Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero by Santosh Jha (ebook offline .TXT) 📖

the question of destination. The question of meaning of life and its purpose will be lost. Love makes you understand the futility and redundance of the intellectual concerns of life’s larger purpose and the material desire of life’s acquisitions. Love and compassion makes you understand that the true wisdom is not in reaching but in traveling well. May be also because, there is no destination and reaching. Love and compassion and its accompanying innocence is the greatest intellectualism, it is the best acquisition, if one defines life’s purpose in terms of acquisition and possessions.”

 

“And where do you think our current world view and mental training puts us away from this realization?”

“I have the feeling that our mental training to see the world as a stage for perpetuity of action, aimed at personal acquisition, based on societal and cultural notions of utility, possession and consumption is major trouble. This somehow engenders a consciousness in all of us, which is majorly and perpetually reactive, as against the need of being receptive. This makes us refuse to see the mechanism of cosmic realism all around us. To only a few, who have this highly receptive higher consciousness, the cosmic mechanism of asymmetrical randomization is unraveled. That is why the wise have said, wisdom is always in the domain of unknowable, something which can be realized but not known. First of all, the idea of meaningful action, what we term as our karma, has become such a misinterpreted thing that our world view has become majorly faulty. I rate myself a super idiot but even then I feel there is so much stupidity attached to the word karma. I fail to understand why we humans attach so much physicality to the notion. Most people confuse karma with physical labour. Karma is not labour, it is nowhere associated with action, as most people conceive it as. Shram (labor) and karma are two distinct things. I have always wondered whether this association of a pure idea like karma with daily life shram has been the basic fault with our world view and the resultant mental training. It seems, the cardinal error is associating human duties on earth as an actionable entity. The problem is that there is an over emphasis on one’s karma but most people follow what looks like the misinterpreted version. I have read that most great people in the long history of civilization have said that the purpose of life is to perform his or her karma but what I feel is that what most of them actually meant to have associated the golden word with is not action but a mind positioning. I know, all goodness are ideas and they need to be converted into action to be of larger good for humanity but the problem is; you need to understand the idea in its purest form then only a suitable and commensurate action pattern can be devised.”

“But Monku, you know it very well that average people have their own limitations. You must have read the philosophical premise that most humans have such limited mental levels that they only understand matter and not the idea. They need to be told all ideas of goodness in actionable terms only.”

“This makes out a case for change in our mental training since early childhood. You know Utta, all major questions of humanity are thousands of years old and that is why I presume, the right answers of all these questions must also be around for thousands of years. Reason and rationality have been there since ages to guide all generations of humanity. What I have told you about love and compassion may be my own personally acquired and experienced wisdom but there is nothing new about it. Millions of people before me have realized this and many have even practiced it successfully. What I have said about love and compassion has also been told time and again. Millions of more will realize the same in coming years. Read the ancient scriptures, read the ideas expressed by great humans, read the Holy books of all religions of the world. All of them have given common answers to all major questions of life. The answer is love and compassion. But this commonality of goodness is only at idea levels. When it comes to practice them, when the idea descends down to the actionable platform, it changes meaning and seven billion people on earth start practicing eight billion ways to attain the good. Loads of hypocrisy creeps in. The problem of humanity is not the idea but the action. That is why; I always say hypocrisy is the greatest malaise on earth. People in general know the idea of goodness but they rarely put them in action; or, they make bad actions out of good ideas. There is something majorly faulty with our mental training and current world view as it fails us in converting the right ideas into good action and practices. The knowledge of science makes us good doctors and engineers. But when we start prescribing unnecessary drugs and treatments to our patients for acquiring money and status, when we mix sand in cement in making a bride to acquire luxuries of life, can we blame the goodness of the idea of education? There is something terribly wrong with our mental training as social beings. Our world view, created since childhood, has something faulty. The goodness of idea loses out on the actionable platform.”

“What is the way out then? Any remedies…?”

“You may blame me for what you may call a eulogy of laziness and there may be some semblance of truth in that… my growing age must be behind it, but I really feel that overemphasis on karma as an action entity needs some close scrutiny. And I truly feel that it is because of male world’s obsession with seeing life as an enterprise. You know Uttu, what is the most popular definition of life? What has been termed by many greats as a synonym to life? They have said, ‘life is a battlefield’. The scientists say that man’s predator gene of ancient times, when he survived by killing animals in deadly battles in jungle, still rules his actionable decisions. I wonder; this battlefield obsession with all human actions has been the most corrupting influence on the idea of karma.”

“You cannot at least blame Indians for that Monku. The very concept of karma was born in a battlefield. Lord Krishna should not have revealed the idea of karma to Arjuna on the battle field of Kurukshetra. He chose the wrong occasion. The context too was wrong. He urged Arjuna to understand his karma and go to battle with his relatives and friends. Had he chosen to do it when he and Arjuna were enjoying a coffee like you and I, the idea of karma would not have been so intrinsically attached to hard-fought actions! The life too would have been defined as something simple”, Utkarsh said jocularly.

“You never know Utta. You may be right. Religion is such a huge influence on most humans. And as I was telling you, the mental training of our society is passed on from one generation to another in such a way that there is very little chance of a wrong interpretation getting filtered out for centuries. Then, you have so many self-acclaimed teachers of religion who assure that all good ideas of ancient scriptures are poorly misinterpreted. The stupidity also becomes a venerated ideal.”

“But Monku, there must be a remedy to it. There has to be a way out of this stupidity.”

“I have already told you Uttu that I have come to believe that this world would be better off if we all accommodate and subscribe to the alternative world view of compassion, instead of passion. It’s a male world Utta and the problem also lies with the typical male view of life and karma. I really cannot understand why life’s view accommodates so much action and continuous struggle for activity. Why make life a battlefield. Why cannot we all settle for life as a mental thing, aloof from the physical action? Why cannot we define life as a beautiful mind experience or a mental journey, as against a struggling physical activity? You are right Uttu when you said most humans have the faculties developed only to understand matter and not the idea. That is why most humans understand body entities and not mental ones. But what I just wish to add is that this is basically because of our wrong mental training. You remember, when we were kids, we were told, ‘study hard and do well in your class. You will get all pleasures and comforts of life only when you toil now to have a successful career’. Nobody told us to study hard so that when we grow up, we would be in a better position to understand the conflicts of life and would be successful in discerning good and bad. People told us that if we became successful persons, we would get beautiful and wealthy wives. Nobody told us what we would then do with our beautiful wives. We were not trained how to love our wives well, how to make her happy and how best to become a caring and successful husband.”

“Yup Monku, there were many who were offering us expertise in sex to have good times with our wives but nobody trained us in the art of love and compassion which we need most when we get our wives finally.”

“The matter, the body, the action are so obsessively part of our karma and world view that the idea, the mind and the golden leisure gets no place. I firmly believe Uttu, when we will have a world view, which will be adorned by the feminine principles of love and compassion, we will find in place an alternative mental training mechanism. We will be trained not about the joys of consumption and ownership of matter in life and the resultant struggle for action but about the satisfaction of the beautiful ideas of love, care, emotions of togetherness, compassion and the very essential leisure to attain them.”

Utkarsh could not say anything. His mind was full. He was not very sure what Mayank was saying truly meant but he had always trusted his view point. He needed time to put all these in perspective to say anything concrete. He could however fear that Mayank had made up his mind for something which would leave him in disadvantage. He could not resist his query.

“What is then the final word Monku? What are you up to?”

“I am not sure Utta. May be I am reacting too much. May be I am biased in my stated positions because I have landed myself into a particular groove. But one thing I am very sure and confident of. I am not comfortable. I cannot think of continuing with what I am currently in. I refuse to accept that. I must say I am not saying that I sort of rebel against this chaos of the world I am in but can’t I demand a small non-intruding space for myself and my beliefs? This world view based on personal utility and consumption is not acceptable to me. I feel very incapacitated and suffocated in it. I am doubly sure that I do not want to bequeath this chaotic world view to my kids. This mental training of counting pleasure and discounting pains defined in terms of utility, possession and consumption kills my real joys, it shortens my horizon of satisfaction, it does not allow me to be what I am born for. I am sure I cannot survive with so many wrong benchmarks of goodness defined by this chaotic world view. You know Utta, a lover says to his beloved, ‘my dear, I would pluck the moon and stars and stitch them on your silk bodice, I would buy all the flowers of the world and pour them on your feet…’. Oh my God!