P: Life’s easy these days. Just thinking there must be a reason I’m here and trying to find that reason!
V: We all are trying to find that reason. We should talk one of these days. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you and discuss such topics.
P: You have a strong reason – your child and your parents depend on you.
V: There has to be a bigger reason. Parents, kids and for that matter earning for food and clothing or even luxury is collateral. Have seen kids without parents doing well in life, and parents doing fine without kids. There has to be a bigger reason.
P: If you have brought a life to earth you can’t give up your responsibility. It’s your duty to take care of your child. And if your parents need you, again it’s your duty to be there for them. I don’t have any such duties. I’ve a single parent who doesn’t depend on me; I’ve 2 siblings who take very good care of her and I’m redundant :-). But still I bought this house and I’m staying here with her whenever she wants to stay with me because it was her desire.
V: I am not shirking off these duties. Ye sab moh maya hai. We get trapped into them. I can’t be Siddhartha to leave them to become Buddha.
P: 👍
V: Anyway, we will continue this discussion. Putting the kid to sleep right now.
P: There were times when I wanted to leave my family and leave her (mother) but I still never gave up. Eventually lives changed and cities changed, so siblings left but she is still with me when she wants.
A night of silence and here is V’s response:
V: So, here I go… May be a little early in the day for you. But it set my train of thought, and was thinking about it till late night and early morning.
Let me confess first that I’ve been consuming a lot of what I’d call “pulp” … I repeat “pulp” online, on Youtube — on souls, past life regression, and karma lately. I don’t take any of it as gospel truth, but some ideas have stayed with me. Even the Aghora series entirely is about that — what we call life is about clearing karmic debts. Parents, children, friends, we’re all entangled in those transactions.
The newer idea that has struck me is of soul groups. That we come in clusters, pre-deciding the roles we’ll play for each other: who’ll teach us patience, who’ll test our love, who’ll awaken or break us. Maybe that’s why certain bonds feel inexplicably deep or painfully instructive, or for that matter painfully destructive (the situation I am in currently). But all this remains transactional; it clears accounts, it doesn’t elevate the soul. But the problem is that it still is cyclic and we just keep settling old scores. The larger purpose, I feel, is to rise beyond that to find what actually would elevate the soul.
Parenting, for instance. Yes, it’s sacred, but it’s also part of that karmic ledger. We bring a child not just to feed and protect, but to enable a soul’s journey. Maybe the child teaches us something in return. The same with parents. We care for them not out of obligation alone, but because our souls owe or learn something through them. May be we are just reversing the roles in this birth to clear off that ledger. That’s what I understand is cyclic. But isn’t this a trap? We keep coming back, life after life, playing different roles in the same theatre. Husband today, son tomorrow, maybe father next time, each time trying to pay our dues.
The bigger purpose I feel, though, has to be beyond duty. To ask: once the debts are cleared, what then? What uplifts the soul beyond its roles? That’s what I’m trying to understand.
Let’s go back to my analogy of Siddhartha earlier. To become Buddha, he had to overcome pitra moha, the deep emotional entrapment of family, before enlightenment. Did he reject his family out of disregard, or did he realize that attachment was the last veil between him and truth? I don’t know.
Even if I look at Krishna, his path, I feel, wasn’t his own choosing. Sending him to Yashodha wasn’t his choice. Probably, destiny chose his path to clear his debts, not just with Yashodha, but with the gopas and the gopis. But leaving Yashodha behind was his choice. For a higher cause? To restore dharma?
Let’s go back a little more. Rama… he had to go to the vanavasa, a journey that wasn’t merely physical but deeply transformative. He could have said no, and perhaps Dasharatha might not have died in grief? Was that a karmic debt? But would that refusal have altered the entire rhythm of dharma? I am not sure. I feel that the exile became his crucible, the ground that prepared him for the ultimate war, not just against Ravana, but against the chaos within. Probably.
And then deserted Sita. I’m not getting into the moralities of those times (Treta Yuga) vs the moralities of today (Kali Yuga). They evolve, like languages and civilizations themselves. What’s virtue in one yuga becomes debate in another. But if I try to look beneath the surface, every decision he took, be it allowing himself to go into exile, the battles with the asuras and rakshasas in the forest, or separation (may be that was a karmic debt), probably was in alignment with something larger than personal love or pain.
As an avatar, as a human, Vishnu’s manifestations (even as Varaha – the dirty boar and the Narasimha – the fierce one) make me feel that the divine often moves through the human to serve a purpose far beyond the immediate family circle. The roles he played, animal, half animal-half human, son, husband, king, are sacred, yes, but still roles. The higher reason, the bigger calling, probably was always to restore balance, to lift human consciousness a little higher each time.
I suppose, when I say that even I am trying to find the purpose – that’s what I mean. I am searching for the purpose beyond my participation in this web of karma without getting consumed by it. But I am getting consumed nevertheless. 🙂
Will continue as V receives a response.
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