Tuesday 18 August 2009

A Perspective on Life

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,

Whether the cup with sweet or bitter rum,

The wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop,

The leaves of life, keeps falling one by one. - --- Omar Khayyam


As life is passing by quietly, I felt the need of understanding the wisdom, which has been handed over to us by our ancestors and spiritual leaders. All of us, at one point of time, compelled to ask “ Why I am here, what I am doing and why I am doing?” There should be a deeper meaning to life than what we are seeing on the surface level. Sometimes our destiny works in such a way that we are left with bewilderment and blame God for not being fair.

But that’s not the case. I believe that we all come on this earth as human beings to learn our lessons. God brings design and purpose to our existence. Everything (good or bad) that happens to us happens for a reason. This is the “moolmantra” of all the happenings around us. Human nature is such that we always crave for pleasure and keep running after it, not knowing that we are running after a mirage. Even Swami Vivekananda said, “It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal; the cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness but knowledge, to which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good. There is always a hidden message in all the acts that have been created by God to make us understand the deeper meaning of life. We all know that every blow brings out our hidden strength to fight our vices and take one step forward to the greater wisdom of understanding & compassion. This discovery amazes us, making us think where it was and from where it is coming. Actually, it is very much inherent in every human being. Every knowledge comes from inside, we just have to polish, unveil or discover it through experience.

One thing that I want to make clear is that we are human and will tend to do mistakes. We can’t be perfect but every step of ours is towards perfection. We are not going to be condemned, if we do one or two mistakes time to time. The importance in reality is the acceptance of the situation, then the understanding of what we've come to learn and move on in our life. At the end of that particular lifetime, it is measured whether we succeeded to meet our intended life path .

I do believe that people we meet also contribute in our evolution, learning & development. So many people in so many ways appear & disappear through life. We fail to recognize their presence, their role and the importance it bears. I really want to thank all those people & situations, to whom once I thought difficult, were actually the contributors in my learning . When one learns to deny one’s own importance and learns to appreciate the worth and achievement of others does one truly understands himself or herself and the nature and purpose of living. As we start accepting people, nature of conflict diminishes.

Great philosopher Sankhya says, The whole of nature is for the soul, not the soul for nature. This world is not our habitation; it is only one of the many stages through which we are passing. The very reason of nature’s existence is for the education of the soul. So whatever that, we are learning as a form of knowledge will eventually lead us to freedom”.

All of us are great in our own way. We all are continuously merging with each other as per our understanding & inner knowledge. It is a journey that we all are taking together. We all are at different stations at this time. But definitely we all will reach the same destination sooner or later.

I want to share so much more, but maybe some other time. I would like to end this subject by quoting Omar Khayyam once again,

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the dust descend;

Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie

Sana wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans End!

Pl. do send your valuable comments. Share your own experiences and perspectives.

7 comments:

  1. Nina ji:
    This posting is at a very high level for me to fully comprehend and comment. But, I will say this much that I am in full agreement with your statement "But definitely we all will reach the same destination sooner or later."

    May God bless you with the energy so that you can share your highly acquired wisdom with us on a regular basis.

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  2. This is a very fine work that you have started.
    I hope it will stimulate discussion and enquiry on various issues that dog modern life.

    Congratulations
    Jitendra and Maya

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  3. Nina I found various concepts being explored in your blog. Your comments reflect your fundamental belief in the Hindu philosophy, nevertheless at times you sound more like an existentilist. We all from time to time encounter our inner strugles serching for meaning of life. To most of us life is not fully satisfying because of suffering and losses. Yet life has meaning and yet in order to realize our true self we are in a continuous search of meaning. Traditional religious and secular rules are arbitary and fluid. That is why our search continues throughout our life as our desire is to find out who and what we are. We make choices based on our experiences. Your acknowledgment of people who have helped you grow and evolve is part of the journey of life.

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  4. Why are we here? What are we doing? We are here to play - a game - like chess, only more elaborate. Anything more? No. Then why is there pain and misery? Because we have a) not played by the rules b) we are poor players
    How then do we WIN: TRUTH & LOVE. Nothing else, nothing more. Knowledge as in education is merely the aquisition of someone else's viewpoint on a particular matter, interesting perhaps but it does not necessarily lead to KNOWING - KNOWING only comes from TRUTH & LOVE as does the ultimate WIN: FREEDOM.

    OCTAVIA

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  5. Just to let all the readers know,that "Omar Khayyam" besides being a Sufi poet, was also one of the best mathematicians and astronomers of his time and his theorems are still studied by the mathematicians of today. If the above quoted poem have a negative connotation, then his other poems connoted the wisdom of life, such as ,

    " With them the seed of Wisdom I sow, And with my own hand laboured it to grow,
    And this was all the Harvest that I reaped, I came like Water and like Wind I go."

    Therefore, as the 'wine of life' is oozing out, we are filling the vacuum created by that emptiness by way of enriching ourselves with the wisdom of knowledge of our being on this planet. To get this wisdom, we have to go through the litmus test of time and in the process the experiences may vary from person to person depending upon one's inherited sanskara's or karma, which is part of the game and beauty of being born as human being.

    Furthermore, we are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions, so we should know how to act.

    However, with all said and done, I recollect a poem from "Rashmirathi" by Sri Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, which I am sure, will provide some answer to all the questions,

    "Jiwan ke param dhyeye sukh ko, sara samaj apnata hai,
    Dekhna ye hai, kaun wahan tak, kish prakar se jata hai,
    Hai dharam pahuchna nahin, Dharam to jiwan bhar chalne mein hai,
    Faila kar path per snighda jyoti, Deepak saman jalne mein hai."

    Meaning:

    " the whole world accepts pleasures as the main purpose of life,
    It is to be seen that what means one adopts to reach that goal.
    the moral duty is not to reach the goal but to keep striving for the whole life,
    by burning like a lamp while spreading the selfless light of purity and wisdom."

    Continue the good work of sharing the knowledge and exchange of thoughts. Looking forward to your next topic.

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  6. Nina and Suman..... indeed this is an excellent brainstorming blog..... one day ..... someday when I slow down my pace and acquire more knowledge....I plan to contribute too...
    Please keep up the good work!

    Best wishes,

    Anu

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  7. The other day I was watching a movie called "knowing". It starts with a mathematics class where the professor asks the question on probability, if life is a random act or is a sequence of pre-determined events, destined to happen. The story ultimately dwelss on the second theme and is based on the experiences and actions of one who somehow can find different algorithms of events with time and could predict what would happen next !!

    Another one documentary I saw on Discovery-Medical, made a definite impression on me. It is about the process how the life was formed. It is on a high resolution ultra-sound and tracked the sperm and eggs and captured exactly the moment, when all of sudden, it started to vibrate with life and then gradually grew into a baby. That first moment when it received the first vibration, is something which I can never forget. It was still in the form of fluids and far from taking the shape of even a fetus. I wondered wherefrom this life came ? And I had no answer.
    All religions and philosophies made their own hypothesis and progressed on. But to me the hindu philosophy, in any form, gives a very logical progression of the purpose,transormation and evolution.

    But can I ask, how many of us has felt life ? Is it really a credible question ? Please think and respond.

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