- How should I increase my fortune?
- How should I pass the exam?
- How to impress my boss?
- How the earth moves around the sun?
- How beautiful the weather is today.
The list is endless. Throughout the day and throughout our lives we are either busy understanding as “How things work in this world” and “How can it be utilized to fulfill the mundane requirements of our life”.
Do we ever bother to ask ‘Why’?
- Why should I earn money?
- Why am I working?
- Why someone in this world is born rich and someone as poor?
- Why earth moves round this sun?
- Why do we grow old?
- Why do we die?
- Why relationship of this world is so fragile and temporary?
- Why our life is temporary and not permanent in this world?
Unless we try to seek answers to these questions we will fail to do any justice to ourselves. Such inquiry is called Athato brahma – jijnasa. Let us not utilize our human intelligence in solving the problems of ahara-nidra-bhaya-maithun – eating, sleeping, defending and mating. Animals can do it better than us and that too without much struggle.
Let us utilize our human intelligence for some meaningful purpose. So let us begin by asking “Why” first and then seek answer for “How”. For e.g. let us inquire, “Why everything in this world is temporary?” Once we find answer to this question then we should ask “How to transfer ourselves from this temporary realm to the eternal world?”
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