Sunday, January 29, 2012

Letters to my daughter : Our Origin, Our roots

Dearest Daughter,
You know for the last few days, I've been thinking about a specific reality. Every one does of course. We think WHY. Why are we here. Why is there the universe? Do we enjoy some special privilege in the entire universe? Is life relevant to the universe?

I realize that one won't get an answer by just contemplating. There has to be a method, a disciplined approach otherwise the seeker will lose his sanity in a jamborie of informations arranged haphazardly : past, present, future, history, geography, astronomy, spirituality, concept of God, the limits of a community, the entire infinite universe..one can collect informations about each of these. They becomer Knowledge in a human consciousness. Leave it at that, & it is useless.
You can make your brain a receptacle for informations : the content of the Library of Alexandria to theories of Hawking & Feynman, but that won't feed you, or provide extra shelter, or more importantly, knowledge can't improve a man or can make a man better. It all depends on our wish, intent, and an instinct to make ourselves more comfortable, with more peace & life, vis a vis a diminishing incidence of conceit, hatred & destruction. We all live life to achieve this, don't we?

There are ways to apply knowledge, be it a human being, or a family, or a community, or a sect , or ethnic and religious specificities, or political beliefs, or a social order or a nation. "Every thing wants more comfort & less struggle. It is this basic need of a fact around everything is happening in and around us every day." what do you think? Think about it, that helps you and a fellow human being.

And these things guided me over time to realise that
is an order by whi
ch I seek to understand Why.
I'd been thinking of our roots, our origin in our planet.
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

The men of wisdom in the ancient eras meditated to contemplate upon the Reason of Life, behind Birth and Death. Particularly in ancient India, during the Mid-Vedic period, the sages (today one of them would have been called the Philosopher of Philosophers) showed brilliant thinking, pondering over issues beyond staying alive, fighting for territory and of course continuing to reproduce and survive.

I run the risk of being marauded by specialist-anthropologists, for that I should add that these are personal thoughts -- calculated guesses, which tend to tie up loose strings in entirity for me, and I do not formally claim them even as hypotheses. It's just sharing of ideas, as in every human being lies the instinct, in varying degrees to seek for every 'Why' that he sees around him and the knowledge that has come to him down generations.

Anthropological study of the Vedic Period reveals that even the most advanced of civilisations lived with in a society which was based upon 'ethics of tribalism'. There was no precedence for these generations in any walk of life to look back upon, so they went by instincts as a member of Nature's family (just like other species of animals)

Here i get goosebumps to imagine in this tribal background, where people were busy trying to survive, the ancient sages sought answers in the metaphysical realm.

Summarisingly, the ancient wise have left the fruit of their metaphysical pursuits, and early Spiritualism across cultures teach us that our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures.

We should understand that the absolute universality of the law of causality does not necessarily limit a person's freedom, because the law of causality not only enables him to explain the past and predict the future, but also encourages him to use his intelligence to create new causes and attain new results.

Here lies the inherent beauty of Life -- its freedom imcluding epistemological freedom. This is the beauty of Nature ans the nature of Beauty. And that freedom prompts me to say that humankind is a great possibility.
Man can evolve phenomenally or he can remain stagnant - both are possible. That is the beauty of being human. It's for us to choose. Now it's for you to choose, right?
Sent from my BlackBerry --------------------------------------------- Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, Physician, Mumbai, India. http://jogyou963.blogspot.com Live Life on your own terms

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