First off, let me thank everyone in Dharma who made Hungama a smashing success. It was the funnest event thus far in my Harvard experience. I’m confident that everyone enjoyed themselves and are looking forward to the next time they can jam to Daler Mehndhi with 300 smiling people.
Now for the post:
Compared to our fellow animals, as human beings we are blessed with the unique intellectual capacity to observe, learn, ponder, and change our behavior. Having observed the suffering and trivialities of the ephemeral world of everyday life, we recognize that there must be something more to life than the illusion of maya we encounter all around us. Hindu doctrine asserts that the only way to break free from maya and worldly suffering is through self-realization.
Although I believe that householders can make significant spiritual progress through seva, meditation, and mantra/japa, I have always generally associated self-realization with swamis and sadhus. While many of us may desperately want to break free from the seemingly endless cycle of karma and worldly suffering, most of us here at Harvard have no immediate intention of embarking on a life of self-renunciation and could never see ourselves as future sanyasins.
All of us are extremely busy with schoolwork, clubs, and friends. We don’t recite mantras/japa all day, do seva all day, or ponder the Gita all day — if at all. While we may regularly think of God during times time of reflection or right before our midterms, our minds are not singularly focused on the divine.
I personally have tried to justify this reality by rationalizing that I’m a student and that my highest obligation lies in studying (so I can one day do God’s work) and enjoying the people around me. But in reality, very soon I’ll be consumed working, raising a family, and will one day ultimately die. Our lives will very soon flash before our eyes and everything we think we have to show for will be nothing more than the trappings of maya.
Put simply, if we don’t get around to making spiritual progress in our current life, in the grand scheme of multiple reincarnations our current lives will literally have been wasted. So then, are we to abandon our problem sets and spend hours meditating in the cozy Dharma prayer space? Or are we to be typical Harvard students and go on to run hedge-funds or develop new cancer drugs, and leave the self-realization for another lifetime? Perhaps, there is some ideal happy medium between the two -– but what does it look like?
Clearly we must somehow incorporate spiritual practice/values into our everyday lives. But, how do we go about doing this? And once we have this internal awareness, how can we stay aware of our actions and live a selfless life? How do we make time for God, so we can incrementally make substantial spiritual progress while still staying busy fulfilling all our other duties?
Take care, everyone. See you all on Friday!
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One Comment
Hemi, I really enjoyed reading this post, which raises a question that is too rarely discussed.
Vikaas has an interesting viewpoint on this matter (http://www.swadharma.org/2009/02/20/why-spirituality/#comment-112).
I have found that gratitude with an abstract object is the most common way that I think about something beyond myself. For example, thinking that I am lucky to have two eyes that can see is a gratitude aimed not at my own agency or that of my parents, but at an abstract creator or Fate.
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