I was reading this article, and when the author thunders, "Is the humanhood in you, acquired by you or something you find already there with you? I don’t think we have acquired our humanhood.", I stood wondering.
Throughout our lives, we take pride in our acquisitions and achievements. But how many of those can we credit ourselves with? Really? Is our birth of our own volition? No. Did we choose our parents? No. Yet they passed on their characteristics to us, through their precious genes. So we inherit a certain kind of mind from them, at least some of it. Then we grow in a certain habitat constituted by our friends, relatives, schoolmates. We learn something from them - some bad, some good. The same inputs are absorbed by one to form good habits, and rejected by someone else. Why? Because we are built that way.
Then come our academic achievements, our performance in the office. Someone succeeds with little hard work, and someone spends a lot of time, yet does not succeed. I know of some college mates who would not touch the books the whole year, then study for 10 days before the exams. One such guy came 3rd at the end of the year. I studied 24x7, yet my rank was only 14. Why? Again, our intelligence, the power of grasping is limited by some factors from the birth. It has to be so, else why this gross difference? So when the author says, "There is nothing called achievement in this world. Everything is an unfoldment.", I kind of understand.
The question is whether we can actualize our potential with the given mind and intelligence. That is when we find that our habits, our tendencies, come in the way. In this article, the author announces the full possibility of improving upon this mind and the intelligence. What can we do so that the mind and intelligence express themselves, as they should? What can we do to make the wrong tendencies fall, and the good take over? The venerable Bhagavad Geeta facilitates this understanding through so many verses, and some are mentioned by the author.
The full article can be found at
http://www.narayanashramatapovanam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1403%3Apr-27-jan-2012-our-freedom-is-only-to-improve-our-mind-and-intelligence&catid=18%3Aguide-to-saadhana&Itemid=24
Throughout our lives, we take pride in our acquisitions and achievements. But how many of those can we credit ourselves with? Really? Is our birth of our own volition? No. Did we choose our parents? No. Yet they passed on their characteristics to us, through their precious genes. So we inherit a certain kind of mind from them, at least some of it. Then we grow in a certain habitat constituted by our friends, relatives, schoolmates. We learn something from them - some bad, some good. The same inputs are absorbed by one to form good habits, and rejected by someone else. Why? Because we are built that way.
Then come our academic achievements, our performance in the office. Someone succeeds with little hard work, and someone spends a lot of time, yet does not succeed. I know of some college mates who would not touch the books the whole year, then study for 10 days before the exams. One such guy came 3rd at the end of the year. I studied 24x7, yet my rank was only 14. Why? Again, our intelligence, the power of grasping is limited by some factors from the birth. It has to be so, else why this gross difference? So when the author says, "There is nothing called achievement in this world. Everything is an unfoldment.", I kind of understand.
The question is whether we can actualize our potential with the given mind and intelligence. That is when we find that our habits, our tendencies, come in the way. In this article, the author announces the full possibility of improving upon this mind and the intelligence. What can we do so that the mind and intelligence express themselves, as they should? What can we do to make the wrong tendencies fall, and the good take over? The venerable Bhagavad Geeta facilitates this understanding through so many verses, and some are mentioned by the author.
The full article can be found at
http://www.narayanashramatapovanam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1403%3Apr-27-jan-2012-our-freedom-is-only-to-improve-our-mind-and-intelligence&catid=18%3Aguide-to-saadhana&Itemid=24
Welcome to the world of blogging Sanjay.. coming from you, it should be a masterpiece, I am still going through it.
ReplyDeleteI just wrote the above few paras, Sanjay. The article referred to is by my Gurudev. Do read.
DeleteHi Sanjay, I read the interesting article you pointed to, and failed to find any reason for the following para to be there in it.
ReplyDelete"We suffer from corruption and the majority of people elected a government, and the parliamentarians think that corruption should not be removed. It should continue. What shall we do? We cannot do anything about it, except by a total revolution."
What is your take on it? Is there something you do not comprehend, or something you find out of place?
Delete