How we are still here
Partha Desikan
All of us have heard the old biblical story of Cain killing Abel when humanity was said to have consisted only of four people, namely these two brothers and their parents. We have heard also how the inflexible Kaurava brothers courted their death at the hands of their Pandava cousins in an avoidable war in which thousands
of others too lost their lives. Some of us have lived through the horrors of a world war and most of us keep reading in the newspapers and seeing on the TV screen mindless killings of men by other men, both in battles and in individual- and group-terrorist acts. It would seem that we do not need natural disasters like earthquakes, violent storms, volcanic eruptions and forest fires to get finished off from the face of the earth and can manage the clean-up job on our own.But wait! The human race seems also to have been programmed not to self-destruct but to survive, judging from the irrefutable fact that each one of us has known even within our own lifespan, that the human population has been continuously increasing!
What is the meaning of this miracle? Are we running out of reasons for which we should fight with and kill our brethren? Have we succeeded in equalizing of opportunities for and therefore equidistribution of wealth of all people? Have we been able to implement use of one language for communication, one way to govern ourselves, one way to relate to our origins and the infinite beyond our ken? Have we learnt finally that we are all one large human family? Have we?
Sad as it might be, we have not. But listen to what the late revered Swami Ranganathananda of Sri Ramakrishna Mission told a group of students in Hyderabad a few decades ago on caring as a measure of godliness. He told the students to raise their right hands if they wanted to rise in life and achieve reasonable success and become happy thereby. Every student raised his right hand promptly and Swamiji said they were all correct in what they wanted. He further said that this desire showed that each student there was adequately selfish. But, said, Swamiji, if each student there practised carefully and learnt to love at least one being other than himself/herself unconditionally and selflessly, he/she would be on the path of God's Love and would merit God's Grace.
It would seem that a large number of us, men and women have learnt this simple lesson at least fractionally and are able occasionally to offer unconditional caring/love to a fellow-human being in need of such caring/love.
Which could explain how so many of us are still here.
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written by P. Desikan, 2008-05-15 07:01:55
Regards.Partha.
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written by Mita, 2008-05-14 16:40:47
Like Pradip, I too believe that it is fear more than love and care for our fellow beings that has prevented us from annihilating ourselves. I'm probably going off at a tangent .. but I've come to believe this after reading "The Life of Pi". It's a story of survival of a boy shipwrecked and stranded in a lifeboat in the pacific ocean with an injured Bengal tiger. In the most compelling part of the book, Pi manages to achieve a spiritual unity with the thing that threatens to kill him as he tends the tiger with the same care that he does himself. It's a brilliant tale and a lot of people have debated about this book but my take is that Pi manages to survive the ordeal of 227 days in the middle of the ocean because of his fear of the tiger.
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written by Dr. Pradip Gangopadh, 2008-05-14 11:19:21
I will be cynical here. Technology is already there today, and indeed has been available for about 45 years, to make Earth uninhabitable. A 100 megaton Hydrogen bomb explosion will be able to lift a chunk of atmosphere 10 km in diameter into space. The reason why it has not been done is that the countries know that using such weapons would kill themselves also. So it is fear that allows humans to survive!
Regards
Pradip
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written by narensomu, 2008-05-14 07:38:35
I agree, that when the last Man/ woman on Earth turns selfish, the planet will perish.
I read a story about Vishwamithra [before he became a Rishi.]
His kingdom suffered from famine and he asked the Dharma devata the reason for the calamity.
He was told that his people were selfish and that his kingdom would be saved from destruction if he could show one , just one good ,selfless soul.
King Kaushik was ready to lay his life down for his less worthy people and thus his kingdom was saved.
Thank you for the thoughts .You ,in succinct words, are elaborating the concept in the KuRaL two liner Nallar oruvar ularel...
Dear Dwai
When we look around what is happening, it does seem like how you put it.
Deepak Chopra is right but only within a context.
The cancer cell attitude is a result of the modern Western mindset.[ Iam sure they too lived in harmony with nature centuries ago.]
All the World is created for Man and his needs!is a dangerous thought
But if the World starts taking a cue from the East ,[ or from the other cultures that weren't allowed to continue, like the native American one for eg] it would be a much better place.
Right now, it does seem depressing and heading towards annihilation,
But as nature is infinitely bigger than us ,we hope things would balance eventually.
Regards
ns
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written by P. Desikan, 2008-05-14 05:45:13
By answer, I suppose you mean for the problem facing the planet because of the proliferation of our species.
Existence decides when there is unmanageable proliferation of any one species(such as ours) totally detrimental to a system such as planet earth, that it should strike. We have no control over that. There are inherent survival characteristics built naturally into us, which together can be summed up as selfishness. It is enlightenment or self-education, which Darwinians would include in evolving characteristics, that trains a person in unconditional caring for other members of one's species and by extrapolation, towards all species. Paropakara or even para vichara which seems to be present in vegetation to a larger extent naturally, has to be cultivated in higher forms of life, especially in us. It has 'evolved' to a certain extent, contributing to several activities including even medical science (please separate commercial factors from it).It is not in the activities per se that you find it, but in the attitude that some persons are able to bring to those activities.
Warm regards. Partha.
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written by dwai, 2008-05-13 21:19:21
Is it because of having learnt how to love just another person unconditionally or is it because medical science has gotten better at enhancing the natural life of people that our populations are growing?
I once read an analogy by Deepak Chopra between human beings and cancer cells. We colonize like cancer, we expand our field of influence like cancer and we are proving that we overwhelm the host system just like cancer.
Maybe there is no answer except total annihilation?
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It has succeeded so far since the end of WW2 since there are innumerable balances of checks and counter-checks through innumerable international Organizations.
But, 63 years is a relatively short time in the history of mankind. Also, since the end of WW2, there have been 3-4 occasions (Cuban Missile Crisis, a decision in the Nixon-era, etc) when we have come close to nuclear holocaust. Sooner or later, one sub-set / group of nations / nation will break out of that Fear.
The answer has to be something else.