Bagavad Gita one of the finest philosophical works of all time. In my opinion it is quite unfortunate that the "label" of religion has been cast on this.
I have always looked upon this as a text written by a great philosopher to explain the turmoil that an Individual goes through when he/she has got to make tough decisions and how should the Individual go about it to come out successfully from that situation.
Arjuna and Krishna are 2 characters, with Arjuna symbolizing the troubled Human Mind and Krishna representing the pure knowledge that exists within all of us and to which every human reaches out to during desperate times or times of confusion knowingly or unknowingly. The entire Bagavad Gita is about the Inner Turmoil that happens within an Individual and how he manages to find that pure knowledge or God or Hunch or Intuition or "X" factor within himself.
Sounds pretty confusing isn't it? That's precisely the reason why these characters were created to make it simpler and to avoid lot of misinterpretations. OK all that in detail for another occasion. Coming to its impact or my own experience now.
There is a place in Bagavad Gita where Krishna asks Arjuna not to worry about the result and to remain detached from it. Very recently i had an experience which made me realize the importance of doing that.
The beauty if I can call it that way was that it was a very trivial issue, where in stead of doing what i could do best, I became so anxious about the result which pretty much was not in my hands. It got to me so much that I ended up making a mess out of the whole thing.
Down I was when this saying from the Gita struck me like a Bolt out of the Blue Sky. Wow!! I said to myself and the next day I happened to hit upon a Zen Story which advocated on the same lines. Finally I must say that i have realized (note the word, it is not "Knowing" but "Realizing") what it means to have a target and work towards it but not get too obsessed with so much so that you end up messing things up or failing to look at the larger picture and finally end up way short of it.
P.S: Had the Financial Geniuses too remained a bit detached they would not have got too obsessed and made the mistake of missing the larger picture which was that the main product was wealth for Shareholders and their own profit was a by product of that. They got too obsessed with their welfare that they ended up missing the larger picture. Hopefully things get right from now on at least.
Religion- A set of rituals and practices that if followed will take us close to the Eternal or a set of stupid practices followed by people who do not have faith in themselves. Your view could be any one of those aforementioned ones depending on whether u believe in the existence of a Super Power or not.
Where did it come from? Why was it conceived? A search would throw up tons of Information that might require a lifetime for us to go through them. I will put it simply as a set of practices which are "Symbolic". The reason why I say them to be symbolic is that looked as it is in a superficial way most of them do not make any sense. In fact i would go ahead and say that man was made to follow religion to make sure that he "Denounced" religion. Paradoxical, it might sound, but that is the purpose.
One who truly understands religion ends up getting detached from all the rituals that religion calls for.
So Why about religion now? Recent happenings in parts of India, have again highlighted the fact that Learned or Academically qualified we might be, we still are Uneducated when it comes to religion. Money paid ( God knows why) and Lives Taken all in the name of religion again highlight our "IGNORANCE".
Money paid in Huge quantities for Conversions and to sponsor Violence clearly shows that academic qualification or Economic Status are not indicators of Maturity.
I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at these happenings. I even feel that we are better off banning all the religions and closing down all the Churches, Mosques and Temples till we mature and truly understand the meaning of Religion. By meaning i don't mean the Text Book Meaning but the Intended meaning. Now will it Happen? "Hope" is the name of the game.
Is something which has become a political rhetoric at the national level just like 'Kamraj rule" has become in Tamil Nadu.
Before looking at Ram Raaj let us take a look at the concept of Society and the role of the State.
There are two versions to it. One is Our Version and the other is the version of the West or the Rest of the World.
Whats the difference? While ours focuses more on the Individual the West focuses more on the State. Why is that?
As they say the family is the building block of the society and the Individual is the building block of the family, so our people framed the policies that would lead to the realization of the Individual. We followed a Bottom-Up way of building.
The west followed the Top Down approach of building the society, by providing the state with all the authorities and making the Individual to depend solely on it.
(They taught the world to follow the "Bottom Up" approach in Programming. Ironical.)
So what is Ram Raaj? Now on reading the aforementioned paragraphs you should be able to answer it.
Ram Raaj is a state in which the people are contented, disciplined and at peace with themselves. Ram Raaj need not have Ram as the ruler, Any Ted, Mark or Iqbal can be the ruler of the state. Ram is merely a Reference to the Context. Unfortunate part is we have lost the context and have stuck ourselves to the Reference.
No wonder we are fighting over the Existence of the Ram. All this is unnecessary if we can understand the true significance of the Reference which is Ram. So did anyone called Ram exist? (Is it really necessary now?)
So when will we have Ram Raaj? We will have it when we look at the society like we look at our family, when we stop letting the Waste Water into the Storm Drains which are built for a different purpose, when we start to teach our kids the importance of values and not Money, when we teach them to deserve and desire, when we live at peace with ourselves, Now when will that happen???
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