We appreciate Bhagar Singh as a hero in India because he sacrificed his life for the country's freedom. Mahatma Gandhi is the father of the nation. Ram is worshipped in almost every home. Yet, if we are allowed to draw the horoscope of our kids, none of us would like to have similar planets in the horoscope of our kids. Why should they be hanged like Bhagat Singh? Why should they live a life of detachment and sacrifice like Mahatma Gandhi? Why should they suffer in the forest like Rama? We want the "most comfortable" life for our kids.
What stopped Gandhi from setting the target of becoming the best of the lawyers in South Africa and leading a wealthy lifestyle? What stopped Rama from accepting the request of Bharata to become the king of Ayodhya and live a comfortable life? What stopped Gautama from accepting the comforts arranged for him by his desperate father and living happily. All of them explored the domain of known and did not find that to be interesting enough. Rama got Virakti from the world and his questions and answers on the futility of this world are well documented in Yoga Vashistha. Mahatma Gandhi has himself written the story of explorations in "My Experiments with Truth". It is well known that Buddha found the comforts and pleasures made available by his parents to be quite sub-standard and not worth pursuing.
As against this, most people keep setting targets in the material world all throughout their lives. Most of us do not even give a second thought to the targets set by our parents during our childhood. Parents tell us to work hard to get the best package and that becomes the sole motive of our lives. Parents tell us to get a prestigious job and getting that public recognition becomes the sole aim of our lives. Some do reflect on their life goals as they grow up, but they too do not dare to go beyond the known. They try to find an alternative meaning of life in the known material world. Some make "good health" their life mission, some join "clubs", and some start investing time in their hobbies.
However, it requires absolute conviction about the limitations of the material world to start exploring the "unknown world". It's not everybody's cup of tea. It not only requires "understanding the limitations of exploration in the material world" but also "an agnostic belief in the possibility of the metaphysical world". If somebody realizes the limitations of the material world exploration but has no agnostic belief in the metaphysical world, he would at best be fed up with the material world without any sense of direction. When we start questioning the widely held beliefs of the material world, we start growing aware of the possibilities beyond the material world. However, since we continue to live in the material world, the pulls and pushes of the material world keep affecting us for a long time. Our body too is a big storehouse of the memories of the material world that stores different memories unconsciously and keeps directing our mind to make different decisions unconsciously.
It takes absolute awareness to realize the limitations of the explorations in the material world. Most people lazily just follow the crowd. The exploration by Buddha into the nature of reality may appear to be quite painful to the people tied to materialistic pursuits. However, Buddha has inspired generations of explorers into the nature of reality. The least we can do with our kids is to tell them the stories of Buddha and Rama so that they at least get a different perspective. The worst thing that we can do to our kids is to give them a singular perspective like the parents of Buddha. Once we give different perspectives to kids, they are free to choose. However, that requires parents themselves to be aware of different perspectives of life. The parents who have lived a linear life find it absolutely difficult to appreciate the possibility of a different perspective. That's why societies and organizations are never able to appreciate the "people with a different perspective" and that's why people like Buddha faced a lot of resistance from contemporary society. However, given a choice, Buddha will become Buddha every time he comes to this Earth.
Comments