Freedom and Duties

Freedom and Duties

The concept of freedom is always perhaps misunderstood as some right given to an individual to have no boundaries or nothing to limit his desires (good or bad).  But I think it’s not so, How can u quantify freedom without boundary or limit, or even how can u define it.  For example u can say I have the freedom to stay awake! Fine, how long? You have to answer it and it can’t be indefinite for sure. This means you have a limit.

“Freedom is power, rights, or whatever given to you with a pre defined boundaries”.

When I say pre defined or pre determined boundaries, it necessarily need not be stipulated by someone, it’s well and good if you have your own. Which makes things lot easier.

Mahatma Gandhi says “Let each do his duty…… what we want to do should be done, not because we object the English or because we want to retaliate but because it is our duty to do so.” (CWMG – Vol 10, p. 64)

Sometimes we don’t understand this, maybe we can’t, even if we try to, like when we were in schools. The boundaries protect us basically, in schools, children are asked to come in uniform, perhaps when you were in school you thought they are trying to boss around you, depriving you from the freedom of dressing. But actually, now we know it’s just to make us learn the professional way of dressing, also to create the oneness among the children and learn not to see any difference between their peer groups. In that situation where you can’t make a clear decision that if the rules and limitation are necessary or not we just have to trust people who lay it. Sometimes we may not know about the rules but you may know about the decision makers so we can trust them.

Am not saying that we should blindly  accept all the restrictions laid upon us and bend for everything, rules should be made for us and by us, not by someone else and squeezed upon us! Rules have to be reasoned out, but we should have the maturity to understand the rules, and also to reason it. For that first we should have the mind set to accept to have rules.

When a child refuses to accept her mom telling her what to do and what not to do, she had to be explained, and she needs to understand it.  Once the child understands the rules she will start to feel the freedom! This is applies everywhere, once a subordinate accepts to understand the boundaries lay before him, he no more thinks he is deprived of freedom.

When you are the rule maker for yourself, the determiner of your own boundaries, think of your environment you are gonna live, the people who are going to be affected by this, before framing it. It is mostly perfect when you decide to have your own limitation and boundaries, because most of the time that will be correct.

Okay now there is a problem, you follow the rules, and you see people around you or even your higher authority in any form, mom to boss in your office, don’t follow the rules that they should follow. As said before do your duty and you will be served, don’t mind them don’t follow bad example, set up a good example, by you will be served I meant you will be respected and they would be even afraid to order you because you are perfect and they know they are not.

 And we should always try to see the duty of others through their own eyes, the environments change the nature of our duties, and doing the duty which is ours at any particular time is the best thing we can do in this world. We shall not concern ourselves with others duties and the way they do it, we are not the standard of the universe.

Okay what if sometimes the rule maker, the determiner of boundaries is not you, and he or she takes a wrong decision, there are different ways to deal it. You can Fight for it, simply adapt with it, Try to make them understand, everything depends upon the situation and environment. I really don’t have an answer for this one, I really welcome people reading this to post their answers for this.

Day without Fridge

Days without fridge is really great! Perhaps ma mom wont agree to that. But it was serving us for almost two decades, nearly a part of our family. Now its down, and how is it great?

Every thing is Fresh, and isnt fresh Great? Fresh sambhar thrice a day, fresh dough daily, fresh curd.

Oh, not just that, clay pots are back! Just found my mom had stored the vegetables brought in those, to keep it fresh. Got some pics of that.

Also the lemons got their shelter.

Who We Are??

Since time immemorial, man has been trying to understand man. As every child tries to understand their own parents since they were born. No two men are same. Variety is the masala of life. Turn everywhere and what one finds is variety - in Physical features, in food habits, likes and dislikes, in economic conditions, in customs and practices, in one's dealings and feelings, in the way one looks at others; there is no end to it. Infinite is the variety in creation and infinite are the types of men.

The famous saying by Avvaiyar goes கற்றது கைமண் அளவு, கல்லாதது உலகளவு  (What you have learned is a mere handful; What you haven't learned is the size of the world). We all should accept that what we call as 'knowledge' is always a limitation. It is limited but what is unlimited, infinite is the knower, but his fate is what he knows is always a limitation, because he doesn want to think beyond it. Swami Vivekananda points out:

      Reasoning is limiting something by our own minds. we throw a net and catch something, and then say that we have demonstrated it; but never, never can we catch God in a net. (from complete works of swami vivekanada)

Man's knowledge is just classification, we are satisfied with facts and never care about why, cause the brain screens the "why" part itself from knowledge and make us feel that we know something! The answer is No "why" can be answered in this world; for that we must go to god. 

This ignorance is not the mistake of man. Its the screen play of the life. Until we are out of this ignorance the play doesn end. To lead the story to the climax this classifications of our knowledge is required to understand and organize our lives better.

The Typus:

1.  The distressed,

      People in distress approach god for relief.  If they are ill they worship Him to be healed; if they lose their wealth, they pray to Him to get it back.

2.  The seeker of material things,
      There are other people who ask Him for all kinds of things, because they are full of desires - name, fame, wealth, position and so on. They will say, "O Virgin Mary, O Vishnu, I will make an offering to you if I get what I want. If you are successful in granting my prayer, i will worship u and give you a part of everything" the heights is the last part XD.
     
3. The inquirer,
    Some men not so materialistic is that, but still with no faith in God, feel inclined to know about Him, we have a pet name for them " The Atheist". They study philosophies, read scriptures, listen to lectures, and so on. The Difference is they don't like leaving the "WHY" unanswered.

4. The knower of truth.
     The last class are those who worship god and know Him. They know that he is the creator, and the director of the play he is the one who pulls the strings, the godfather, and he simply love him. His love for him is eternal.


Through this classification we can understand that not all seek god for the same reason. There is such variety in the purpose of God-Seeking!!
All those four Classes of people are good, not bad. All of them worship Him. The path they choose is different cause they are not the same and the path they choose determine the time taken to realize him. The classification can be narrowed down into 
INTENSE  
FEEBLE
The former is like a sharp razor, puts all his efforts put aside all other things and achieve, the later is lukewarm in his attitude.

So all the Pathways Says this you think of him in whatever way you want. You will realize him. 
The famous stories of gospels of all religion in the world have their own stories where the sinners and the villain who want to kill the god, think about him day and night how to defeat him, indirectly worship him and reach him! 

When we realize this we automatically turn good, turn into human being. There is a story of two farmer both trying to get water to their field from the lake, one farmer labors for days to bring water his efforts are futile because he has no grit. The other one takes a vow and says, 'I will bring water into my field today, and not till then will i go home', he puts aside all thought of his bath or his meal. labors the whole day and feels great joy when in the evening he finds water entering his field. Thus we can be distressed, material seeker, inquirer, the knower of truth each leads to the same victory of realizing god.

Got remained of ma spiritual guru telling about a Poet Bhartrihari and his classification of men on one of his verses of Neeti Shatakam;

The superior men sacrifice their own welfare for the sake of others; the common people work for the benefits of others when it is not against their own interest,. People who harm other for their gains are like demons in the guise of men.  I. however, do not know what to call them who destroy the happiness of others without rhyme or reason.

Concluding with a well-known song in Hindi,

Strange are the ways of the mind.
One mind is hungry after desires,
Another one is content and full of love;
One is only interested in getting,
Another one knows only giving;
One mind know only its own happiness,
The other one feels for others;
One mind is immersed in its selfish aims,
Another mind is immersed in doing good to others;
One mind is full of egoism,
Another one is a garden of humility.
Indeed strange are the ways of the mind!!

OVORU MINDUKUM OVOVURU FEELINGS XD.... choose and channelize yours!