Today is 31st December 2018 and the entire world is busy celebrating the arrival of yet another new year 2019 and exchanging greetings. We all wish others “A Happy and Prosperous New Year”.
The purpose of this blog is make you think in a different perspective.
First let us examine Time. We all know that the time is not absolute and relative in nature. The calendars are man made. From the nature perspective there is only sun rise and sun set that results in day and night. So, we are simply passing through this cycles of day and night ever since we are born.
However we are conditioned/ trained about calendars. We are also trained to think in terms of past, present and future. As of today, we reminisce the past (2018) and hope that the future (2019) holds some promise for us. But our past is already gone and not sure if tomorrow is ours. Hence I say that Today is the most important day where we exist and if we need to do anything it has to be today. And when we are always rooted in Today there won’t be New or Old days. The famous philosopher J Krishnamurthi has said that you shall die to the past every minute, every day. That means you shall empty out all your ego, thoughts, anger, jealousy etc on every day basis. Then you are newly born every day. He also says that you shall not be thinking about future since that involves mere thinking and no action. Any action happens now and immediately.
Now let us come to the word Happy. My first question to you is that “Is it fair to hope for a Happy New Year?”. We all know that happiness is a state of the mind. A poor man may be more happier than a billionaire. Can we really live all through our life with only happiness? The answer is absolutely no since we will be going through ups and downs during our life. And when do we consider a year to be a happy new year to us? Is it when only good things happen to us? Again is it really possible that only good things happen to us? Obviously there are bound to be some bad things also that will make us feel sad. Why do we classify the events/ things that happens to us as Good/ bad in the first place? Why can’t we take them as mere events/ things and learn not to condemn them or justify them and learn to flow with them gracefully as they occur in life. What will happen then? We will be more open ended and willing to undergo all types of experiences with the same state of mind. And that mind will be at peace internally with itself always. Externally it may be happy or sad but that does not matter.
Next, what do we mean by the term Prosperous? Is it wealth/ health/ money or all of them? We want to be happy and prosperous at the same time knowing well that happiness has nothing to do with prosperity. You can still be sad being prosperous also. In my opinion we are merely making a wish to be prosperous and that wish is a desire in nature. Any human being shall ultimately reach a stage of zero desires in his life time (preferably as early as possible in his life time and not definitely during the time of death). What will happen to him then, shall be experienced by self instead of me telling.
So, here is my prescription of how you shall wish a person at any point of time.
May you be a person with zero desires and who is always rooted in Today, willing to wipe off your past and start afresh every day. May you be the person who does not condemn or justify whatever happens to us
Your comments are welcome.
vsrsastry 