SPIRITUALITY - Just an attempt to fix Value

I feel that what I want to pour out certainly has value. I say it has value because there is certainly some value in intense suffering, and this value is being crystallized in what I pour out in this blog. I also understand that different people find different things valuable, and so far as value is concerned, it is almost impossible to fix an amount such that all people would find that they concur. As it has happened in the recent past, some may feel that I am a fool, someone else may feel I am a fake, and a rare person may like to see what I want to say. So I say it now!

The path of spirituality is essentially one of fixing value. At least for me, that is what it seems to be. All of us tend to live with a total lack of consciousness, so that we seem to have lost value for the opportunity provided to us as ‘a life’ on this earth. For instance, every morning when my wife boils milk, she makes a conscious dedication and thanks to God before she uses it for our coffee. In trying to attribute ‘value’ to such a ritual, I think of how many calves are being deprived of their food and nourishment – something which is actually theirs- and how we are appropriating to ourselves something that is theirs. If the cow is conscious, how would it feel that its own child is being deprived of its nutrition. Have you ever noticed that some cows refuse to yield milk when the farmer tries to milk it, and the farmer lets the calf suckle first and as soon as he gets to know that the milk is flowing, how he forcibly leads away the calf to milk the cow for us to drink! The path of spirituality draws attention to these small things that we seem to lose sight of.

Again, I have seen some people pouring out water to their lawns for hours or use buckets upon buckets of water to wash their cars or to wash the ground in front of the gate of their house. There may not be much wrong in this action, provided you are conscious that water is a dearly precious commodity to some others in Bangalore, and they have to stand in long queues near a common pump, over and over again to get just enough water for their essential requirements.

I am not trying to moralize. The very fact that fate seems to have provided some with all of these comforts, and denied it to many others, perhaps itself is enough justification that they are indeed entitled to the lavish lifestyle. I am just trying to make the experience of enjoying these commodities more valuable and precious by my past experiences of suffering.

xxx