Adi Shankaracharya’s Moha Mudgara gives us many reasons to think about the truth, either as a deity without us or the self within us. The many reasons he gives for diverting the mind to this one goal point out that the knowledge we acquire in the world cannot help us in this direction, wealth cannot help; let the mind know that beauty and handsomeness is only modification of flesh.
The Acharya gives all these reasons to show that life is very flimsy and should not be wasted in finite pursuits. Even that short life is full of diseases, petty resolves and pride. The whole world is covered with sorrow.
Our entertainment through relationships lasts only as long as we have the capacity to earn wealth and share. More so, only as long as there is the soft breath flowing through the nostrils, people will enquire about our well-being. If that movement stops, even the spouse will be afraid to be with the partner’s body for a moment. Time flies away in play as a child, in dreaming about the other gender as a youth and in munching over thoughts in geezerhood. None has the time to know the truth of one’s self.
All are now celebrating New Year and Sankranti. What has the master to say of time? He says that day comes and night follows. Morning comes and evening is not far behind. Winter comes and spring awaits to tow. Time just plays its game right in front of our eyes. As we get absorbed in the game of time and constantly watch the ball shift from one court of time to another, our life constantly ebbs away.
What is the purpose of this life? There are some desires with which we came into this world. The lifetime is spent to focus on exhausting those desires and going through the results of many a desire, experiencing them thoroughly to get detached from further forming desires. Even though days and seasons come and go, the wind of desire is never liberated. It remains ever strong demanding for more and more from this world.
The more there is a demand to fulfil from this world, the more the desires get stronger. So long as the desires remain strong, the freedom to not be born again on this earth is not an option. We are born now in the present circumstances with the parents and other members of the family we have, the society, country and the particular condition of the world with all its positive points and ailments.
When life ebbs and desires remain, we come again with a fresh lease of life to fulfil them. In the process of completing the need to fulfil ourselves with those desires, we only give way to more desires with an altogether new set of parents, family, surroundings and country.
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