Old Monk

Some years ago a friend and I were talking along the lines above and he was waxing eloquent on the idea of the world as maya, that everything is an illusion and fit only to be treated as a game. On the center table was a glass paperweight and I began to push it towards him. First he watched it with interest, and then as the heavy object edged closer to the brink, he said, alarmed, 'hey! Watch it. It is going to hurt.'

Evari Jatakam varide, evari grahalu varive

The Indian mind is immured in the idea of fate.

Even the choices we make are governed by our karma. 

Dane dane pe likha hai khane wale ka nam.

After fifty, thoughts automatically turn to the teachings of God, owing no doubt to the programmed mind that follows the pattern of The Four Stages of Life set by Manu.

From atheism to unabashed worship, from skepticism to blind faith, from the power of knowledge to the surrender to belief, from debunking mysticism to glorifying bizzare cults, we swing from one branch of philosophy to the other, like the great apes, our ancestors. We are a nation of self-contradicting endlessly debating people.

The greatest achievement of the Indian psyche is the integration of numerous little cults and subcultures into a unifying religion, all subsumed under the banner of holy trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva - the creator, the preserver and the destroyer. 

So powerful is the idea of fate that we can without the least sense of shock declare an appalling crime as the fruit of the victim's past life and the perpetrator's growing karma.

It appears to me:

Philosophy is the comfort of the uncomprehending mind. Spirituality is the comfort of an aching heart. God is the comfort of a frightened being. 

Growing old

The older we grow, the louder are our chants, the greater is our fear of the unknown and the inevitable end.

A lady who turned sixty a few days back travelled across a continent to catch a glimpse of a seer in an ashram. She failed to get a darshan of the holy man even though she was prepared to buy a ticket for Rs. 1000/-, for the place was already packed. A wizened old man past seventy apparently wanted to know from a young priest, barely twenty five, to point out the passages from a holy book that he must read and chant, in order to receive the divine blessing.

An octogenarian who spent his youth as an avowed atheist became a believer in the hope that he would get a safe passage through eternity when he would be called upon to make the last journey through life.