” To Love and To Forgive”

There are two sides to the coin of progress.

One is-“To remember” other is “To- forget.”

How can we love if we cannot remember!

How can we forgive if we cannot forget!

To love and to forgive are two bases of life

It will help to keep in mind this open secret.

Girish Desai

   મળે પ્રેમ ‘ને માન

જો રાખીએ ક્રોધ કાબૂમાં

અને લૂલી પર લગામ,

તો જીવનમાં શાંતિ રહે

વળી મળે પ્રેમ ’ને માન 

“મુત્કકો”

ખાન પાન વાણી વિશે,જો ન રહે જીભને લગામ

તો સ્વાસ્થ્ય જરૂર ગુમાવશો ‘ને થશો જગમાં બદનામ.

*******************************

મન તણી ભઠ્ઠી મહીં દુઈખાગ્નિ જયારે જલે

ન બુઝવો તેને આંસુથી,ઘડો ચારિત્ર તેના બળે.

સૌથી સરળ ’ને સહેલી સમજવી

છે ભાષા હાસ્ય અને રૂદનની

આબાલ વૃદ્ધ સહુ તે સમજે ’ને

ન કોઇ બાધા તેને કાળ કે સ્થળની.

                            Is God, truely something real?

                           Or is He just a figment of my mind!

                           An answer to this, I hope, I wish

                           Some day I really could find.

                           To me, God is nothing but

                           A huge transparent screen,

                           Where a shadow of this world is cast

                           Which creates a wonderful scene.

                           There is not a moment in time

                           When absent is this screen.

                           But because it is too transparent

                           It always remains unseen.

                           I know, this shadow is an illusion

                           And that screen is the solemn truth,

                           But how can I with my feeble mind

                           Furnish you with a valid proof !

                           When muddled mind casting its shadow

                           Will become transparently clean,

                           And thus, unable to cast its shadow

                           Surely will merge into that screen.

                                                               Girish Desai.

  Every creature seeks comfort and happiness during its lifetime but only our human soul never satiates just with creature comforts  and so it always longs for freedom from the cycle of birth and death or for a permanent place in heaven. This is its ultimate goal. It seems that, this longing, drives every human being towards one religion or the other.[1] Every religion proclaims that they have found a way to Salvation,( Nirvan, or Mukti.) Every religion preaches that by living a righteous and ethical life a man can surely reach his goal. By living thus he steps closer to his goal and by living an evil and unethical life he steps further away. Hindus call this process “ Law of Karma.” Even though all religions put utmost emphasis on righteous living the law of karma stipulates one very essential factor for righteous living. It suggests that just righteous living alone is not enough to reach the goal of salvation, because all karmas good or bad will fetch a reward and to claim that reward one must be present in a physical form. ( i.e. reincarnate in some physical form.) But if he does all his karmas without putting a claim as the doer of the karma ( i.e without involving personal Ego) he or she does not have to come back to accept the reward, hence no rebirth. This type of work is called Nishkama Karma and only via such karma one can reach the goal. This doctrine is accepted by all eastern religions. However the western religions promulgate a different doctrine called resurrection. They state that after death every one needs to wait till the day of resurrection or ‘Kyamat ka Din’. On that day all the souls wake up to hear the judgment from God. Till then all souls, meritorious or sinners, must reside in a place called purgatory.(Then, is not our world that purgatory ?) After the judgment is passed they go either to heaven or to hell. None of them gets a second chance to correct his or her follies. Can God ever be so cruel, so unjust? I don’t think so.Why would he keep the pious ones in limbo with the sinners? Why would the  merciful God not give another chance to amend our follies?

These two different doctrines accepted by two different groups of religions are just a surmise. But unlike the western religious group the eastern religious group, instead of relying on blind faith, puts forth a sincere effort to provide following logical explanation to justify their doctrine.

According to theologies of eastern religions reincarnation is just a way of evolution of the Ego (Jivatma) traveling through time. Birth is the time for soul to evolve and Death is the time for it to rest during this long journey thru time. This belief in reincarnation or rebirth is deeply engraved in psyche of Hindus, Jains and Buddhists because the societies that believe in the doctrine of karma had no other option but to acccept rebirth, a second chance, given by a truly just God.[2] Otherwise how can one justify good fortune of a dishonest evil minded person ? They justify his good fortune (Prarbadha) by citing to his good karmas (Purusharth) of some previous life. Every Hindu, every Jain and every Buddhist believe that doing meritorious karmas is just a first step for a soul to proceed toward the final goal, called Moksh or Nirvan  (freedom from the shackles of cycles of birth and death) and only by doing selfless Karmas (Nishkam Karma) the final goal can be reached. Thus it is up to each individual to choose his or her path. From this it should be clear that Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism do not promote a fatalistic (prarbadhvada) view of life but, to the contrary, the emphasis is on a very goal oriented (purusharthvad) approach to life.

According to Hindu theology all beings are a confluence of three Gunas,[3] And their preponderance and potencies keep varying with individuals and even in the same individual they vary with time. Also according to this theology human being is considered to be a package of following three entities.  

1. An entity which is invisible and beyond clear perception of human senses called

                  The causal body.: Paramatma  (karan shareer)

               2. A visible and perceptible entity called

 The gross body. : The Physical form              ( karya shareer)

               3. And an invisible yet perceptible entity called

               The subtle body. : Jivatma, Ego, Personality  (karta shareer )

                   Now let us briefly delve into each of these entities separately to apprehend their viability for reincarnation.   

1 The Causal body (karan shareer) otherwise also referred to by other names such as God, Brahman, Paramatma, Ishwar, Bhagvan, Allah etc.

This entity is the primordial cause for everything that exists in the universe. It is the one and the only most essential ingredient of everything that exists.  Without its support nothing can exist. It is just like a colorful painting drawn on a transparent screen. Even though the screen is invisible, without it, a painting can not exist and without a painting there is no painter.

Gita describes this entity as follows

     “It is that which is neither born nor will it die, and it is never that it did not exist in the past or that it will not exist in the future or it does not exist in the present.

( i.e. it is beyond shackles of time) This unborn causal body is permanent, eternal, immutable, and even older than time and is indestructible. Only the physical body succumbs to destruction.” Gita 2-20 [4]                

From this description even a slightest notion for its viability of rebirth should not arise. The one who does not die how can it be reborn? 

2 The physical body (karya shareer) Generally referred by various other names such as Body, Shareer, Tanu, Deha, etc.

According to sankhya philosophy every object, including our physical body, is an inert object composed of one or all of the five elements. viz, Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Space.(Panch Mahabhoot) And only after a specific and proper combination of these elements it acquires a specific physical form and becomes manifest to our senses. This manifestation is called Birth. 

The first three of these elements represent the existence of inert matter in solid, liquid and gaseous states. Fire represents heat and light energy via which the inert matter is preserved and perceived. And space represents the domain of force of Gravity via which the whole universe is held together. 

According to Gita. 

 “Just as a person discards his old worn out clothes and puts on new ones, in the same way (Jivtma, Ego, the subtle body within this physical body ) discards this worn out old body and accepts a new body.” Gita 2-22[5]

Thus when the corpus, or any physical object, is distroyed it totally disintegrates and reverts back to its original elements ( Law of conservation of mass and energy) And after their release these elements can reunit to form a new body, new object, of different type and form. After decomposition every object eventually disappears i.e. it remains unmenifest[6] (Gita 2-2 This is known as Death. Thus what we know as birth and death is nothing but a process of distruction-the unmenifest state and reconstruction –the menifest state of these five elements. i.e

3        Subtle body (karta shareer) also referred  to as Jivatma, Anthakaran, Ahankar, Vyaktitva, Ego, Personality, Character etc.

This body is said to be composed of four elements. Which are Mana(Mind), Buddhi (Intellect), Chit (Sub conscious) and Ahamkar (Ego). Instead of treating them as separate elements it will be easy to comprehend them as four different phases of the same faculty for acquiring knowledge. The word Antahkaran literally means the process of internalizing all our experiences we go through in the present life. In other words it is a process of developing our character, our Ego, our personality, our personal Identity.

We all know that there are four major factors involved in learning about any subject. 

1) Acquiring data

2) Analyzing and classifying this data

3) Storing or saving these classified data and

4) Labeling it properly to retrieve it easily for future use.

Now let us consider how this is achieved thru the use of these four phases of one faculty called Antahkaran.

Thru the use of our senses of actions and perceptions our mind (Mana) experiences the world around us, thus acquiring data. And then it hands it over to Our Intellect (Buddhi) 

Our Buddhi  analyses and classifies this data to decide whether it is good or bad, whether it is pleasurable or painful. And feeds this information to Sub conscious (Chit) where it is stored.

From there on our ego (Ahamkar) takes it over and neatly arranges this data and labels it as “This is what I am, this belongs to me”. And it is this ‘I’ that we keep projecting from our personal world  (personality) within to the physical world without. Thus Jivatma is nothing but our Ego, our character that we build during the process of internalization, done during our entire life time under the influence of three Gunas.

After death this ‘I’ is transported to some new physical body. In Gita an explanation is given about the way this transportation occurs.

 ‘Just as the wind carries the fragrance of a flower from one place to the other so does our ego ( Jivtma) carries all the impressions gathered during the present life to the one to be acquired. And after establishing itself in the mind and physical senses of the new body it enjoys new life. The new body that the jivatma acquires is always appropriate and conducive for gratifying unfulfilled desires of his previous life.’ Gita[7] 8,6

At the time of death Jivatma carries along with it two types of impressions. The ones with the highest priority are considered potent and exhibit themselves as vasanas  (desires) in his new life, while the ones with lower priority exhibit themselves as samskar (his innate nature). After the death Jivatma abandons the cadaver which decomposes and Jivatma goes his own chosen way. In his new life jivatma, according to his samskar, performs new karmas to exhaust his vasanas, but in doing so it accumulates new impressions which are stored and utilized in evolving and advancing one step further in the cycle of birth and death. Thus the chain continues until it is broken by the chisel of Nishkam karma.

To comprehend this process of transportation of impressions from one life to the next let us compare it with the current day wireless technology. Just as the audio and video information from a transmitter is broadcasted in space and picked up by a properly tuned receiver so are the impressions ( thought waves) gathered during the present life and picked up by a properly tuned (i.e. physically and mentally most conducive to receive and act on it ) new body.

This idea, of course, is a wild conjecture of human mind but why should one under estimate the power of human brain which helped us to progress this far! I hope in future some one will be able to verify this type of Thaught wave transmission. Gita 15- 8,9

 Shareerm yt avapnoti yt cha api utkramti ishvar  

 Gruhitva etani smyaati vayuhu gandhan ev Aashayaat .      Gita 15- 8

 Shrotram chakshuhu Spashranm cha rasanm ghraanam ev cha

 Adhishthaay manah cha ayam vishayan upasevate.              Gita 15- 9

                                                                                           5-23-05

                 Girish Desai

બુઝ્યો અગ્નિ શમી ચિતા, કરી આ દેહને ભુકત
બુઝ્યો ના અગ્નિ વાસના કેરો,
થયો ના આત્મા મુકત.

જો અગ્નિ વાસના કેરો, ન પૂરો બળી જાયે
તે એ બળેલી રાખમાંથી પણ,
દેહ નવો ઊભો થાયે.

                                         shadow of light !

                          Because of light we see all things

                          It  makes things clear and bright,

                          Light creates shadows of things

                          But how to create a shadow of light.

                      ”The Truth”

Truth is always one and it can never change

So from one it can never become two.

And if God is that truth, HE must be only one

Then how can HE be different for me and for you!

                                                               Girish Desai