We often experience the fear of the known. As children, we were afraid to go to a dark room when there was a power cut. We all recall having butterflies in our stomachs before examinations. We feel jittery when we go to the podium to address a gathering. We feel uncomfortable when we take up a new assignment. We are on our toes when we settle in a different country or town. We are comfortable with the known. The familiar food, the comfort of home, the company of familiar people, working at a familiar workplace, and exploring places that have been explored by others and received 4 or 5 stars.
Why are we so uncomfortable exploring the domain of the known? Probably because that requires us to be attentive. The brain wants to preserve energy, and that's why it makes us feel comfortable when we are surrounded by the known. We can afford to relax, we can plan according to our wishes, and things are predictable. We feel in control of things. Given an option, we would like to live a life on the dotted lines with dots being printed by society on the canvas of our minds. You get a good education, marry, produce kids, take care of them, get them married, take care of parents, socialise, repeat these blessings again and again in your mind and die "peacefully". Any deviation looks uncomfortable. Not able to get the college we wanted to go to, unable to marry the person we like, loss of a partner in some tragedy, inability to have kids, inability to get them settled, not getting the validation from society, any health issue; all look like uncomfortable scenarios.
It is quite strange that a country, where Ram and Krishna are the two biggest guiding forces, is so fixated on comforts. Ram went to the forest with Vishwamitra when he was very young. A completely unknown ecosystem, full of demons. Survival is a challenge. Death may come in any form. Even post-marriage, he had to go to the forest for 14 years. Completely unknown ecosystem again. Then he went to Rishyamuk and helped his friend Sugriva. After that, he entered a completely unknown territory called Lanka, unknown to human beings. Krishna too left the comforts of his home and his beloved Radha when he went to fight against Kansa. He did not mind shifting from Mathura to Dwarka. Even when Dwarka was very prosperous, he agreed to participate fully in the battle of Kurukshetra and became the Saarathi of Arjuna. Ram and Krishna challenged themselves almost every moment of their lives.
There are a few significant events in the Ramayana that can guide us about the three fundamental reasons for this fixation. The first when Bharata was made the king of Ayodhya, and he came to know about this, he was extremely sad. He could not digest the fact that because of him, his brother had been sent to the forest. He went after Ram to bring him back, but Ram did not agree and finally Bharata took his sandals and took care of Ayodhya as an agent to Ram, having established his sandals on the throne. Bharata was sad until he was full of the sense of "doership". He considered himself the reason for the exile of Ram. The moment he gave away that "doership”, he was relaxed. We, too, become fixated on the known because we develop a very strong sense of "doership”. That's why our attention gets focused on whatever we identify as our responsibilities and stops relating to the rest. That's why the domain of that "rest" or the "unknown" haunts us. We get so focussed to save our little "home" that we ignore that the whole of the town is burning. That sense of "doership" makes us very limited. The moment we shift from the sense of "doership" to "agency", we relate to everything around through the same whose "agents" we all are.
The second event from the Ramayana is the struggle of Hanumana to jump across the ocean. He always had this capacity, but forgot for a temporary period. We too have the capacity to explore the domain of the unknown always; however, we too forget the same. Why? Because we do not get the right purpose. Hanumana, as a child, tried to eat up the Sun, considering that to be an apple, and then Indra had to intervene, and Hanumana forgot his capability until he met Ram and got the right purpose. We are often so busy in our comfort zone that we do not make efforts to find the right purpose of our lives. Our Swadharma. The thing we are made to explore, and since we do not find that purpose, we are not passionate about the things we do in life, and that’s why we feel short of capacity. That’s why it is so important to understand our Swadharma.
The third event from the Ramayana is when Lakshmana fought Meghnatha, and Meghnatha tied him with Nagpasha. This happens to all of us who explore the domain of the unknown. This happens quite often with the people who practice meditation. Some imagination or projection of their mind looks very prfound and they feel so elated. All of us, entering the domain of the unknown, pass through phases when we feel very elated at a certain experience. We fail to realise that it's just some illusion or hallucination, and if we get stuck on that, we again get fixated. That’s when we need Sanjivani, the wisdom of life. The understanding that life is all about constant exploration and challenging ourselves constantly.
These three incidents from the Ramayana can guide us in our journey into the domain of the unknown. It’s challenging. We can decide to live a life on the dotted lines, as most people do. That may give us a comfortable life. Soil is most comfortably lying on the Earth. When it takes the form of a plant, new possibilities are created. When it takes the form of human beings, many more possibilities are created for a short time between birth and death. After death, we will become the same soil and rest. This short span of life is to explore the domain of the unknown. Of course, we need the tools, but to toil in the field rather than to decorate them in a temple. Human life is also meant to explore the domain of the unknown and not to die comfortably and peacefully to turn back into the soil where we have come from. The hotel room is to give us comfort to take rest so that we are ready to explore the town the next day. We may feel that we have best utilised the hotel by being comfortably inside the whole day long, but that’s a sheer wastage of life.
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