Doing Good

Madhuri, sometime back told us all about her novel idea of giving the proceeds of a birthday contribution in cash to Akshayapatra. If I am not mistaken, ( probably not known widely) Arun has a corpus to aid a few children thru their school education. I would love to hear about this, from someone who knows, if Arun is too modest too talk about it.

I have been for quite a long time at odds with the orthodox / advaitha group, where I find a less than passionate attachment or appreciation, to good samaritan deeds, as compared to their overwhelmed emotions, to a Lord balaji darshan or say a profound exposition of advaitha philosophy.

I had many a time been disturbed to find that in any of the great texts, that we are exposed to, there isn't much to be found about these qualifying for "Liberation", which I daresay, is very similar to the "tyaagena eva" part of the upanishadic doctrine, that neither, your karma, nor your begetting children/enlarging your lineage, nor acquiring of riches, but only renunciation can ever lead you to salvation.

The group in Mumbai, which provides succour to any family, which is faced with a problem of a death in the family, by making every possible arrangements for funerals etc, also comes in this selfless,renunciation driven category of service. It was in this mood, that, I read an article in the Express today, which talks about one Nisar Ahmed, who at the age of some 24 years, when finding a rickshaw pulleres corpse lying in the roads in rural Bihar for 4 or so days, decided to do the final rites based on his religion. This then turned his life, to a mission.

Today, he is said to be an old man of 70 odd years. He has so far performed the last rites of (poor, unknown, and any unclaimed body, after ascertaining the religion he/she belonged to) over 1500 people. Ahmed is himself poor, but friends have helped him. Can there be a better service to an unliberated soul, which again is a manifestation of that Universal soul, to borrow from the advathins. Even when this sounds terribly like a cliche - which I am averse to mostly- I am happy to use this as this drives home the point clearly.

There is also this famous phrase of Ahmed which is worth a mention here. It goes like this:-

"Kaash, aise bhi muhabbath ho, apne desh mein, jab mere ghar upawas ho, aur tere ramzaan ho".

Surely there is a profound "advaithic" bhaav in him, will he get moksham, or is he already a jeevan muktha? Or my outpourings are grossly immature, and perhaps represent blasphemy? Think it over folks...........

Love

Vichu