Jeevan Yatra

Jeevan Yatra

…. The journey of life

When we talk about life, it is always spoken about as a journey that begins at birth and ends at death. We have been gifted with life not to die one day, but to live it optimally till death comes. We may be born as humans, but to live like a human is in our hands.

A human being’s life is best lived when he learns the art of living. This art of living can be defined in three steps: Dissect the word Jeevan into its 3 parts,

• To live (Jee-jeevavu)
• To grow (Va-vadhavu)
• To bow down in humility (Na-namavu)

As humans we have an upper hand over the other living beings. To live our lives we are blessed with three exceptional gifts. The first gift being 'the power of speech' that helps express our feelings in words. The second gift being 'intelligence' or 'the power of understanding and grasping' that helps understand the cause of our existence. The last being 'the free will' that helps us choose the path or the journey of our life. These gifts define the way we live our life.

A great scholar once said – “In this age of noise and speed, we walk without reaching, we talk without saying, we hear without listening, we see without perceiving, we act without thinking, we are all very busy without work.”

He implies that even after being blessed with such exceptional powers we spend the journey of our life in mundane activities and daily hectic routine. We do not pause and spare even a minute to think that are we actually living our life optimally or are we just slowly moving towards our death without actually living each moment gifted to us?

The best way to live, we must “watch”-

• W – Watch our “wishes” (desires)
• A – Watch our “actions” (karma)
• T – Watch our “thoughts” (vichar)
• C – Watch our “character” (charitra)
• H – Watch our “health” (well-being)

We must be alert and vigilant about the way we have been living our life and the way we should be living our life. We being the blessed ones have the power to do so and we must not let it go waste.

Growth is inevitable. Our body and age grows, but intellectually we do not grow. The journey of our life is incomplete without knowledge. We are blessed with the power of understanding and grasping and we must make use of this by finding the answers for the cause of our existence, from where do we come and the reason behind the happening of the things? These answers are in Vedanta and can be understood by all the human beings if they ask. The growth of our soul is in our hands.

The growing involves following the 5 steps:

• Health - Taking care of your body and being healthy. Only a healthy body enables one to do any sadhana (practise). Your basic needs (roti, kapda and makaan) need to be fulfilled. You may be the most educated human being but at the time of sickness you cannot treat yourself with grammar.
• Values - You must learn the values and principles of living and follow those principles throughout your lifetime. Even in your weakest hour you must not let go of your principles. Your principles and knowledge will become your self-esteem and you must protect it. But, while protecting it, you must make sure it doesn’t change into your ego. Your self-esteem and dignity will help you grow but your ego will bring you down.  
• Emotions - We must respect our emotions. Being emotionless only makes us a stone that cannot grow. Gaining knowledge shouldn’t reduce the emotions in us. We may be aware of the universal truth, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are still living the birth gifted to you. Having emotions makes us humble and improves our way of living.
• Self Control - We must gain the knowledge of controlling emotions too. Overwhelmed with emotions also stops our growth. Self-control and the sense of duty should not be affected by the emotional outburst.
• Experience - The knowledge we gained when practiced becomes our experience. And every experience teaches us a lesson. These lessons also become a part of our journey as they help us grow.

A young man urinated in the ocean and stood by the shore feeling proud about himself that his contribution to the ocean lead to the rise in the level of water. How arrogant was he to think that just by urinating in the ocean will raise the level of the ocean.

In this universe of 9 planets, 7 continents, many countries, more than million states and cities, we have a small house and family. And being the head of that family, we claim to be the one who is responsible for the survival of the whole family. In our absence we believe that they would perish. How ungrateful are we when we do not realize the power of the universe and the creator, and consider ourselves the powerful one or the one who runs the lives of others.

Each life is independent. Only a fool believes that he is the reason why the world exists. Once you gain the knowledge of how to live and have grown intellectually, you must learn to stay humble. This is the most challenging bit which causes our downfall. Humility is the key to the final step of living life. Arrogance and Ego will just bring you down. This doesn't mean you must bow down to everything and everyone. Neither does it mean that a weakling who bows down in slavery is humble. The one in the position of power, when bows down in humility is the one who is humble and has successfully lived his life.