It takes a lot of effort in the city to look at the stars because the sky is so full of street lights. In a place where a loud DJ is being played, it is almost impossible to listen to the sound of birds. Similarly, it is quite difficult to listen to the inner voice in this world full of so many temptations. Since most of the parents are themselves, infants, in terms of their spiritual growth at the time of becoming parents (and in most cases die as infants), they end up passing the same confusion to their offspring. When the entire society is madly busy dancing to the tunes of loud DJs, shouting for a louder sound, where is the space for a person trying to listen to the sound of nature? However, anybody whose mental faculties have not been paralyzed by the social virus, and who has even an iota of sanity left, can observe the reality. Once a person gets out of the intoxication caused by the "drugs of temptations", he can see that what he understood to be a "bed of roses" under that intoxication is actually "mud full of dirt". That is the first step to get out of these temptations and look inside.
We keep cribbing that we have so many problems in this world. However, ask a person suffering from a terminal disease and having few days to survive. Despite suffering from unbearable pain, nobody would like to die. Ask an old person 100 years old, he would like to live longer. Ask somebody suffering from great poverty and not having sufficient means to fill his stomach, he would also like to live as long as possible. That's the beauty of this life. It offers some or the other temptation to everybody to cling to.
At best, few are able to leave certain temptations to pursue certain other goals. We left so many immediate gratifications in our childhood such as socialization with friends and partying etc. in order to study to get a good job and career to enjoy life long. It was also a deal. Leave the immediate gratification to enjoy life later. That's what society preaches. Leave the temptation of getting up late, and pray to God to get a good body so that you can enjoy the pleasures of this world with that body. Follow the social rules rather than following your own heart so that society validates your actions and you feel secure and comfortable.
We just keep replacing and exchanging one temptation with the other throughout our lives. In the process, sometimes, spirituality also becomes a seeking. We leave the office work and family in order to seek some spiritual experiences. Again substituting one pleasure for the other. We fail to realize that all these substitution mechanisms are just time-buying tactics. I feel that the entire human civilization is not that foolish not to understand the temporariness of all these pleasures. There are enough rich who have realized the futility of money, there are enough powerful who have realized the futility of power and there are enough knowledgeable people who have realized the limitations of knowledge. We all know that we can not have food beyond a limit and that results in diseases of different body parts. Yet we all keep running after these temptations throughout our lives. There must be some fundamental reason for the same.
I feel that the fundamental reason is the ease with which these pleasures are available to us. Nature has designed us in a way that the lesser we have the easier we get pleased. A rich person has money to spend on his luxuries. He can travel across the countries and have food in restaurants of his choice. A poor person gets pleased by going to the local park. Everybody has a different threshold for pleasure. While a rich person has a higher threshold, a poor has a lower threshold. A minister gets pleasure out of the huge number of people he represents and a Mohallah leader gets pleased with few people following him. A senior bureaucrat derives pleasure out of the impactful decision-making powers and a security guard derives pleasure from his authority to stop people at the gate. So, everybody has chosen his temptations and in the market, there are plenty of options available to choose from.
Comments