Happy new year - How true to heart??
Happy new year 2011. The greetings were all around in the air as i arrived for the first day in office for 2011. Innumerable handshakes, SMS, emails!!!
I joined in it part of group think, which makes one do a ritual just because everyone is doing. Inside me i was thinking ‘what is happy about arrival of a new year?’. I have wished for the past 30 years but nothing better has happened. Corruption levels have increased, crime rates are on rising trend in all major cities and around us. We are constantly at fear of an imminent terrorist attack. So why we are all part of this ritual of wishing when the First of January arrives every year? Have we become very mechanical in life? Have we stopped questioning the intent of anything due to the ever increasing busy life. By the time my first day in office had ended, i had got heavily cynical of these new year wishes. As i was overhearing numerous wishes over the phone across my cubicle i was feeling how empty these wishes are. How many times do we really wish the betterment of a peer and how many times our heart, thought and words are in synch with each other? In the mad race to acquire more money, fame assets every peer, neighbour, friend is perceived as a competitor.
Arrival of a new year is a relative concept in our minds. It is basically flow of ‘Time’. Time in a deep sense is change. Time does not allow anything o stay as it is. Time ensures that we don’t experience ‘present’. In the material world that we stay, every moment is becoming ‘past’ by the time we experience it. Past and future is what exists in the conditioned world. Time is that energy that is on a mission to increase disorder in the universe. Time applies on human beings to make them old. Old means proceeding towards disorder or merging into the fundamental elements. Creation, growth, byproducts and decay -> this is the life cycle of an object operated by time. Just like air, time is also all pervading. Nobody can hide from time. This is echoed in the Gita where Lord Krishna claims in the 11th chapter – ‘The Blessed Lord said: Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people. With the exception of you [the Pandavas], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain.’ The hand of the Lord is there in time. But why does the Lord wants to destroy the world using the agency of time? According to the Vedas everything in the world around has to follow the life cycle stages of creation, growth, byproducts and decay. This is sort of a enforced law. Time is the agent which ensures that objects are going thru these stages – be it living or non living. The only difference being non-living things may not give rise to byproducts.
Time operates on us as long as we are engaged in an attitude of consumption towards the world. The world is meant for my enjoyment and the only goal of life is to enhance quality and quantity of enjoyment. As long as we wish ‘Happy new year’ with this consumption attitude in mind, it can never turn out to be auspicious. Time and the decaying effects of time harp on individuals with consumption attitude. To become free of time we have to develop an attitude opposite that of consumption, which is that of service. Service is the opposite of consumption. To serve and to enjoy are contrasting verbs. To enjoy means an inward flow from the environment to the individual whereas Service is going away from the individual towards an outside entity. The word duty or dharma is always associated with service. To serve parents, nation, is duty – we keep hearing the clarion calls frequently. All of the duties or dharmas is not sanatana dharma. There is only one kind of service which is called sanatana dharma. For understanding which service becomes sanatana dharma we have to delve into components of service. Service involves the ‘Servant’ , the ‘master or served object’ and the activity of service. When the servant is ‘anything living’ and the served is ‘the supreme being’ – the activity of service is called sanatana dharma. In other words service without trace of a self consumption expectation meant for satisfying the senses of the supreme being Sri Krishna is sanatana dharma. We become independent of ‘Time’ when we are engaged in sanatana dharma all the time like flowing of oil. Any consumption is ‘adharma’ and divine service for the pleasure of supeme being Sri Krishna is ‘Dharma’. The first ray of auspiciousness is the first time the desire to selflessly satisfy Sri Krishna arises in the heart. This desire is obtained by coming in contact with a rasika or lover of Sri Hari. When the desire is continuously nurtured by hearing and chanting about Sri Hari, it turns into prema or love of God. Lets strive to make this Happy new year ‘Happy’ in the true sense by somehow obtaining the attitude to serve Sri Krishna in the shelter of his devotees. Seek out pure devotees, participate in hari naam sankeertanam and make 2011 a beginning of a truly glorious chapter in your life.
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