When nothing natural works, we look at the supernatural. Expect miracles to happen. We do hear a lot of stories about miracles which actually work. One such story was,
“I was in deep problems. Bad luck had an intimate relationship with me. But one day, I went to a temple. I sat before the almighty, kept my never-ending problems aside and prayed for a while. When I closed my eyes, I felt his presence, I felt an energy, an energy flowing deep inside me. An enlightenment, a touch. And then I opened my eyes, I felt relaxed. I was confident, with the new energy. I came out of the temple and turned into a winner. That’s the power of God.”
The story was great. But, the process involved in the story has a parallel relation with something scientific, in fact something important. When you close your eyes, focus only on a single thing and control your breath, It’s called Meditation! Meditation activates the circuits inside your brain, gives you clarity in thought and fills you with positive energy. This is what has precisely happened in the story! When we stand before an image inside a temple and pray fervently, we end up transforming ourselves through our own positive vibrations. The stone in the front miraculously turns magical. Actually, the stone is irrelevant, it’s the person who meditates in the direction of truth, gets filled with positive energy. That’s how goes the popular saying,
“The philosopher is more important than the stone!”
There has been lot of debate on who a leader is? How to become a leader and all. Even if a person leads a group or a country, he only becomes a representative. A leader is something more! It’s the crises which brings out leaders. Whenever a problem persists in a situation, a leader rises. A leader rises from a hope, a hope of positive energy to end the evil forces. Mahatma Gandhi, an ordinary lawyer, turns up into a leader from scenario where a section of people(blacks) were ill-treated in South Africa. His legacy continues in India too. Gandhi was just an example. The list is never-ending.
For a change lets look at a couple of verses from Bhagavad Gita
yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata !
abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srjamyaham !!
paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya cha dushkrtaam !
dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge !!
Gita – Chapter IV, Verse – 7,8
The English translation goes this way:
“Whenever there is decline in righteousness, And rise in unrighteousness, I incarnate myself, To protect the virtuous and to destroy the wicked from age to age.”
Dramatically, these verses directly indicate the definition of a leader! Vishnu is the ideological form of a leader. Or conversely we can say a leader is nothing but an ideological form of Vishnu. Solutions to the problems doesn’t come from the supernatural. It’s a waste, to wait for 10th incarnation, Kalki. The number ’10’ has passed a long back. Vishnu has infinite forms.
There is always a message conveyed in the religious scripts. Often people forget the message and worship the idol. Religion is like a river, let’s say Ganges. Water at the source Gangotri is the purest, as we proceed from the mountain to the ocean, more and more rivers mix up with the stream, more impurities, and perhaps the Hooghly word itself signifies dirty water, and the river near Calcutta is the least pure. At the point of origin, religion is the simplest and the purest, when it meant to show a way of life. Much later idol worship took its prominence. Coincidentally, to curb this, Vishnu takes his so-called ‘9’th incarnation as Gautama Buddha and gives his famous ‘8 fold path’. Apart from that we have the Buddha’s warning which fits perfectly in our context. It says:
“Only a fool looks at the finger that is pointing to the moon!”
My upcoming post will be on November 30th which is based on Taj Mahal. So is the header image.. Don’t miss that special one..
Sprout 