Monday, June 26, 2006
GITA 108 DAYS - DAY 16
16. When thoughts cease, life begins
The self (Atman) cannot be known by sense organs and it is beyond any imagination. It cannot be swayed by emotions either. So our life becomes meaningful not by thinking, but by living our lives meaningfully. When all thoughts end, life begins.
Atman is the founding substratum and essence of the universe. This is not the ‘soul’ referred to in poems. You cannot injure Atman nor set it to fire. It cannot be dampened by water and it cannot be worn out thin by wind.
It exists everywhere and it is permanent. It is immovable and eternal. Even if one imagines that the Atman takes birth and dies everyday, the Lord reminds Arjuna that he has no right to lament. If one takes birth, death is inevitable! Likewise, if one dies, to take birth again is also an inevitable consequence. This problem is not something that can be ‘solved’ and so also, there is no reason to lament.
Sorrow is born out of ignorance and no one gets stronger by lamenting and it is tiresome to the body. If one is sorrowful, it will make the people around him miserable by affecting their thoughts and emotions and eventually draining their energy.
Imagine our body as a pot and the self (Atman), the air inside. For an observer, the air in the pot appears to be limited by the size and shape of the pot. Although the pot can be moved anywhere, the air inside or outside is not modified in any way. Even if the pot breaks, nothing happens to the air. Even the notion of ‘inside air’ getting dissolved in the ‘outside air’ is also a mere imagination. The pot is gone- that’s all there it is- and death is just like breaking the pot. Atman does not take birth, live, change, grow, decay or die. It is not subject to any modification at all.
The self (Atman) cannot be known by sense organs and it is beyond any imagination. It cannot be swayed by emotions either. So our life becomes meaningful not by thinking, but by living our lives meaningfully. When all thoughts end, life begins.
Atman is the founding substratum and essence of the universe. This is not the ‘soul’ referred to in poems. You cannot injure Atman nor set it to fire. It cannot be dampened by water and it cannot be worn out thin by wind.
It exists everywhere and it is permanent. It is immovable and eternal. Even if one imagines that the Atman takes birth and dies everyday, the Lord reminds Arjuna that he has no right to lament. If one takes birth, death is inevitable! Likewise, if one dies, to take birth again is also an inevitable consequence. This problem is not something that can be ‘solved’ and so also, there is no reason to lament.
Sorrow is born out of ignorance and no one gets stronger by lamenting and it is tiresome to the body. If one is sorrowful, it will make the people around him miserable by affecting their thoughts and emotions and eventually draining their energy.
Imagine our body as a pot and the self (Atman), the air inside. For an observer, the air in the pot appears to be limited by the size and shape of the pot. Although the pot can be moved anywhere, the air inside or outside is not modified in any way. Even if the pot breaks, nothing happens to the air. Even the notion of ‘inside air’ getting dissolved in the ‘outside air’ is also a mere imagination. The pot is gone- that’s all there it is- and death is just like breaking the pot. Atman does not take birth, live, change, grow, decay or die. It is not subject to any modification at all.
# posted by Sukumar Canada @ 10:28 PM 
