I was a young boy, maybe about 7 - 8 years old when we had gone to our village for the first time to spend our summer vacations with my paternal grand mother in a relatively remote village in Himachal Pradesh located on the banks of river Beas. It was a great vacation. Every night we, my younger siblings & I, would lie down in our beds under the open skies in the court yard in one line and pester our grand mother to tell us some stories or anecdotes. She always had something new to add to our young minds, which had spent most of their lives in the city. She was very wise but totally illiterate by modern standards, maybe she had studied up the 3rd class, as she came from a Brahmin household that always valued education and wanted every one to know at least how to add/ subtract, and write their names.
One day she told us about how fortunate we were to be born as human beings. She further elaborated on the Hindu wisdom/ folklore of the evolution of species; which as per her was to have to live through 8.4 million births in different species before one got to the human birth, and thus how it was important for each one of us to strive to do good karmas, so as to end this cycle of birth and death, and achieve 'mukti' or liberation. After a few minutes we were fast asleep. But, I remember that it left a deep impact on me, although I did not understand karma, rebirth, species, or any thing else connected with life on this cosmos.
We were up the next morning, and trudged our way of about 2 - 3 kms to the river Beas to do our morning ablutions, have a massage on the banks and have a dip/ swim in the river, before returning home for a sumptuous 'aloo porathas', pickles and curd. On the way there were always peacocks in the jungle at 2 places, performing their beautiful dances every morning. We always looked forward to witnessing the tantalising beauty performing the dance with loud squeals to attract the peahen's attention; not that we understood any thing at that stage of life.
After finishing our massage, given by the expert hands of my father, we would take flat stones and skip them off the river, while cooling off our warmed up bodies before entering the relatively cold waters of the Beas. On this particular day, I picked up two stones that I thought would help me do what I had in mind, after I returned home. These were then deposited in the pocket of my shorts. We returned, finished breakfast and I was off to my mission now.
There was an ant hill in the small kitchen garden on one side, and every morning the big black ants would trudge out of that and form a queue going out looking for food. I took up my position on one side of this queued up ants. I placed one my stones on the ground and held the other in my right hand. I would pick up an ant, being very careful not to expose my two fingers to the deadly claws of the ant. I would then place it on the stone on the ground and with other one would try and kill it, before it scrambled away. Initially it was tough as the ant would invariably get away much before the second stone came down. I finally got the hang of it, and managed my first 'kill'. I was now getting excited that I had learnt something new to do my job successfully without getting hurt or bitten.
At that instant my grandmother came out and confronted me, "what are you doing". So, I told her that I am helping these ants overcome one of their 8.4 million lives so that they can reach the human form earlier. She was aghast, and asked me, "Is that your karma? What happens to your karma? Who are you? You are only required to do your own karma. The ant is not dependent on you for his evolution. You have no right to take more than what you 'need' from this existence, as every thing has a role in this grand design." She was visibly upset and I too was after this bitter rebuke from my grand mother. I never understood what she meant but did understand one thing very clearly and that I was just another small cog in this big universe, which included stones, rivers, trees, animals, stars, sun, moon, galaxies and the vast nothingness of our skies.
Observation, inquiry, life, thought, contemplation have brought me to the same conclusions that my very wise but illiterate grand mother knew because of our great traditional civilisational heritage, where the 'varna' system ensured that the most evolved souls contemplated and passed on truths about our great cosmos to lesser mortals as beliefs. The system got corrupted many times, but every time an evolved soul came about and brought about reformation. All religions born on this sacred soil, from Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, have imbibed most of the salient features of this these basic truths of life, existence, and God. These thoughts celebrate the diversity of the Creator and is happy to 'accept' what is and work only to evolve oneself from within. Acceptance & gratitude comes naturally to all diverse ways of living, belief, etc.
There is no one 'right way' is the final thought and 'every one is right' in their own way is guiding spirit because every one has a different journey through this cycle of births and rebirths, where one evolves as per one's own karma. Only thing needed in 'Observation, Inquiry, & the use of intellect to understand our role in this whole cosmos.
A small thought for the thinking minds:
10 Things That Would Happen if Bees Died Out
Eventually we will all cease to exist.
Every thing in this world is interconnected by grand design.
We appear stationary, but are hurtling through space at 1500 kmph on the equator, once every 24 hours, AND for millinea now.
We appear stationary, but are hurtling around the sun at many times the speed of sound, once every 365 days 6 hours and some minutes/ seconds.
We are just a cog in the wheel in the great and grand cosmos, sticking with some beliefs that some lesser qualified society/ priest/ pandit/ mullah/ granthi or what have you try to tell you.
So, OBSERVE, INQUIRE, CONNECT WITH THE SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH CONTEMPLATION AND MEDITATION ON THE BIG PICTURE OF OUR ROLE/ PLACE IN THIS COSMOS
