Can slavery ever choose freedom? Can the ego choose love ever? Can a servant choose to start entrepreneurship? Yes, of course. They can. However, it does not generally happen. People who get used to the security of a job find it extremely hard to set up their own ventures, and only one out of many thousands dares to do so. Similarly, it is very difficult for the slaves to get the mindset of freedom. Only a very few Indians could dream of being free in British-ruled India. Years of slavery kill their dreams also. Slavery gets into the blood of a human being, and he accepts his fate to be a slave. He does not think of something like freedom; day-to-day survival is the most important thing. Similarly, years of living with the ego at the centre of our lives leave hardly any scope for us to be free.
Can "I' ever love? It seems almost impossible. So long as "I" and "you" exist, where is the question of loving? Love means merger. How can two people merge while their identities remain intact? How can a father merge with the son? For that merger to happen, the father will have to let go of his identity as a father, and the son will have to let go of his identity as a son. How can a bhakta merge with God? For that merger to happen, the bhakta will have to drop his identity of being a bhakta. How can a unit merge with the whole while continuing to remain the unit? How can a drop merge with the ocean, while continuing to remain the drop?
But why would the drop like to merge? How can a drop make a decision to merge with the ocean? That seems so uncertain. The drop has been used to make decisions in life to gain more and more control. The drop can even dream of controlling the entire ocean and then making the ocean's water available to the "fellow drops". A drop can neither connect to the "fellow drops" nor to the ocean until it is ready to drop its identity as a drop. However, throughout our lives, we generally make efforts to strengthen our identity. We want to be in control of everything. From the room temperature to the spouse. Everybody and everything should follow our command. How will such a "control freak" drop merge with the ocean?
In this loveless world, people who live with love at the centre of their existence are often "used" by others. Hypothetically speaking, suppose somebody is running a bhandara, and a dacoit takes food at the bhandara and then commits the act of dacoity and murders somebody. Hasn't the act of charity strengthened the dacoit? That's why, when Arjuna says that he does not want to fight against his teachers and elders, Krishna tells him that love and compassion is not selective for a few human beings. That's attachment. If Arjuna has love and compassion at the centre of his life, he will have the same love and compassion for the people of Hastinapur and will not want them to be ruled by Duryodhana at any cost. When a "drop" cares for another "drop", considering that other drop to be connected to it, while ignoring so many other drops, that's attachment. On the other hand, when a "drop" realises that every drop is made up of the same ocean and will merge back into the same ocean, it is love.
Living life with love is both easy and difficult. It is very easy, and we get rid of all the calculations, the moment we start living life with love. A child naturally loves. All of us are born with a natural instinct to love each other. However, an insecure society and especially the insecure parents, make their children fearful. Out of that fear, the child becomes desperate to get security in the form of money, power, position, relationship, intelligence, or belief. Once he gets that security, he clings to it, and any thought of dropping that security becomes the biggest nightmare. A person who is busy getting that control in his hands will find it almost impossible to lose control. How will our children learn to love when we make them insecure since their childhood? When we feed insecurities into them, how will they find their passion? Love in this insecure world looks very costly. But it is the other way round. The desire to control in this lovely world results in the wastage of precious life. It is not a long life with control at its centre that makes life fulfilling. It is a life full of love. Swami Vivekananda lived only 39 years, Adi Shankaracharya 32, and Bhagat Singh 23, and look at the grandeur of their lives and compare them with most people who die after completing 70-75 years. We will not be able to hold ourselves back and say, "What a wastage of life!" The next in line of this mindless wastage should not be our kids and us.
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