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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
Ma reminded me that today is the Sashtyabdapurthi of ‘P’. ‘P’ told me last time when she came here a few weeks back that “We are going for the marriage of my husband’s brother’s son. But we will come back here and I want to be here on the sixtieth birthday of my life.” I felt quite touched by what she said. They went and attended the marriage, went home to Hyderabad and have come back, perhaps only to be present here on this day.
Birthday is generally an irresistible feature in everyone’s life. We all have our birthday, the day on which our body was born into the Earth from the mother’s womb. This birthday goes on repeating every year. We call it our birthday. But I always wonder, is it our birthday or the day on which the body was born? That day again comes back. How do we know that it comes back? It is because of the Earth which goes on revolving around the Sun.
Every planet and celestial body is generally in a state of motion and all have their trajectories and they go in a cyclic manner around some other planet or celestial body. So, the Earth goes on revolving around the Sun and it does so in a consistent, unfailing, rhythmic manner. It takes about three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days for the Earth to complete one pradakshina of the Sun. The day on which we were born, what was the position of the earth with reference to sun, the same position repeats after a year. That is because the Earth is revolving and this revolution is a constant, cyclic, static one. So, is it our birthday or the day marked by the Earth? It is an interesting point to think about.
It is good that we think about our birthday having completed a year. What one has to do is, “How was the year that was passed spent by me? Where was I when I started the year? And where am I when I end the year? What is that change, evolution, expansion or goodness I have imbibed or displayed? We are not supposed to be selfish in this world. The human life is supposed to be a service to the others, a sharing with the others. So, has the selfishness reduced in me and selflessness increased substantially?”
“How was my conduct? Was I good? Was I pure? Was I noble? If I was not, how many instances were there where I failed? What was the cause for failure? Maybe objective and external causes maybe there. But the failure is mine. My mind and my intelligence, my heart did not respond to and display in the manner in which they should. This failure, under what provocation or compulsion did I fail? Is it not my own mind’s different types of urge that put me to failure? If it is my own mind’s urges like passion, prejudice, fear, jealousy etc. have I come to terms with them? Have I been able to reduce their intensity? If not, what was the reason?" So, there is stocktaking possible in our birthday.
Apart from it what I feel is, we are living on the Earth. Our mother delivered us into the Earth. She was herself living on the Earth. So, the one factor that keeps us alive is the gravity of the Earth by which we are held to the surface of the planet. Then we are given different types of food and nourishment by the Earth. We are having our oxygen from the air around. We are having seasonal rains. We have the sunshine, we have the moonshine, we have enough of water, then our body remains hot, fire is required for cooking our food. Then again, the space is surrounding all the other bhutas like fire, air, water and earth. Don’t you think that our life itself is an evolution from these panchabhutas and the life is sustained by them?
Maybe we are born of the mother and father. But the life is on the Earth. We are not living on the shoulder or the lap of the mother. The parents as well as the child are living on the Earth. So, our connection and gratefulness should always be towards the earth and the other bhutas, panchabhutas. This gratefulness, I believe one should reflect upon on every birthday at least. I am enabled to live by the earth, by the water, by the air, by fire, by space, by the vegetables which the earth and mother nature amply provide for us in the form of food and nutrition. The clothes that we are putting on are again made up of materials, cotton etc grown on the earth. Everything is a bounty, bounty of nature. How grateful we should be to nature!
Whether you have lesser money or greater money, this money belongs to nature. We owe it to the gracefulness of nature. This kind of a gratitude should be remembered. In our tradition we have pancha mahayajnas. I am not explaining them in full. We have devayajna, nriyajna, bhutayajna, pitryajna and rishiyajna. We are grateful to the people, knowledgeable people who lived in this world and gave us a language to speak, an alphabet to use, so many different forms of literature, giving us different branches of knowledge. We should be grateful to all these knowledge givers and knowledge bequeathers. They are called the rishis.
We should be grateful to the other beings in this world. We should be grateful to the supra human and celestial sources of nature. We should equally be grateful to the other human beings on the Earth. None of you is wearing a cloth made by you. The clothes are made by somebody else in different forms. The food that you are eating, not grown by you. The vehicles that you are travelling in, they are manufactured by some. So, there is a lot of interdependence in our life. We should be thinking about it. If we are a human being, we should be given to thoughtfulness, we should be given to wisdom and our thoughtfulness and wisdom should reflect our gratefulness, obligation, indebtedness to Mother Nature and all the factors that go along with nature.
Sixty years are a very good period. We were a child, then we were a boy or a girl, then a youth, then got married, we have children, we understand what it is to be a human in different stages of life. The children are old. Maybe they are married. At the age of sixty, we have got enough of maturity to reflect upon life, to reflect upon our relationship with Mother Nature and so many other factors and then think and decide, how we shall express our gratitude, our gratefulness to these different sources.
Our sastras say Paropakārārtham idam śarīram. Our body is meant for a service to the others. I think that is where human life fulfills itself. ‘P’ has done well. ‘B’ (‘A’) also in as much as they decided to be in the Ashram, a very good decision, without showing, celebrating it in any other manner. It is very good. And the further step will be to reflect upon these basic factors concerning life and develop more and more of goodness, benign-ness, benevolence, sacrifice and sharing. By that, they will have a far greater and nobler inner personality. Let them have enough of inner enrichment, empowerment, confidence, strength and elevation, ultimately enlightenment and fulfillment. I am very happy.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.