One of my favorite movies is Iqbal. I loved the dialogue of Nasiruddin Shah when the coach of a rich player (Girsh Karnad) tries to manipulate the selection process and offers money to him for Iqbal and tries to negotiate a compromise whereby the other player will get selected this year and Iqbal next year. Then Nasiruddin Shah says "For a long time I wanted to say to everybody who pretends to be my well-wisher that go to hell". Why this well-wisher cult is so unbearable?
There are two factors probably. Firstly, most of the time well-wishers just try to manipulate. They try to achieve their own goals by manipulating others. We come across many such situations everywhere. In organizations, we see similar manipulations where the employers pretend to be well-wishers and for their small benefit, they exploit the employees. Duryodhana was a wellwisher of Karna and in the process manipulated the emotions of Karna to use him against Pandavas in the battle of Kurukshetra. As long as the well-wishers are fixated on their self-interest, they may at best negotiate the terms that are mutually beneficial. Girish Karnad, in the movie Iqbal, is just trying to ensure that he keeps getting money from his rich students by ensuring that they get selected for India. The rest of the things are just offshoots of this goal. If this goal is achieved by getting Iqbal selected to the Indian team, he would like to do that.
I have seen many organizations, including the so-called spiritual organizations also very closely. For most of the organizations, their existence becomes primary and the rest become secondary. As human beings are afraid of dying, most of the organizations also develop such fear. The office bearers and the gurus slowly become heavily dependent on these organizations for their survival. As a result, the purpose for which the organizations were started takes the back seat and the protection and promotion of the organization becomes primary.
There is another category of well-wishers, who are not manipulative but they do not understand us. A mother who wants her daughter to be married at an early age against the wishes of the daughter to study more is a well-wisher but she does not know what wellness means. A person who has lived whole of his life inside the well can never understand what it means to come out of the well and live under the open sky. He would wish that none living inside the well is able to come out of the well. Somebody who has spent his life keeping the material world as the center of his life can never understand what it means to connect to your inner being. Ravana would never understand what Rama got by going to the forest for 14 years. It is quite unthinkable for Ravana and that is the reason why as a well-wisher, he would always advise to accumulate more and more.
The well-wishers of Buddha advised him to close his eyes to all the sufferings of the world. He should be kept away from all the miseries of life. He should not see any old person or anybody suffering from disease. We also try to keep our kids away from the harsh realities of life. We try to make their life as safe and comfortable as possible. But, are we really well-wishers of the kids? A frog inside the well can never understand what freedom from the well means. A person who has never tasted freedom would always suggest ways and means to get little pleasure while being a slave. Freedom is not everybody's cup of tea and most of the people are happy being slaves.
That is the reason why anybody who wants to move along the spiritual path would soon have to discard this well-wisher cult and carve out his own path. Let truth be the lighthouse. Why do we need the advice of the well-wishers who do not know their own well-being? Fortunately or unfortunately, we are caught in a world where the majority is happy being the slave of their desires and fears. They laugh when somebody tries to move out of the cave, to the world of light. Ironically, their ideal are Rama, Krishna, and Shiva but they aim for wealth and power like Ravana and Kansa. Then they have the audacity to claim to be life guides and keep giving advices to others for their well-being.
Fortunately, we have the lighthouse of truth inside us. We just need to be aware of the same. The moment we observe dispassionately, the truth gets revealed. If we make truth our lighthouse, nobody can stop us from living a life of freedom and bliss. We soon realize that we do not need much from the world, rather this body and mind are a divine blessing to us. It is such a powerful tool that not only it can make our own life meaningful but also the lives of many around us. We may waste the best supercomputer in watching YouTube videos or we may use an ordinary laptop for creating something extraordinary. We make choices each moment and when we refrain from making choices, the default takes over. Even the choice of not making a choice is also a choice. If we choose not to move outside the well, by default, we will end up being inside the well.
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