No Brain, No Pain.

There was a time when I developed a compulsion of wanting to know everything about Bhagavadgita. I was told that the holy book had all the recipe for a meaningful life. And I heard about a volunteer at a local temple who was conducting a series of lectures on that subject. My acquaintances were all praises about the speaker and the contents of his classes.  

I was drawn in. I decided to give it a try. In the first lecture, all that I heard was that I was nothing. I was smaller than the smallest of the speck in the Universe. I did not matter to the greater scheme of things. Hence, the last thing I needed was my ego. I had to crack my hardshell called ego, following which enlightenment would flow in like an eternal fountain of knowledge. Like how Arjuna had to clear his head of all his doubts to receive the unlimited erudition from the Lord himself.

I thought to myself, "I do not need these people to tell me that I am nothing; my wife tells me all the time that my ego is bigger than my head! These people are asking me to be a zombie - to operate like a non-functional lump of protoplasm working in a reflex arc at the spinal level. I did not like to be another statistic along the line of a cult member of the Branch Davidian who perished in the Waco massacre smiling in anticipation of the bliss of entropy.

The little bit of sense that prevailed within me told me that these just will not do. Echoes of my mother's childhood stories of Socrates in his death bed murmured somewhere in the nook of my mind. Even though she barely scraped through primary schooling at a time when discrimination against girls was rife, she managed to sponge whatever she could from radio dramas, movies, storybooks and periodicals. Her words reverberated, "don't listen just because this fellow or that fellow said so; enquire and investigate and be enlightened!" or something to that effect.

Hence, I recoiled to the company of me, myself and I to indulge in a little soul searching and introspection. 

Ego, a sense of self-importance and self-esteem, cannot be all so bad. It is the trait to make one so embarrassed to hold out his hand for alms as his pride tells him that he can fend for himself in this big wide world. It prods that if a lame or a blind can survive, why can't he? 

It is the thing that pushes him to be better than his neighbour. It is that satisfying, gloated feeling that propels him to go beyond boundaries that no man has ever been before. Many individuals are addicted to immersion in the sea of endorphins as they become successful in their outlandish endeavours. Some fail, but that also inspires them to try harder to succeed. Well, that is how the human race progresses. It is the hard work of mad minds of the insane with a never say die attitude, not the complacent bumpkin who thinks very lowly of himself and no self-pride but just follows the herd. Beware, the shepherd, despite all the seemingly cordial and charming smiles, has only one thing on his mind - to fatten the flock and to prepare for the slaughter! He has a vested interest. For vegetarians, there is the proverbial cash cow to milk. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Do we really know everything?

Usually, I do not give too much importance to things that are spiritual in nature. I just simply join the bandwagon to keep people, especially my loved ones, happy. Like when I, the first born to my father, was summoned to perform certain rights on the first anniversary of his death, I just obliged. I knew it would make my mother happy to see my father 'sent off' to the ethereal world in a proper manner. It does not matter that my parents towards the tail end of his life, could not stand each other but that is another story for another day.

The purpose of the prayers on the day of first death anniversary is to remind the soul of departed that he is not forgotten here on Earth. By invoking the forces of Nature, appeasing the feminine forces and cajoling the spirits of the ancestors, it is hoped that the deceased will keep a cursory eye on the wellbeing of the living.

Do these things really happen or is it just another mumbo jumbo set up to put the element of fear of the unknown? The guilt of not doing certain rituals could literally frustrate one when something does not go his way. Are our ancestors so vengeful that they would harm us if they are not feted? 

As I was faithfully doing the rituals and reciting mantras as directed, I noticed sporadic unprovoked movements of paraphernalia on the dais. At first thought, I attributed it to wind movement or the blowing of air from the air-conditioners.

When all the formalities were over, the priests sat down to give a pep talk to the attendees on the significance and meanings to all the seemingly pointless gestures that were involved during the exercise. Much to everybody's surprise, he asked the audience whether anyone noticed the sudden movements seen around the photograph of the deceased. In unison, everyone nodded in the affirmative. In his experience, he had noticed such unprovoked movements in most of the ceremonies he conducted. In his understanding, it is nothing more than the sign of the soul being in attendance in the ceremony as he was summoned! Really?

Through the rituals, the living hopes the family ancestors of the same bloodline act as the guardian angels who would keep vigil on the downlines. Or maybe just to give a peace of mind to the living, not the dead!

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/riflerangeboy/!