________________
Guide to a Fuller Life
Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra
We meet with problems and difficulties every day all throughout our life. Some we solve, others remain insoluble. We wonder at times : is there something wanting in our way of growing up and living, that creates so many problems for us?
Indeed the intensity with which we feel at times and the sort of fixation to trivialities that we indulge in, often, has much to do with our predicament. If I was insulted by someone, the feeling of hurt totally occupies my attention. I cannot tear myself apart from this feeling, nor can I look at myself than as others look at me. Not to get too subjectively involved with things and to view situations in a larger perspective is one way out of the situation.
Have we received any training here ? Probably not. Though there is a sort of training and learning when in the hustle bustle of life one tries to keep on proceeding and immunises oneself to the feelings like this feeling of hurt. All this helps and yet one may wish that one did receive some instruction on how not to remain too sensitive and thus vulnerable to external stresses or to keep to some higher kind of a thinking when buffetted by trivial matters.
We live a life that is very limited. It just takes into account our physical person and our psychological self at a very low level. As Alexis Carrel said, we are little Eskimos overprotected, incapable of facing the realities of life. We have grown oversensitive to noise, to climatic changes and a host of allergens. Are we not limiting ourselves in this way from embracing life in its fullness? We are also facing difficulties at the psychological front. A disintegration of our personality is occuring as a result of increasing "double-think" on our part and a host of similar tendencies, We adjust to things without having arrived at a clear understanding of them. We tolerate a lot of injustice, corruption etc., as a stopgap arrangement. We hope and wish that things would be different and better sometime, somewhere, but the Shangrila of our dreams recedes as we advance in age.
The cause of our difficulty is that we refuse to grow up. The journey of man in the external world of unfortunately wholly guided by the physical sciences. His inward journey to explore the consciousness never starts though it could be considerably belped by the science of spirituality.
आसमस्थ तम Taze Rol तब हो सके आश्वस्त जन
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
