By choosing this life are you not escaping from your responsibilities?
No, in fact I am fully accepting my responsibilities and further expanding them. Escaping is something you do when you are not ready to face reality. A person may use drugs or alcohol to escape temporarily. A person may abandon his life when the going gets tough. For instance, when a close relative dies, when he looses his job, when his business fails, when he commits a crime ... if a person runs away, that is escaping. I have done none of these. I was pretty happy in my social and family surroundings when I took this decision. Further I am now available to take care of my aged parents. When ever there is a need, I attend to it, I am not running away. I have enough capacity to do that. After fulfilling those needs, I am utilizing rest of my time for meditation. This is where I differ from others in a similar position where they feel insecure and run behind money not knowing when to stop. While most fellow beings put up with the evils in the social system either with the pretext of not having time or being afraid of being victimized, I fight for my rights. I got all my dealings with the system like getting my DL, passport, tickets by standing in queue. Not only am I available to the call of my family but I am learning to accept the whole world as my family and trying to attend to everybody’s call. So my responsibilities if anything have expanded. Only thing is I am trying to be less selfish, less self centered, less insecure, less mean and less impatient.
Isn’t seeking for one’s own Moksha the most selfish thing to do?
I am of the opinion that seeking Moksha is the only thing to do. What ever you do in life is either irrelevant or a step towards Moksha. In Bhagvadgita, Lord Krishna says that only one can help himself in the path of Moksha. No body can give it to you as a gift and you can not give it to anybody as a gift. You have to earn it yourself. And it is ever living being’s foremost duty. It is a different thing that most people get disoriented and start running behind money, fame, … That is the game of Maya. When people say that they want Moksha, most of them do not know what Moksha is. They have seen unhappiness in life and they have heard somebody saying that if you attain Moksha you will be never sad again. So when they say that they want Moksha, what they actually mean is that they want to escape the unhappiness around them. Now this Moksha can be achieved irrespective of your marital status, citizenship, work status, profession, wealth, sex, beliefs… Time again people have attained Moksha across all these boundaries to prove this point. The lifestyle that you choose should just be conducive to your evolution at that point. Further, Moksha is obtained through divine grace. It is beyond your control to command when the grace descends on you, but when it descends you should be ready. It is a natural phenomenon like death. No matter how much you love a person or an object, you can not take it with you when you die. You die alone. So is the case with Moksha. If Moksha is selfish, so is dying. Now your question becomes ridiculous.
There are so many poor people in India. May be you can help them instead?
You can help a poor person become rich but that does not end his sufferings. Both rich and poor people are unhappy. Many poor people are happier than many rich people. That has to do with the mind. All the so called social work that people do is to change the standard of living. But the problem of unhappiness stems in the mind. People have to understand these themselves and have to work for it themselves. May be that a great person like the Buddha can help them in some way, but until you attain enlightenment there is almost nothing that you can do to help your fellow beings spiritually!
Why did you pick this Guru? I know of people who are more powerful, more famous than him.
A Guru – Shishya relationship is more complicated and I too do not understand it completely. You do not pick a Guru like you pick a shirt at a store. Neither can a Guru arbitrarily pick a disciple or deny one. The Guru Tatva is more important. And when ever there is a need, God sends a being in physical form to guide an aspirant at that point. Neither of them might have planned to meet but when they meet, both will know it. That is the game of destiny. In fact, your Guru will only show you the path, motivate you and provide you with relevant facts that you are unaware of when you need to make a decision. You have to walk by yourself. May be you both can walk together for a while but soon everybody has to walk to their destination. Each being has a different destination and there are as many paths to it as there are beings.
I never claim that my Guru is the best or the most powerful. That would be like a child claiming that her father is the strongest man in the world. Further for any relationship to be successful, it should not be conditioned on the capacity of others in it. If you marry a wealthy person expecting that he will be showering you with comforts, his money can melt away tomorrow. Power shifts hands. Change happens. But you still stick to the relationship because you have the inner strength to offer and not because you receive from your spouse. That is a true promise. That is where a real relationship differs from a business. If you choose your Guru based on his google pagerank, his popularity or his success numbers, there is only so much that you will get out of it spiritually.
No, in fact I am fully accepting my responsibilities and further expanding them. Escaping is something you do when you are not ready to face reality. A person may use drugs or alcohol to escape temporarily. A person may abandon his life when the going gets tough. For instance, when a close relative dies, when he looses his job, when his business fails, when he commits a crime ... if a person runs away, that is escaping. I have done none of these. I was pretty happy in my social and family surroundings when I took this decision. Further I am now available to take care of my aged parents. When ever there is a need, I attend to it, I am not running away. I have enough capacity to do that. After fulfilling those needs, I am utilizing rest of my time for meditation. This is where I differ from others in a similar position where they feel insecure and run behind money not knowing when to stop. While most fellow beings put up with the evils in the social system either with the pretext of not having time or being afraid of being victimized, I fight for my rights. I got all my dealings with the system like getting my DL, passport, tickets by standing in queue. Not only am I available to the call of my family but I am learning to accept the whole world as my family and trying to attend to everybody’s call. So my responsibilities if anything have expanded. Only thing is I am trying to be less selfish, less self centered, less insecure, less mean and less impatient.
Isn’t seeking for one’s own Moksha the most selfish thing to do?
I am of the opinion that seeking Moksha is the only thing to do. What ever you do in life is either irrelevant or a step towards Moksha. In Bhagvadgita, Lord Krishna says that only one can help himself in the path of Moksha. No body can give it to you as a gift and you can not give it to anybody as a gift. You have to earn it yourself. And it is ever living being’s foremost duty. It is a different thing that most people get disoriented and start running behind money, fame, … That is the game of Maya. When people say that they want Moksha, most of them do not know what Moksha is. They have seen unhappiness in life and they have heard somebody saying that if you attain Moksha you will be never sad again. So when they say that they want Moksha, what they actually mean is that they want to escape the unhappiness around them. Now this Moksha can be achieved irrespective of your marital status, citizenship, work status, profession, wealth, sex, beliefs… Time again people have attained Moksha across all these boundaries to prove this point. The lifestyle that you choose should just be conducive to your evolution at that point. Further, Moksha is obtained through divine grace. It is beyond your control to command when the grace descends on you, but when it descends you should be ready. It is a natural phenomenon like death. No matter how much you love a person or an object, you can not take it with you when you die. You die alone. So is the case with Moksha. If Moksha is selfish, so is dying. Now your question becomes ridiculous.
There are so many poor people in India. May be you can help them instead?
You can help a poor person become rich but that does not end his sufferings. Both rich and poor people are unhappy. Many poor people are happier than many rich people. That has to do with the mind. All the so called social work that people do is to change the standard of living. But the problem of unhappiness stems in the mind. People have to understand these themselves and have to work for it themselves. May be that a great person like the Buddha can help them in some way, but until you attain enlightenment there is almost nothing that you can do to help your fellow beings spiritually!
Why did you pick this Guru? I know of people who are more powerful, more famous than him.
A Guru – Shishya relationship is more complicated and I too do not understand it completely. You do not pick a Guru like you pick a shirt at a store. Neither can a Guru arbitrarily pick a disciple or deny one. The Guru Tatva is more important. And when ever there is a need, God sends a being in physical form to guide an aspirant at that point. Neither of them might have planned to meet but when they meet, both will know it. That is the game of destiny. In fact, your Guru will only show you the path, motivate you and provide you with relevant facts that you are unaware of when you need to make a decision. You have to walk by yourself. May be you both can walk together for a while but soon everybody has to walk to their destination. Each being has a different destination and there are as many paths to it as there are beings.
I never claim that my Guru is the best or the most powerful. That would be like a child claiming that her father is the strongest man in the world. Further for any relationship to be successful, it should not be conditioned on the capacity of others in it. If you marry a wealthy person expecting that he will be showering you with comforts, his money can melt away tomorrow. Power shifts hands. Change happens. But you still stick to the relationship because you have the inner strength to offer and not because you receive from your spouse. That is a true promise. That is where a real relationship differs from a business. If you choose your Guru based on his google pagerank, his popularity or his success numbers, there is only so much that you will get out of it spiritually.
