Where do we stand today? With the limited one dimensional approach taken by us, we have arrived at the following situation: At the level of individual: We see today that human beings on the one hand suffer from unhappiness, dissatisfaction, a sense of purposelessness or futility, tension, frustration, depression even suicide and on the other hand show the signs of domination, violence, crime, terrorism etc. The body health is steadily declining in spite of improved levels of material and medical facilities. A majority of people find themselves engulfed in problems of one type or the other, and some people have even come to believe that no solution is ever possible. At the level of family: One finds that in family, among the members, there is complaints, fights, inter-personal tensions, injustice and hatred. Numerous attempts are made to solve these, but invariably it leads to disintegration. Reason for all these is ultimately assigned to lack of sufficient material facilities (a feeling of being deprived), without ever deciding how much is going to be sufficient in terms of physical facilities. At the level of society: Problems are visible in the form of poverty and unemployment on the one hand and division, discrimination, exploitation, opposition, struggle, war on the other hand. There are talks of cooperation with each other, but they end up in one form of exploitation or other. At the level of nature: Problems manifest in the form of ecological disturbances (seasonal imbalance, pollution) and lack of natural resources. Air, water, soil and food are getting increasingly poisonous. Fertility of the soil is reducing. The problem of water shortage is deepening. The nutritional value of food is decreasing. Ecological imbalances have resulted into global warming (heating up of the earth), heralding larger problems and disasters soon. On the one hand, many breakthroughs and wonders are being made by modernity, science and technology; while on the other, man still remains an unknown and unrelated to himself and other human being. Today, human being has become the biggest source of problem for human being. The possibility of war between two nations, terrorism, fear of fights and violence within nation states and corruption tiring out the daily lives of human beings has increased. Ecological imbalance, chemical fertilizers and pesticides and sedentary lifestyles are making the body weak and prone to diseases. The ultimate result of all this is that suffocation in individuals, disintegration in society and damage to the environment are on the rise. Man is thus getting isolated and lonely. Getting isolated is more fearsome than any other scarcity. If one looks at these conditions a little deeply, it seems that man has not even been able to rightly recognize his needs so far. Today’s prevailing materialism has made us to believe that unlimited acquisition of physical/material facilities is the ultimate aim of human being. Entire culture, science, technology, education and nation states are being applied to ensure this. As a result, every human being is being engaged in this. Material acquisition has become the aim for a man’s thought, behavior, work and realization, without even bothering to find out how much material facility is required for an individual, family and society. While man’s need to live, to survive has been recognized as a primary need, the need to live in perennial happiness, in a state of no-conflict, to live with knowledge, has not yet been recognized as a basic human need. The reality is that to live with knowledge is an innate and basic need of human. It is only on the basis of knowledge that man is able to live in harmony within himself and in harmony with the larger organization (other humans and rest of nature). Otherwise, he lives in a way purely based on what he has ended up assuming (which may or may not be so in reality, i.e. may right or wrong). In the absence of knowledge, absence of a resolution (samadhan), man is unable even to correctly recognize as to how much material/physical facilities is required. As a result, he is unable to feel prosperous in spite of having excessive amount of physical facilities/wealth. He keeps getting stuck into a vicious circle of trying to accumulate unlimited facilities/wealth.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 17:37:52 +0000
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