Skip to main content

Journey of Life

Man is an emotional being. We have quite diverse emotions, such as like, dislike, fear, insecurity, jealousy, high, low, inferiority complex, superiority complex, greed, pride and so on. We keep navigating in this infinite loop of emotions. The "I" within us wants to experience certain emotions, and we keep making efforts for that. 

As if life is like the journey of a train. We travel with our family and friends, and as the train moves along the path, we keep looking out of the window. We too decide what we want to do in life. We take a ticket and get inside the train. The train will take us to the destination by passing through the fixed route. We are not aware of what's happening inside the other trains. However, we are fully aware of what's happening inside. Similarly, when we choose a particular way of living, we lose awareness of the lives of those who have taken another train. Our worldview gets confined to the views of the fellow passengers. We are surrounded by people who share our worldview and understanding of life, and therefore, we lose sight of other worldviews and thought processes. We divide the whole of the world by religion, caste, nations, beliefs, ideologies, and so on. 

In the process, we keep looking at the towns, mountains, rivers, and the roads we pass by. We, too, get to see many different cultures, practices, rituals, and ways of living as we live life. However, we decide to remain inside the train we have boarded. Sometimes, a city of a valley or a mountain attracts a passenger, and he decides to get down at the station or to come back to the station. We, too, get exposure to different ideologies, cultures, and belief systems, and sometimes, we get tempted to stay with them and explore. We meet people of different types in our social gatherings, watch movies, read books, and sometimes get influenced by a new thought process. We decide to change our lives accordingly. However, then we board another train and start travelling therein.

Most people spend their entire life travelling on the train that they boarded in their childhood. Some dare to change the train. Very few dare to change more than a train. However, most people are busy taking trains from one destination to the other. Very few have the awareness and courage to ask the fundamental question regarding the purpose of the journey. They get bored with the routine. The comforts of the train no longer attract them. The regular supply of lunch, dinner, and snacks does not keep them satiated. All the family members and friends are travelling with them, but they have something else on their minds. They become desperate to know about the purpose of the journey. 

They realise that, from one destination to another, they have been travelling throughout their life. But that's not life. They want to know about life. They get out of the train and travel to space just to realise that all the boundaries, such as nation and religion, that appear so real, while on the ground, have no meaning when we look at the Earth from space. They travel further away to realise that in the entire universe, this solar system is smaller than a particle of dust on the Earth. They go micro and nano, to a much smaller scale, to realise that quantum is just a replica of the cosmos. With this understanding, when they get back on the train, they are no longer concerned about the destination; what matters is just the journey in that time and space. They just want to make the best use of the body and brain and take joy in every moment. They have the realisation of that oneness that underlies all the divisions.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why life is so stressful?

The present-day society is the most comfortable in the entire history of humanity. We have invented machines to carry out work at home, have built highways, can fly conveniently across countries, have comfortable homes, have information of almost every kind at our fingertips, and also have AI to help us make use of the information. Advances in robotics have made many apparently impossible tasks quite easy to perform. Yet, so many countries are at war, people are suffering from psychological disorders, depression, there are broken relationships everywhere, and people are under tremendous stress. What has gone wrong in the process? Why is development not bringing happiness? Because we have chosen "comforts" over "growth". Because we have chosen "fear" over "love". Doesn't that sound strange? Why would somebody choose "fear" over "love"? Probably, we are not aware of it while making these choices. Our unconscious mind process...

A Comfortable Life full of Fears

 Why did Buddha reject the offer of a comfortable life as a prince from his father? Why do most people grab such an opportunity? Why do most people struggle all through their lives to get such a comfortable life? It is because most people can't see what Buddha could see. That is exactly why Buddha wanted to tell the secret to the entire world.  Buddha asked questions to his charioteer about disease and death. He could have closed his eyes to the suffering of the people and sat happily inside his palace. But he enquired into the nature of death and diseases, the old age and pains thereof. He asked whether anyone can avoid suffering, and came to know that it is not possible to avoid the sufferings of old age, diseases, and death. He was determined to find a solution and therefore delved deeper and deeper into the nature of suffering and its source. His inner journey revealed the secrets that he shared with the whole world. The real cause of suffering is ignorance.  We form ...

A "home" decorated with "bonsai"

 Somebody gifted a plant sometime back. When I look at the plant on the Table, it appears to me as if the plant had the potential to grow into a big tree, but we confined the little plant within the limits of the pot, and it has grown strangely. It has a thick stem but has small leaves and branches. We have designed the plants to look the way we like. What "I" want is more important than what the "plant" is. The plant will grow the way "I" like it to grow. And then, "I" would also claim that "I" love the plant.  Yesterday, I went to a coaching institute to get some test series for a competitive exam for my daughter. The guide there spoke for around 40-45 minutes on the risks and chances of getting selected in different competitive examinations. So much competition. Fear is instilled into the minds of the students from the very beginning. Everything is around fear. If they are not able to get enrolment in a professional course , they wi...