A finite vessel
A finite vessel your heart is,
Newer feelings will never cease
filling it to the brim.
Once which were closest to you
will ever drip, leaving a few
incredible moments in dream.
A world in a hurry…
There was a little girl in a small town. She went to the farm one day and wanted to buy watermelon. She looked at a large watermelon and asked for its price. The farmer replied that it would cost 50 rupees. She had only five rupees and so she replied to the farmer. You can have the small one, replied back the farmer pointing to a little watermelon in the middle of the field. The little girl was very happy. She gave 5 rupees to the farmer and requested him to let the watermelon stay on the field. I will come after 30 days and take my watermelon, she said and left with a smile. The little girl was smart enough to understand the importance of patience. She knew that after 30 days she will get a large watermelon at the cost of a little one.
Russian folk lore had the story of the duck hatching the golden egg. Greed in the form of impatience of the farmer made him loose his duck and his fortune. Are we doing the same thing everyday?
Impatience is the new life
That is what the marketeers wants us to believe. The popular commercial of the famous mobile network company ran a national campaign showcasing impatience as a virtue of the youth. From instant noodles to instant coffee to instant search engines to instant photos the market is flooded and the consumers fascinated with every thing instant. If we want it we want it now.
A world of Instant Gratifications
The social network sites bestows us with the power of enjoying instant likes. Every social happening, every travel, every moment in life is being captured on our smart phones and uploaded on the social sites to receive instant likes. The little kid no longer is ready to wait for that special day to receive his gift. The number of consumers waiting for the festivals to come, to buy new clothes have diminished drastically. If you want it now you have to get it now. The whole banking world is waiting out there to help you get your stuff through credit cards, personal loans and so on and so forth. Even the loans have become instant. But every instant gratification comes with a delayed pain. And we are happily oblivious.
YOLO Culture
Though the phrase was existing for over 100 years it has recently achieved currency in youth culture. It has become a popular Twitter hash-tag. The phrase and acronym are being popularly used in merchandise worn by teenagers such as hats and t-shirts. ‘You Only Live Once’ culture conveys the same impatient mentality where every experience, every encounter has to be now. Without caring for the consequences. impatience is the soul of such outlook.
Consumerism that kills
We all deserve to have good food, beautiful clothes, comfortable homes and more. But there is no end to this ‘more’. We are all gradually getting in the grip of acute consumerism. We want much more than we need. We accumulate much more than we can ever use. This constant consumerism is slow poison that is killing. With this attitude of more adds the eagerness of now. Every billboard, every TV commercial, every newspaper, every place where your eyes go, is shouting out at you. To get more and get them now. The cycle of production and consumption should rotate faster than ever. And this will churn out the most desiring profit. The consumers should consume faster so that the producer should produce faster and the profit will flow. Greed is running this wheel. And we are getting crushed under it.
A Farmer’s Life
Imagine a farmer sowing his seeds and every day digging them up to see how much the saplings have grown. He would be called a fool and will never see his crops grow. A farmer sows his seed and then leaves it to grow. He has faith that one day he will reap a field full of crops. But he regularly waters the saplings even when they are not visible. He painstakingly clears the weeds and patiently waits for the beautiful plants to flourish.
Every old wisdom had taught us the virtue of patience. In this cut throat world of competition and consumerism we have a greater need of alienating ourselves. To reclaim our inner peace and happiness we need to develop the virtue of patience within us. This is the only antidote we have in hand to save ourselves from the acute greed syndrome that all of us are suffering from.
Shift your gear from a custodian to a friend.
As parents it is our responsibility to take care of our children. Help them, guide them, nurture them and provide them with all life skills and tools for survival and success. But with most of us this role becomes our skin. We try being their benevolent custodians for life. We believe that the ways we earnestly followed throughout our life should be pursued by our progeny. Any deviation might be detrimental to their existence. And it is our moral responsibility as parents to protect them from committing such mistakes.
But we need to understand that any thought, any belief is not an absolute truth. It is contextual and thus tainted. Modern science has proved beyond doubt that the information that we gather from the world are relative and thus not reliable. Everyone perceives the world differently. All these perceptions become our accumulated memory which is based on subjectivity. And all our thoughts are just the creation of this accumulated information called memory. Thus no one can be absolutely sure about the authenticity and absoluteness of their beliefs.
Before we forcefully or through manipulation inculcate our ideas and beliefs into our children we should pause for a moment and think. What if we are wrong? What if we are out of context? Thus the only prudent option is to be open minded, without clinging to one’s own belief by having an understanding that both can be wrong. This liberalism can only have a chance if we stop playing the role of a custodian and owner and shift to the role of a friend.
As parents this is the biggest challenge that we face as our little bundles of joy, grows and matures into a teenager and an adult. To become friends, for friends can easily accept each other’s follies and learn from one another, co-creating a new path. They can easily come together with an understanding that both can be wrong in their beliefs.
The possibilities of new beginning start with the knowledge that ‘I don’t know’. Once we transform from being a believer to a seeker, a world of new potential opens up before us. Instead of being a steadfast dogmatic parental prototype, we ourselves become a new possibility. We can start to learn so much about the new world from our kids. And they also stop treating us as ‘the other’. The divide and the unsaid resistance vanish. May be we will have to come down from the fake altar of self proclaimed greatness. But the fun we will experience of becoming a young mind again would be enormous.
So let’s try to throw away our outdated baggage of old thoughts, stubborn dogmas and stiffened beliefs and start experiencing the world with a pair of new eyes and connect with our best friends…. our children.
Hirearchy of happiness- as defined in Vedic scriptures.
In The Upanishads it is said that there are four levels of happiness of a human being. The most momentary are those attained through our five senses. These are all our sensory pleasures called KAMA in the shashtra. From the uncontrollable love for the rasgullas to the more profound experience of Mozart music every sensory experience is within it’s periphery. The happiness stays with us for some time and then vanishes. We can also call them as our physical needs.
The second is ARTHA which literally translates to material pleasures. Artha also means meaning. It is about the happiness that the mind creates by putting meaning to materials. All our acquired wealths which we believe to be our unflattering vehicle for happiness gradually looses their sheen and becomes ordinary. Law of diminishing return as it seems to be. This can also be looked upon as our psychological need.
The third is called DHARMA. Dharma comes from the word ‘Dhi’ which means ‘that which holds’. This is not about religion but about the ideal nature and purpose of an individual and as a human being. This is about the emotional fulfillment that we achieve in our relationships as a father, husband, daughter, friend or as a neighbour. It’s about the meaningful and engaging emotional connections that we develop with all other living beings and environment around us. It’s about the happiness we achieve by our action that we perform for the benefit of someone other than ourselves. It’s is also about the profound happiness that we experience in our fully submerged action as a singer, dancer, author, doctor or what ever our dharma of professions or passions are. This happens to be more like our emotional need.
But above all these, the fourth and the most important one lies, which is our spiritual need. It is MOKSHA- The eternal happiness that one can experience by self realisation. In Hindu philosophy this is the ultimate goal of all human beings. Knowing our true self will absolve us from all the mortal pains and lead us to a blissful eternal experience of being one with the universe.
Thus comes the insightful expression TAT TVAM ASI- Thou art that.
soulsutraa 