Life is a Path

Life is a path but not the goal: After getting this life, we spend the initial ten years crying for some thing and playing with some thing. As a child our interests never crossed beyond toys, games, sweets, eatables and may be books and pictures. We spend away that first child hood without even trying to understand .

 

Later period with some other interests like money and partners.When we reach old age, we have all worries about our life, our family. The great saint, Adi sankaracharya explained the same pitiable condition of a man, in his verses of Bhaja govindam (or Bhajagovindam, which means, praise the Lord). He says " During childhood interest in playing, during adolescence full interest in women and in old age full of worries, and where is the time to think about the God and the purpose of life?" He and his desciples wrote wonderful 12 verses to exhort about our wasting away our valuable time in life with trivial interests which will not save us. His every verse ends with " Bhaja govindam , Bhaja Govindam, Bhaja Govindam Moodha mathe" That means, Oh fool, praise the Lord, Praise the lord, and praise the lord . When the end time of life approaches any of your skills, your grammar, your talents ,money will not save you. Govinda is the name of Lord God. Another great unknown sanskrit poet compares the pitiable condition of a man's life with a butterfly.

 

Once a butter fly was enjoying the honey in a lotus flower. It forgot itself with the sweetness of the honey in the flower and spent lot of time drinking honey. Meanwhile, time is up, darkness fell and the lotus closed itself . Then butterfly ( or honey bee) worried and finally complacent that the lotus blooms early morning and it planned to escape at that time. But unfortunately, before early morning, an elephant plucked the lotus flower and the fate of the honey bee ended like that. Similarly, the man would be fully engrossed in the pursuit of earthly love, money , fame and loose his opportunity to fulfill the objective of his life. We are all in the same condition.

 

We plan that one fine day we start knowing ourself but none knows if that fine day comes or not. So, this life what we got is just a road that leads to our goal of self realization or evolution to God state. We should not think that this life itself is a goal and we are settling here with our money, houses and beautiful wife. This beautiful wife will be scared to touch the corpse of the man, when he dies. So, we should not believe this body as permanent. Great Guru says, this body is a bubble of water. None knows when it bursts. May be in the city, may be in a jungle or in the midst of water. Bursting is a must. Another great old poet of sankrit compares this life as a sojourn at a old inn or tavern. When sur rises, we have to start our journey. We should never think that the inn itself is our Home.