Mrinalini Sarabhai’s autobiography ‘The Voice of the Heart,’ published by Harper Collins India in the year 2004, is now available for free download

Monday, July 12, 2010

Soul's Pilgrimage

The lifetime of each person, is an experience of the soul's pilgrimage in existence.  A whole human being is one who can balance attachment and detachment in living.  Every experience in existence can create harmony or disharmony.  All values and perception are determined by the values we cherish in life.  When we work to take instead of to “give” we are treating life without reverence.  

If each one of us believes in the sacred responsibility of life’s journey, then create loving thoughts as they draw currents of positive energy, and help to invoke positive energy. The person who cultivates the path of peace and love enhances the atmosphere around which in turn contributes to an atmosphere of vibrant positive energy.  

Wisdom, compassion, nonviolence are all lessons to be learnt by deliberate means.  Each one of us need to replace anger with compassion, hatred with understanding and other negative emotions – with a conscious effort.

Respect for life can begin with respect for nature.  Great saints have found enlightenment relating closely to nature.  Buddha under the Bodhi tree, Srikrishna who dances under the Kadamba. All ashramas were situated in forest groves and were centres of learning.  Nature contributed to its atmosphere.

Bhatruhari sings:

“O Mother Earth
O Father Air
O Friend Fire
And Precious Water
O Brother Sky
I salute you all !
From you I received pure knowledge.”

In our country, we have been taught to live with Prakriti to worship even the delicate Tulasi plant to the strong Peepal and Banyan trees.

Music too has been given reverence as it brings peace and healing.  Dance through its rasa lifts us into an eternal ananda, linking the performer with the Divine.

The light on the stage remains uninvolved.  Yet it illumines.  

When we meditate, we try to acquire inner and outward silence.  In that silence, there is peace and quietitude.  And in peace, there can be no anger, no hatred.  There is a realization, that we are all one.  “Tat Tvam Asi.”

Today, we need a  new consciousness, to teach our children that each one of them is responsible for the universe.  There is too much of negative energy perpetuated by news channels and newspapers where we read only  about violence.  But there are wonderful things also taking place.  New thoughts, a new vision of humanity, a new world order of oneness, new technologies of living and ways of eradicating poverty and violence.

Let us all be participants in realizing the divinity in all beings, the oneness of life.  In our country, we greet each other with ‘namaskar’, the meaning of which is “I salute that eternal being who is in you and me” – let us not forget that in our daily lives.

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