Here are some anecdotal references from our epics Mahabharat, & Ramayan, plus a few others of my own imagination(s).
Abhimanyu, a boy of merely sixteen, & a son of Arjun has broken the "Chkra vyuh"- an intricate defence formulation in War-- but once inside is unable to extricate himself even as he is surrounded by about half a dozen of kaurav warriors. He then makes an SOS cry by blowing his conch.
Arjun led by the Lord is nearby and would have heard this cry & could have saved his son. The Lord knowing this blows his conch at the same time to muffle the boy's SOS call. Well, what happens afterwards is not too complicated. The boy meets his end in one of the most poignantly tragic events of the Pandav-kaurav war.
Lord Ram is banished to the forests, & mother Kaushalya is overwhelmed with grief, when Bharat visits her. She bemoans the fact that her Vidhi (fate) is apparently more potent than the the Vidhaatha (Dispenser of that fate) Himself.
Another one of the texts talks about a commoner who is promised Lord's darshan if he does pooja to Lord Shiva a 108 times. Failing to discern even the slightest signs of a progress after 107 times, he loses patience and kicks the pooja samagris & walks away in sheer anger. He is born as an unjust king in his next birth & is given darshan by the Lord after he imprisons a seer, coming to him in the guise of a warden. The Lord asks for the keys of the prison gets it, & then proceeds to release the Seer who is a tad sad that the unjust king is given the first darshan before him.
Let me get to contemporary times :
Being told that breaking of a coconut in a Ganapathi temple will ward off the temporary hurdles in his life, a man goes to a nearby temple to do just that. Alas he finds the coconut which has just been offered turns out to be a rotten one. The same man is asked to do a pooja on a particularly auspicious day only to find out later that the booking clerk had made a wrong entry of the date for the pooja.
Let me add some more color: A man is very religious, he observes all the requirements of Shaastra ordained rituals like sandhya etc. He is someone who has rarely experienced any great material comforts. One day he just misses his daily prayers in one of his rare off-mood. He however is surprised to get a welcome good news that day. He is intrigued but soon goes back to his regular rituals of daily sandhya etc, till one day he falls sick, and again he misses the routine. He is now visited by a great misfortune making him wonder whether God has punished him for missing his routine!!
In the same town there is this rich man who has no time for such ordinary rituals. But he is showered with God's choicest blessings. One day he falls sick & over a period of time loses considerable money & visits a seer who advises him sandhya for 45 days & a special pooja & blesses him in good measure. Lo behold in 45 days everything comes back. He is now an ardent devotee. During one of his visits to this poor man, seeing him miss the sandhya due to some physical discomfort, in dead earnest gives the poor man a patronizing lecture about the need to do sandhya at any cost.....!!!
Now to the exact opposites:
Sahadev the astrologer, confirms to Duryodhan that if the war is started on the New Moon day, he will win. Lord Krishna quietly intervenes and changes the New Moon day itself.
The Lord Himself visits Karna and asks the latter to donate all his punya so that Arjun can defeat him in the battle.
What are the messages that we get from these? (a) The Vidhaatha will seldom ever intervene to change one's Vidhi (b) But, since He can, He will intervene, when there is a need to protect His script, as dispenser of Vidhi. We as mortals discern any such intervention only after the event and comfortably call it "prarabdha" or to borrow a more sexy term used by even holywood stars "karma" .....!! Seers would want us to just grin bear, endure, this Karma, & let it run its course.
The obvious inference from these insights is that I seem to have very little elbow room for exercising my Free-Will, assuming that I have some. This Creation of His, I am told is a well done Dream/Leela/Play or what have you. (Samyak+ kalpana = Samkalpam!!!!!). And the characters in this dream -- me/you the rich/poor man etc etc., -- are all as real as those we see in our own dreams. The only purpose of one's life therefore is to wake up in awareness.
Unfortunately this romantically exciting piece of knowledge, provides me no sense of a relief. I continue to experience every sentiment that one can imagine & mostly they are nightmares. So can this be really true? Dwelling further I find some "samaadhaans".
It is said that there are only two instances when one enjoys absolute Free-Will. They are (a) The path you may wish to choose to reach Him, namely Karma, Bhakthi, Gyana paths, & (b) whom you remember/recall at the exact moment of your death. (Remembering Him at that moment relieves you of a birth-death-rebirth cycle it is said)
So strictly, since the only purpose of life is to strive to return back to Him, I have no choice but to choose a path for liberation. Of course one has a free will to simply do what one wants without a care in the belief that its after all Him who has decided anyways. But since outcomes are known only to Him as He is the Scriptor,this can be a risky option. The secular life - namely the dream -- will also have to be lived till wisdom dawns. So with my free will, I have to choose a path for liberation, do my duty with that humility that every action of mine is but a worship of Him as He is ultimate dispenser of my fate, Pray that His script provides perceive - able succor as & when necessary, so that I do not lose trust, and let me remember Him in my last moment for Him to take me abode. Will not my Karma come on the way? Yes it may, but equally strongly, His own words that "just a mere thought of Rama would banish all prarabdha/karma etc.," would lose their meaning if He cannot deliver. I have to simply trust that He will.
Do all these then give me sufficient succor? Yes & No. My only prayer (I have the free will BTW) therefore is to plead that in times of hardship, let Him come down to my level of endurance, & offer me some glimpse of being there, especially when I am affected by my perceived raw deals for myself & those whom I consider my near & dear. Though I feel for totally unconnected folks equally strongly, I would prefer not to be presumptuous & assume that He has given me such a huge responsibility for talking about their Yoga Kshemam in the same vein.
And it bugs me when some of those belonging to this latter clan, --namely those who think they can/ ought to change the world etc.,-- mouth inane platitudes. I hope He is listening & He will deign to change His script once in a while if not too often, and make my part in His dream more live-able. Though He may not be too keen to reign in these folks from shooting off their mouths, as these are also part of His Script, I can possibly hope that He keeps these guys away from me..........
Make sense?
Love
Ekalavya alias Vichu
Abhimanyu, a boy of merely sixteen, & a son of Arjun has broken the "Chkra vyuh"- an intricate defence formulation in War-- but once inside is unable to extricate himself even as he is surrounded by about half a dozen of kaurav warriors. He then makes an SOS cry by blowing his conch.
Arjun led by the Lord is nearby and would have heard this cry & could have saved his son. The Lord knowing this blows his conch at the same time to muffle the boy's SOS call. Well, what happens afterwards is not too complicated. The boy meets his end in one of the most poignantly tragic events of the Pandav-kaurav war.
Lord Ram is banished to the forests, & mother Kaushalya is overwhelmed with grief, when Bharat visits her. She bemoans the fact that her Vidhi (fate) is apparently more potent than the the Vidhaatha (Dispenser of that fate) Himself.
Another one of the texts talks about a commoner who is promised Lord's darshan if he does pooja to Lord Shiva a 108 times. Failing to discern even the slightest signs of a progress after 107 times, he loses patience and kicks the pooja samagris & walks away in sheer anger. He is born as an unjust king in his next birth & is given darshan by the Lord after he imprisons a seer, coming to him in the guise of a warden. The Lord asks for the keys of the prison gets it, & then proceeds to release the Seer who is a tad sad that the unjust king is given the first darshan before him.
Let me get to contemporary times :
Being told that breaking of a coconut in a Ganapathi temple will ward off the temporary hurdles in his life, a man goes to a nearby temple to do just that. Alas he finds the coconut which has just been offered turns out to be a rotten one. The same man is asked to do a pooja on a particularly auspicious day only to find out later that the booking clerk had made a wrong entry of the date for the pooja.
Let me add some more color: A man is very religious, he observes all the requirements of Shaastra ordained rituals like sandhya etc. He is someone who has rarely experienced any great material comforts. One day he just misses his daily prayers in one of his rare off-mood. He however is surprised to get a welcome good news that day. He is intrigued but soon goes back to his regular rituals of daily sandhya etc, till one day he falls sick, and again he misses the routine. He is now visited by a great misfortune making him wonder whether God has punished him for missing his routine!!
In the same town there is this rich man who has no time for such ordinary rituals. But he is showered with God's choicest blessings. One day he falls sick & over a period of time loses considerable money & visits a seer who advises him sandhya for 45 days & a special pooja & blesses him in good measure. Lo behold in 45 days everything comes back. He is now an ardent devotee. During one of his visits to this poor man, seeing him miss the sandhya due to some physical discomfort, in dead earnest gives the poor man a patronizing lecture about the need to do sandhya at any cost.....!!!
Now to the exact opposites:
Sahadev the astrologer, confirms to Duryodhan that if the war is started on the New Moon day, he will win. Lord Krishna quietly intervenes and changes the New Moon day itself.
The Lord Himself visits Karna and asks the latter to donate all his punya so that Arjun can defeat him in the battle.
What are the messages that we get from these? (a) The Vidhaatha will seldom ever intervene to change one's Vidhi (b) But, since He can, He will intervene, when there is a need to protect His script, as dispenser of Vidhi. We as mortals discern any such intervention only after the event and comfortably call it "prarabdha" or to borrow a more sexy term used by even holywood stars "karma" .....!! Seers would want us to just grin bear, endure, this Karma, & let it run its course.
The obvious inference from these insights is that I seem to have very little elbow room for exercising my Free-Will, assuming that I have some. This Creation of His, I am told is a well done Dream/Leela/Play or what have you. (Samyak+ kalpana = Samkalpam!!!!!). And the characters in this dream -- me/you the rich/poor man etc etc., -- are all as real as those we see in our own dreams. The only purpose of one's life therefore is to wake up in awareness.
Unfortunately this romantically exciting piece of knowledge, provides me no sense of a relief. I continue to experience every sentiment that one can imagine & mostly they are nightmares. So can this be really true? Dwelling further I find some "samaadhaans".
It is said that there are only two instances when one enjoys absolute Free-Will. They are (a) The path you may wish to choose to reach Him, namely Karma, Bhakthi, Gyana paths, & (b) whom you remember/recall at the exact moment of your death. (Remembering Him at that moment relieves you of a birth-death-rebirth cycle it is said)
So strictly, since the only purpose of life is to strive to return back to Him, I have no choice but to choose a path for liberation. Of course one has a free will to simply do what one wants without a care in the belief that its after all Him who has decided anyways. But since outcomes are known only to Him as He is the Scriptor,this can be a risky option. The secular life - namely the dream -- will also have to be lived till wisdom dawns. So with my free will, I have to choose a path for liberation, do my duty with that humility that every action of mine is but a worship of Him as He is ultimate dispenser of my fate, Pray that His script provides perceive - able succor as & when necessary, so that I do not lose trust, and let me remember Him in my last moment for Him to take me abode. Will not my Karma come on the way? Yes it may, but equally strongly, His own words that "just a mere thought of Rama would banish all prarabdha/karma etc.," would lose their meaning if He cannot deliver. I have to simply trust that He will.
Do all these then give me sufficient succor? Yes & No. My only prayer (I have the free will BTW) therefore is to plead that in times of hardship, let Him come down to my level of endurance, & offer me some glimpse of being there, especially when I am affected by my perceived raw deals for myself & those whom I consider my near & dear. Though I feel for totally unconnected folks equally strongly, I would prefer not to be presumptuous & assume that He has given me such a huge responsibility for talking about their Yoga Kshemam in the same vein.
And it bugs me when some of those belonging to this latter clan, --namely those who think they can/ ought to change the world etc.,-- mouth inane platitudes. I hope He is listening & He will deign to change His script once in a while if not too often, and make my part in His dream more live-able. Though He may not be too keen to reign in these folks from shooting off their mouths, as these are also part of His Script, I can possibly hope that He keeps these guys away from me..........
Make sense?
Love
Ekalavya alias Vichu
At moments like this, the only thing that one who thinks he understands is to say that he thinks he understands. And perhaps just say, that each one has to live thru these moments, extending to life's last one, alone. Thomas Hardy in one of his novels ends his narration of one such phase his central character is passing thru saying " ..... and thus each one plodding his dreary path to dusty death". We might choose to say, either in resignation or in trust that finally prevails over our frequently faltering faith; ".... and thus each one being escorted thru his lonely journey to blissful reunion". May we not be betrayed on this eternal Truth.
ReplyDeleteGulpa
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete