There is an amazing story in Mahabharata, the great Indian epic. Five Pandavas, who are the heroes of the epic are forced to stay in the forest and while moving around they feel thirsty and find a pond. As they try to take water, the caretaker of the pond, who is a Yaksha, warns them that they can only take water from the pond if they answer his questions. When the four brothers faint, finally Yudhistira answers the questions of Yaksha. The most interesting question was "What is the greatest wonder in this world?". Yodhistira answered that everybody sees death almost every day and yet believes in his own immortality and lives life as if he will never die. That is the greatest wonder.
Yudhistira was bang on the target. Definitely, that remains the biggest wonder of the world even today. There is war war-like situation in almost every corner of the world today. We are getting news from Bangladesh, the UK, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, Russia, Palestine and so many more countries about the unrest and conflicts. Despite so many problems in almost every nook and corner of the world, we are sure that we will survive long and keep planning accordingly. That's really wonderful.
However, I notice one more such wonder. We all pray and respect the people who lived a very simple life most of whom left even their home and family life in search of the truth but when it comes to our own life, we do the totally opposite. We pray and respect Rama, who left his palace just to obey the words of his father. He left his wife to address the concerns of the subjects of Ayodhya. He had Vairagya since childhood and was not attached to anything material. His life revolved around Dharma and duties. We pray Rama, and have his statue in our homes, but when it comes to making choices for our own lives, we choose Ravana. How many of us would go to the forest? Leave aside going to the forest, how many of us will be willing to forego our rights over the ancestral properties even in favor of our siblings? How many of us can give away our rights to address the concerns of even the ones whom we claim that we love. Even concede when we are arguing with a friend. We go to the extent of insulting the ones we claim to love if they do not agree with our opinions and viewpoints. Leave aside matters, we owe our views and opinions also to that extent that we can go to any extent to defend them. Yet, we pray to Rama.
We pray Buddha and Mahavira, but when someone talks of devoting some time to spiritual pursuits, the first advice we give to such a person is that he has to fulfill his duties as a husband or wife. In that case, why do we pray to Buddha and hold him in high regard? Buddha also left his wife and son when he was quite young. I feel that there is some problem with these thoughts. A person can not be born in this world without parents. If a person decides to move along the path of sannyasa, he will have to leave the duties to his parents in any case. Shankaracharya had to do the same. Does that mean that till the parents are alive, a person can not choose the path of sanyasi? Does that mean if a person decides to marry at a certain age, he loses his right to be sanyasi for the rest of his life?
I feel that there is a fundamental problem with the concept. We need to examine what life is and the rest of the questions can be examined only after we answer that question. To the best of my understanding till date, science has no answer to the question. Quantum physics has not understood so far even the four fundamental forces of nature, leaving aside understanding the meaning of life. Biology has not so far understood where life comes from, leaving aside understanding its meaning. Neurology has no clue to understand the meaning of "I". In such a situation, it is meaningless to look forward to science to solve this problem. I feel that Astrology offers us quite a reasonably good answer. It says that every individual on this earth is born with a Prarabdha which is reflected in one;s horoscope at the time of birth. It is a sum total of the Karmas in the past lives. Karmas here are not the physical Karmas but the dasha of Mana and that is the reason why entire astrology is about the study of that Dasha over the lifetime of an individual. Astrology also says that all these forces of nature and dashas operate only in the gross domain and if a person maintains equanimity, he remains completely unaffected like Shiva.
Now if life is not limited to this birth, and it is the sum total of all the lives, any sane mind would understand that the purpose of life can not be accumulation of wealth and powers, or to take care of a family. Each member of the family has his own unique journey and we are all co-travellers along the journey. In that case, how can anybody's purpose in life be restricted to just taking care of the family? Unless we understand the truth, we can not know the purpose of our life, and in that case, we will spend the whole of our life in ignorance just following what the majority says, if the majority is blind to the truth, we will also mistake false for the truth and keep living in an illusion. Naturally, if someone wakes up and tries to understand the meaning of life, the entire society will become fearful and start reacting because if even one person has a candle in his hand, it is dangerous to all who are happily sleeping in the darkness. Nobody wants to face reality. That is why the entire society conspires to eliminate such people be it Christ, Socrates, or Buddha. They keep praying for all these fellows after they have died because after that they can manipulate their teachings to suit their conveniences and take shelter in their name, pretend to be their followers, and in fact, use them as a psychological protection to deal with their fears and keep opting the easy way out, the way of denial of truth and sleeping in darkness.
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