I turn 50 this week. A simple arithmetic reveals that it is about 26 million minutes!! Naturally, I had no role to play in this passage of time; I just was there, when it passed me by. Which brings us to the question, what is time? Is it the 24 x 7 phrase that we familiarly use nowadays? Actually no; what we have done with our scientific knowledge is to compartmentalize time. Time by itself, like its sister Space, is eternal. So the infinite moments that we let pass by in our finite time on this physical plane, should be purposeful and with a motive to grow to the Higher. Life should be large; not long. There is an advertisement of a popular liquor brand with a byline, “It’s your life, make it large”. Of course the large there has a different connotation, but the phrase by itself is very relevant !! I, of course, thank my parents for providing me with the platform to help me trying to make my life large. I also thank my Guru for his inspiring teaching.
I had shared in one of my earlier posts about a text written by Adi Sankara, titled “Shiva Aparadha Kshapana Stotram”. The import of this text is that, in one part, we seek forgiveness from Shiva for mistakes / sins that we have committed in not remembering Him at all times and in the other part we seek His help in remembering Him and growing larger and better every moment. I will briefly explain this here, in as few words as possible.
In our previous embodiment, we clung on to the fear of passing away from this world without remembering Him at the time of our exit from the world stage. We are propelled into this world into a new embodiment, with unfulfilled desires and passions, as determined by the urges we entertained at the end of the previous embodiment. Thus without remembering the Lord and His glories, we are ordained to come again into this world. Here, from our childhood to youth to old age, at every moment, we are crying for more and more satisfaction from the objects, emotions and thoughts that we come into contact with, without remembering Him and His infinite glory. We constantly live our day-to-day moments of wants fulfillment, from birth to youth to old age to death, always assuming that we are permanently to remain here. We forget that we are merely enacting a role provided to us by Him as determined by our past. The effort that is required to uplift us from this mortal plane to a Higher Consciousness, we refuse to take, with the result we continue to remain in this web created by our own desires and fancies. We seek His forgiveness for our unintelligent acts that we perform in this physical plane. We have forgotten that the Lord is the Ultimate Truth and dwelling on His Glory, making our mind and intellect, pure and calm, if meditate upon Him, our entanglements with objects, emotions and thoughts in this physical plane will cease, and we will climb to the pinnacles of happiness which is His Abode, Kailash. Unfortunately our limited knowledge about the purpose of coming into this world; creates a massive sense of attachment to things and beings, due to which we forget to remember Him in our day-to-day transactions in Life. So in the second part we seek His Grace and support for surrendering unto Him all our ego driven fancies and attachments, and grow into pure and unsullied bliss, through selfless, unattached and dedicated actions in every station of our life.
Our life is divided into different time compartments, birth, childhood, youth, middle age, old age, decay and death. The benchmark of our growth through these various stages / compartments is determined by how we have adjusted to these various automatic time determined events in our life and “lived” rather than “existed”. May the Lord shower one and all with right knowledge and right thinking!
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