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Holding On to the Fire that Burns Our Hands

The more I study the Indian scriptures and listen to the Indian Bhajans, the more I get surprised about the behavior of the people. A society that celebrated Vairagya of Shiva has become so obsessed with material objects. A society that celebrates the love of Rama and Bharata is now full of court cases among siblings. A society that has the ideal of Savitri-Satyavan and Sita-Ram is full of marital disputes. Probably one of the biggest reasons is that we have discarded our scriptures which are full of guidance on every aspect of life from our saints and rishis. Bhagwad Geeta is more read by foreigners than by Indians.

The following is the link to a video that I listed recently, and it made me think for some time:

https://youtu.be/glUuKyj1NoU?si=WDZdiGvEOnypAlBl

Yashoda held onto a very small emotion that why did Gautama not ask her before leaving and that holding on to a single emotion disturbed her for so many years. The moment she let it go, not only did she become free, but that freedom released so much of energy into the ecosystem. We hold on to so many emotions. All because of the fragile ego. It is very difficult for the insecure ego to let go. Insecure ego is so insecure that it wants to hold on to not only material possessions like money and power but also to the feelings such as revenge and jealousy. Not only does it want to have comforts and pleasures but also wants to deprive its enemies of these comforts and pleasures.

Insecure ego wants to prove that its line is longer than the line drawn by the others. It tries to do the same by making its line longer as well as by rubbing the line drawn by others. We try to prove our worth and indispensability by doing hard work, and when we do not succeed with that we try to damage the work and reputation of others. Damaging somebody's work is easier than hard work. If we can not damage, we try to steal other's work. We use Chat-GPT and AI to write essays and make presentations for the meetings.

In the process, we do not realize what big harm we do to ourselves. Whatever we hold on to, be it money, power, fame, appreciation, or possession, keeps getting stronger. We want more and more of these things and start behaving like a drug addict. We get addicted to the higher and higher doses of the neurotransmitters that are produced by these things. The day we get a smaller dose of appreciation, we go mad. Some loss of money makes us sad. A potential threat to power ignites so much fear and hatred that we go all the way to defame that person and damage his reputation. Any damage to our respect and goodwill in society looks like death to us. Ditch by a partner ignites thoughts of suicide. We hold on to these things so tightly that we can't think of a scenario where we are deprived of them. When Yashoda suffered for many years just due to holding on to the behavior of Gautama leaving her without telling her, how long will we suffer holding on to so many things? We keep burning our hands in the fire, due to holding on to the fire and yet do not want to let go of the fire. That looks so strange. However, this strange attitude is so common that letting go appears to be strange. This world is really so full of wonders. 

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