappointment on their face with the male smoking and the female sitting as if feeling helpless. They really looked constrained for resources. On the other hand, we often see so many people who have all the resources available to them sitting constrained. I fail to understand why they feel hopeless and constrained despite having a sound body, a skilful mind, and enough resources to do something or the other. I find no reason for that helplessness except that they just want to feel helpless. Probably, they do not want to work hard, and feeling helpless looks like an easy option. Some experiments were conducted on mice in which they were kept in a box with low boundaries and given an electric shock. All of them jumped the boundary and ran away. Slowly, the boundary's height was increased until they could no longer jump over it. After some time, the " learned helplessness " set in: they couldn't jump the...

 I was listening to the story of King Shantanu from the Mahabharata this morning. King Shantanu looks at Ganga and falls in love. I really don't know what "love" means here. He decides to marry her, and Ganga agrees on the condition that the king will never ask about her identity or what she does. Eventually, she gives birth to 7 children and offers the newborns to the river. The king feels extremely pained by this and yet does not say anything to keep his promise. However, when the eighth son is being offered to the river, the king becomes extremely angry and stops Ganga, asking her why she is doing this. Ganga tells him the story that these 8 babies were the 8 Vasus who were cursed by Sage Vashistha. When the Vasus begged for pardon from Vashistha, he said they would be born, and soon after, they would attain salvation. However, since one of them did not beg the pardon of Vashistha, he could not be offered to the river and stayed as Bhishma . Bhishma's life was t...

मैत्री की राह बताने को, सबको सुमार्ग पर लाने को, दुर्योधन को समझाने को, भीषण विध्वंस बचाने को, भगवान् हस्तिनापुर आये, पांडव का संदेशा लाये। कृष्ण की चेतावनी ‘दो न्याय अगर तो आधा दो, पर, इसमें भी यदि बाधा हो, तो दे दो केवल पाँच ग्राम, रक्खो अपनी धरती तमाम। हम वहीं खुशी से खायेंगे, परिजन पर असि न उठायेंगे! दुर्योधन वह भी दे ना सका, आशीष समाज की ले न सका, उलटे, हरि को बाँधने चला, जो था असाध्य, साधने चला। जब नाश मनुज पर छाता है,पहले विवेक मर जाता है। ये पंक्तियाँ महान हिंदी कवि और लेखक रामधारी सिंह दिनकर की कविता "रश्मिरथी" की प्रसिद्ध पंक्तियाँ हैं: "जब नाश मनुष्य पर छाता है, पहले विवेक मर जाता है।" ये पंक्तियाँ कितनी सटीक हैं! इसके उदाहरण हमें चारों ओर दिखाई देते हैं। पूरी दुनिया युद्ध क्षेत्रों से भरी पड़ी है। ऐसा लगता है कि मनुष्य पृथ्वी को नष्ट करने पर तुले हुए हैं। लोग घनिष्ठतम रिश्तों में भी प्रेम के प्रति असहिष्णु हैं। वे बस वही चाहते हैं जो उनकी प्रवृत्ति चाहती है। वे इतने निर्लज्ज हो गए हैं कि अपनी अनुचित इच्छाओं की पूर्ति न होने पर अपने रिश्तेदारों को भी जान ...

मैत्री की राह बताने को, सबको सुमार्ग पर लाने को, दुर्योधन को समझाने को, भीषण विध्वंस बचाने को, भगवान् हस्तिनापुर आये, पांडव का संदेशा लाये। कृष्ण की चेतावनी ‘दो न्याय अगर तो आधा दो, पर, इसमें भी यदि बाधा हो, तो दे दो केवल पाँच ग्राम, रक्खो अपनी धरती तमाम। हम वहीं खुशी से खायेंगे, परिजन पर असि न उठायेंगे! दुर्योधन वह भी दे ना सका, आशीष समाज की ले न सका, उलटे, हरि को बाँधने चला, जो था असाध्य, साधने चला। जब नाश मनुज पर छाता है,पहले विवेक मर जाता है। These are the famous lines from the poem " Rashmirathi " written by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar , a great Hindi poet and writer. "जब नाश मनुज पर छाता है,पहले विवेक मर जाता है।". These lines are so apt. We can see the examples of this all around us. The whole world is full of war zones. It seems that human beings are hell bent to destroy the Earth. People are very intolerant of "love" even in the closest of relationships. They just want whatever their instincts desire. They have become so shameless that they can threaten...

The world is full of so many preachers and teachers, yet humanity is becoming increasingly greedy and disturbed. It seems contradictory, but that's true. It is also strange to see that Duryodhana , Dushashana , and Shakuni were not only contemporaries of Krishna but also related to him. In fact, when the battle of Kurukshetra was about to commence, Duryodhana approached Krishna to seek his help. That means none of these people was inspired by Krishna's life, even though Krishna himself was an incarnation of God and constantly interacting with them. That means that an egotist's mind rejects even when God himself is telling him the truth. What gives the egotist's mind such a strong conviction to reject even the words of God? I think it is true not only for Duryodhana and his brothers but also for us. We are born with a sense of curiosity, and a young child wants to know everything. However, we soon realise that discovering things requires a lot of effort, while believ...

पीरा नु मैं सीने लावां, ते मैं हसदी जावां हो पीरा नु मैं सीने लावां, ते मैं हसदी जावां धुप्पां दे नाल लड़ लड़ के, मैं लाभियाँ अपनीयां छावां दुःख वि अपने सुख वि अपने, मैं ते बस एह जाना सब नु समझ के की करना ऐ, दिल नु एह समझावां तू झूम झूम झूम झूम, तू झूम झूम झूम झूम I was listening to this song and thinking about what it means to embrace the " peeda ," or the suffering. How would somebody embrace suffering and yet be happy and dance with happiness? How would somebody cope with the suffering? When I see the privileged kids and even adults complaining about little problems in life and giving up the drive for excellence for small problems in life, I feel sad that they will waste the potential of their lives due to their ignorance about the true meaning of life , coupled with stubbornness not to be open to exploring the true meaning of life. Unless somebody learns to embrace the suffering , how will they realise their potential? Their entire life, they will keep running from pillar t...

 The moment this consciousness takes the form of a body, the ego is born. The ego is nothing but a sense of separation. We feel different from the rest of the universe. We don't want to die and will go to any extent to protect this body. As we grow, we form complex correlations between this survival and different things. First of all, the ego feels that certain relationships, such as parents, siblings, and friends, are necessary for survival, and that's how we become deeply "attached" to them. We can't think of losing any of them. Then we realise that there are many more things necessary for our survival in this world, and that's when the ego forms deep attachments to money, positions, wealth, social image, and self-image. We still feel vulnerable. The whole bunch of attachments, too, does not make us feel safe, and then we start believing in certain thoughts, such as the existence of God , the theory of karma , and the concept of the afterlife, to add that ...

 All of us would have read hundreds of spiritual quotations on the ego and visited the cremation ground many times. Each time we visit the cremation ground and read the spiritual quote, we feel strongly to get out of the grip of the ego. However, the moment we come out of the cremation ground, we get back to the world of ego again. We start to feel jealous when we see a colleague's luxurious flat or a shiny car on the road. We worry about whether our child will be able to get into the college we want him to attend. The worry about money, promotion, relationships, and so on fills our minds the whole day long. Why are we unable to handle these desires despite being fully determined while being at the cremation ground or while listening to a couplet of Kabir ? It's because all these worries and desires lie deep in  our psyche. We may give thousands of reasons when we look at the shiny car on the road, trying to convince ourselves that it is not meant for us. We have tried to tak...