Gratitude for Life

God resides in me and in you,

This life is a beautiful gift for all and not just for a chosen few.

Probably since my teenage, I have been searching for some answer to the questions like what is this life and why do I have one. If it is all about troubles and confusions that I am supposed to live with then why do I even have to live it; these thoughts silently creeped in now and then. Often, I ignored them. Years passed but unresolved they still were until I met a person who showered on me all his life’s learnings. He said it straight, those were his views, his perspective and may be the truth of life; and you have complete freedom to discard it.

Lord Krishna, he would start his sentence as, this life is a gift and Lord Krishna is the creator and giver of this gift. He would say, look how lucky we are that we got a chance to transcend through this life in the best living form of human being. He would say wake up and enjoy your precious gift.

He passed on all his understandings and I believe, it changed my outlook towards life. I kept reflecting on some of his ideas which seemed conflicting to my naive mind. The quotes, he sometimes shared, were absolutely mystic. Those words and their meaning at first sounded beautiful and fascinating, but as I gave them a deeper thought, I came across entirely new dimensions of life.

sarva-dharman parityajya
mam ekam saranam vraja
aham tvam sarva-papebhyo
moksayisyami ma sucah

                                                                -Quote From Bhagwat Gita

Meaning- Lord Krishna in this quote asked Arjuna to surrender unto him and Arjuna would be free from all his sins.

Arjuna, if represents every other common man out there in this world, I wondered how his surrendering to Krishna would give one the most coveted freedom. I pondered what does that surrender word means and what kind of freedom we would have if we are able to surrender unto Lord Krishna.

The word surrendering was to me like giving up my ego completely and it was conflicting with the Ayn Rand’s words from her Fountainhead book, “A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress”.

Well another conflicting idea was that if Lord Krishna was asking to surrender Arjuna his ego to Him, wasn’t Krishna pampering His own ego! Well, then there was a sudden shift in thoughts and all I wanted to know was ‘who is Lord Krishna?’.

I, one day, happened to read Albert Einstein’s finding that “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

These and my guides words tended to create a chain reaction in my head to help me understand more about this life. My guide, I remember, he said that this life is much bigger and larger than we can imagine. I understood, this life as a human being is just a phase of a vast and timeless life. We are continuous and infinite energy across time and space. And it dawned onto me that  Lord Krishna is just a name given to this entire magnificent universe of energy. Surrendering unto Krishna meant detaching from the all the desires that make you unhappy as they would take you away from your true nature. True nature of infinite energy and infinite possibilities. Human’s true nature is that they never die. They are always existing in some or the other form. It is just this body that dies. Soul transcends from one form to another.Ayn’s definition of ego as well talked to certain extent about living for your own happiness and not allowing your happiness to be dependent on someone or some specific situation. You always get an intuition about the right and wrong and following those intuitions are going to give you the extreme happiness.

Lord Krishna and Goddess Radha are known for their true love. I asked my guide, why is only Lord’s love called a true love and how is what I call love different from theirs?

He replied – ‘Their love is setting them free. Their love has no conditions and have no bindings and no boundaries. They have understood that love is not something different but the same energy that is flowing, transforming and transcending through everything. Lord has knowledge that no matter how many material disturbances exist between Him and Radha, they were still together. They existed close to each other even in non existence. Humans tend to be ignorant and hence tend to divert from their true nature and hence end up tying love with conditions.’

These all absolutely mysterious words love, life, happiness to me now appear all as same thing. And as Lord resides everywhere, He resides in us as well. And if Lord is all Happiness, Love and Energy then our Life is also all about happiness. Thus joy, bliss and enthusiasm are things that need not be forced but they should dance out to you to celebrate this extraordinary phase called human life of your endless life. As we make ourselves tangled in the silly complexities of human life, we keep wasting our fast evaporating moments in sadness. With all the situations we have, life is in living free and in being thankful for this beautiful gift of human form which allows you to explore, appreciate, express and even impress.

With all my heart, I am thankful for this life!