Skip to main content

Master



When my problems bogged me down, I approached Guru.

“No one, not even God, can solve your problems unless you want to solve them yourself,” said Guru.

“But…” I was shocked.  I went to him for help because I wanted to solve my problems, didn’t I?  Why is he speaking as if I didn’t want to solve my problems?

Most people are in love with their problems,” Guru said as if he had read my mind.  “The drug addict, for example, loves drugs and don’t want to leave them though he may say he wants to kick the habit.  What withholds him from kicking the addiction is precisely what led him to the addiction.”

“A sense of emptiness?”  I asked because I had faced that sense time and again. 

“Is there anything better than emptiness in life?” asked Guru.  “Weren’t all the Mahatmas searching for emptiness?”

“People can’t bear emptiness,” I blurted out.

“Precisely.  That’s why they fill their life with things.  And when things fail to satisfy the real inner need, they look for alternatives like drugs.  And drugs perplex your neurons.  Upset your consciousness.  You find yourself in somebody else’s shoes.  You enjoy that.  You enjoy walking in somebody else’s shoes without any obligations.”

Being in somebody else’s shoes without any obligations is a wonderful idea, I thought.  It’s a kind of transmigration of the soul. 

“Escapism,” said Guru.  “People want to escape.  Though there really is nothing to escape from.  Ultimately we have to fall back to the same reality which is nothing but the world before you and its demands.”

“Which is very mundane,” I thought aloud.

“The world is mundane.  What else do you expect?  Haven’t you learnt history?  Have you seen paradises or utopias opening up anywhere though your leaders may have promised them in their election manifestoes time and again?  2014 CE is no different from 2014 BCE.  Except for the attachments like electricity and gadgets supported by it.  But the social structure was the same now and 4028 years ago.”

I got stuck with that number 4028.  But I realised soon that if I added 2014 CE and 2014 BCE I would get 4028 as long as I didn’t think like a mathematician for whom pluses and minuses neutralise one another.  I also realised that the Egyptian pyramids were constructed more than 4028 years ago.  The Indus Valley Civilisation originated more than 4028 years ago.  The Greek civilisation can take us far beyond 4028 years.  Civilisations.  Were those people any worse than us?  They too worshipped some gods, drank wine, built monuments or whatever they thought were great, some enslaved some others ...

How are we different from them?  Except that we built better gadgets?  As time goes forward we will build still better gadgets.  Will the world be any better?

“Will man be any better?  That should be the question.”  Guru has a way of interrupting my thoughts.

“Know you are a master, and you are one,” continued Guru.  “Know you know the answers to your problems, and you get the answers.”

Otherwise you search for answers in granite gods or preaching Babas or tranquilising drugs, I thought.


“No one can solve problems of someone who looks for solutions outside,” said Guru. 

Comments

  1. Guru justified being the Guru. He showed the right way...Liked the conversation..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Profound. Very well narrated. A depressive person is also in love with his own depressions as it gives a meaning to his/her life. Something I have always observed in melancholic people.. and it also allows me to observe myself if I start falling into the same trap..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too have noticed it. People seem to fall in love with their problems. Perhaps that's one way of making their life bearable!

      Delete
  3. Yes, all the Mahatmas ultimately sought emptiness.. For what more can be important than attaining peace with yourself? Profound indeed..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Enlightenment is emptying the self of superfluous attachments, isn't it?

      Delete
  4. People can't bear emptiness...
    How true...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ... And how they choose to fill it matters a lot.

      Delete
  5. The conversation is a profound one and how true is is that common people can't bear 'emptiness' in their lives..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Nature abhors vacuum," as the saying goes. In fact, how one fills that emptiness determines one's meaning in life.

      Delete
  6. He he :D.. People in love with their problems! Interesting one :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If people were not in love with their problems, there would be very few problems in the world. King Lears and his daughters continue to live with their illusions and delusions.

      Delete
  7. Wonderful....Search for God within....and you will find him...;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't believe in God; I believe in Truth and that too relative truths. Yes, we should discover those truths, our own truths, and they are within.

      Delete
  8. Does it happen that you know what your problem is, you know the solution too but you are just not ready/capable or fear to execute it. Like agreeing to what the Guru said is different than abiding it...Just a thought.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No doubt, Shewta, sometimes we know the answers/solutions but are incapable of acting... There are times when external help (counselling, for example) is of immense help. My post is a philosophical look at the theme rather than psychological one.

      Thanks for sharing your thought.

      Delete
  9. So skillfully written. :)
    I am so impressed by the way it is written.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Namrata. What happened to you - not writing these days?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Chhattisgarh Story

Deforestation in Chhattisgarh Kerala’s Catholic Church is teeming with rage these days because of the arrest of two nuns in Chhattisgarh on false charges. No one seems to understand the real politics behind the Modi government’s enmity towards Christian missionaries in Chhattisgarh as well as other backward states in its neighbourhood. Modi is selling the tribal areas and forestlands to the corporate sector part by part, his friend Adani being the chief benefactor. The Christian missionaries are a severe hindrance in that commerce. Let us get some facts right, at least. The Adivasi villagers allege that Gram Sabhas (local governing bodies) were forged or manipulated under pressure from Adani and the BJP government officials in order to take away their lands. In Hasdeo Aranya, minutes of the local body meetings were altered to show the villagers’ consent for land transfers. Also, the Chhattisgarh Scheduled Tribes Commission found that Panchayat secretaries were detained and coerc...