Winner stands alone

All of us, including myself, are in a rush to judge others. Judgments divide the things and people between right and wrong, good and bad. It makes life easy for us. We judge some people to be good and maintain intimate relations with them. On the other hand, we judge some people to be bad and avoid their company. We similarly divide things into good and bad. Alcohol is bad and milk is good. These judgments make life easy for us.

If we examine the matter of judgments from a different perspective, are all these judgments not a result of our laziness? our laziness to be present in the moment. To look at everything afresh. Without any prior judgment. Let's stay with it for a few moments. Is it actually possible to observe each person and thing afresh? Without the stale judgments. Is that asking too much?

But, who has the time and energy to invest in the observation of people and things? What purpose is that observation going to serve? The answer lies probably in understanding the meaning of life. If we understand life to be a race to achieve an intended outcome, then probably, one has no time to invest in observation. Then one needs to form the judgements and beliefs that best serve being the fastest in the race. If, however, the purpose of life is to appreciate the richness and diversity of life, then observing people and things may be tantamount to interacting with God. Each one os is a unique creation of God. We can not understand God without appreciating His creations. We can not understand Aurobindo, without reading "Life Divine" and "Savitri". We may read hundreds of biographies, but so far we have not read the books written by him, we will reach nowhere near appreciating who Aurobindo was.

The same author writes different books in different states of mind and moods. We are talking about the greatest creator and the greatest creations. If we are not in a race to be a winner, we can actually observe different human beings with wonder to appreciate what a wonder the Creator has created in this world. All of us are so diverse in our thoughts that every time, I interact with fellow human beings, I am filled with wonder. The possibilities are immense. We have seen Ravana and Rama both on the same Earth. We have seen Hitler and Mahatma almost living at the same time. 

Understanding and appreciating the "purpose of purposelessness" is not easy. Such observation apparently looks to be aimless with no purpose being served. With eyes on the target, this serves no purpose. With eyes at the winning, Krishna's Geeta has no purpose for Duryodhana. He has no confusion in life and therefore he doesn't need the preachings of Geeta. On the other hand, Arjuna is confused. He has become disillusioned with the judgments of society. He listens to Geeta in the midst of the battlefield. He observes Krishna, the universal form of Krishna at the battleground. There is no right or wrong place for observation. That is the message of Mahabharata. Geeta was not given by the Lord while Arjuna was sitting at peace in some forest. It was given right at the battleground.

If we want to understand and appreciate the meaning of life, we will also have to learn to observe right at the battleground of life. We can not live our daily lives with our eyes closed and try to open our eyes while sitting cross-legged. That is going to serve no purpose. We have to learn to observe ourselves and everybody around us while living life to understand the appreciate the nature of God. 

We can observe ourselves and others only when we put our thoughts and understanding aside and observe the people and things as they are including our own ideas and thoughts. That's quite counterintuitive because that is not normal. The entire society teaches us all the time to judge and divide. It takes a lot of courage to put our own ideas and thoughts aside. It brings a lot of insecurities initially till the time we realize that security itself is the biggest danger. What we consider to be a stick to support us is actually a snake. 

It must not have been easy for Arjuna to observe all his beliefs and ideals from Krishna's eyes. That requires a lot of courage and trust which is generally not allowed by the ego, which seeks security in these do's and don't, rights and wrongs, good and bad. It fails to realize that these judgments are actually the biggest threats because they are based on a limited understanding of things. With a slight change in in the ecosystem, they will fail to operate without any warning signal. Under the illusion of being good and doing right, we will end up doing the biggest damage to ourselves and our near and dear ones. We may win the race but in the end the winner stands alone.