Remaining truthful in heart, thought, aim and action is essential. When I thought about this, I wrote this song.
உள்ளம், எண்ணம், நோக்கம், செயல் ஆகிய அனைத்திலும் உண்மையாய் இருக்கவேண்டும் என்று எண்ணியபோது எழுதிய பாடல்:
உண்மை வேண்டும்
பல்லவி
உள்ளத்தில் உண்மையே வேண்டும்
உத்தமனே உன்னைப் பற்றி நடந்திட–உள்ளத்தில்….
சரணம்
எத்தனை பலவீனம் என்வாழ்வில் வந்தாலும்
எவ்வளவுமுறையே தடுமாறி வீழ்ந்தாலும்–உள்ளத்தில்….
கவி
உள்ளத்தை அறிந்தவன் நீ
உன்னிடம் மறைத்து
ஒருசெயல் செய்வதாய்
என்னை நானே
ஏமாற்றிக் கொள்ளாமல்–உள்ளத்தில்….
எண்ணத்தை அறிந்தவன் நீ
மனம்போன போக்கிலே
மருவியே வாழாமல்
மாய்மாலம் ஏதுவுமே
வாழ்விலே செய்யாமல்–உள்ளத்தில்….
நோக்கத்தை அறிந்தவன் நீ
பிறர்நலம் கருதியே
உழைப்பதாய்க் கூறியே
சுயநலம் கருதியே
காரியம் செய்யாமல்–உள்ளத்தில்….
25-08-1993.. கோண்டா. (உ.பி)
English Translation
Pallavi
I should be remain truthful in my heart
O pure one to follow you…
Saranam
How many weakness might come in my life
How many times I might stumble…
Poem
You know my heart
And I should not cheat myself
Thinking that I can do one anything
By hiding from you
You know my thought
And I should not do as my heart likes
By corrupting my life
And not doing deceitful
Things in life
You know my aim
And I should not do anything
Keeping my selfishness
At the same time telling
That I am toiling keeping others interest
25-08-1993.. Gonda U. P.
Comments
One time when I was travelling from Ahmedabad (via Jaipur) to Delhi, one young man travelled with me. He was a follower of a group from West whose motto was ‘be selfish’. And the main thrust of this ideal is that all are selfish and just pretend to be charitable to others. Every charity—beginning from home is done only with some selfishness. So be realistic and do everything keeping your self-interest as the aim. By keeping one’s personal interest as the focus all can live a better and contend life.
As we were travelling in meter cage and he without any reservation, I accommodated with me in my lower berth. But when the middle berth was put for sleep, one cannot sit in any berth. First I allowed him to sit at the edge. Later he stretched his leg and finally almost lay down keeping his head near my feet. As I never like another person to sleep with me in the same room, I cannot sleep with another person that too squeezed in a meter cage train (now such trains have disappeared). So finally I allowed him to occupy my berth completely and managed to sit on the floor and spent the night. So I didn’t sleep that whole night.
The next day our dialogue continued and at one point he said, ‘I won’t even give thanks to you for giving your berth for me to sleep. As you allowed, I used that opportunity to be selfish keeping my personal interest. In response I said with a smile, ‘I never expected any thanks from you. Above all I too have my self-interest, as don’t like to sleep with another person on the same bed, I allowed you to sleep in my berth’. The following is from diary:
Feb. 26. … left Ahmedabad…One Dr. Ajai Kumar Sharma, who travelled with me talked… and he has the same idea as I have. ‘Be selfish’—is his philosophy. And he got this idea from some lady who wrote a lot about it (like The Virtue of Selfishness). When I said that I am doing some service to the society, he said, “If we each one think about himself and develop himself, the society will develop automatically. This was the starting point of our further talk. Then I too agreed that how I also believe in it and how Muktinath also said, ‘love your neighbour and you love yourself’. So without a genuine love towards oneself, one cannot even love others. And my philosophy is this: Man is basically selfish. Even in spiritual life, he renounces everything with an aim to attain something greater. God also asks us not to sacrifice, but to exchange.
His statement was that society imposes so many thing (like religion, tradition etc.) and I have it. And in this point I don’t agree with him because I am what I am because what society made me. And I shared my view, that as everyone needs a society for his identity, the society always (naturally) demands something. But one individual should never allow the society to make him to danced according to its tune…..when I said, ‘Absolute could never be comprehend’ he as usual argued, ‘no. It could be measured because we have a value system by which we explain or understand everything’. Most of his statements and explanations were based on the book which he read written by that lady….. My last word to him when he got down at Jodhpur in the morning was, ‘be selfish in nurturing the friendship’.
The Indian ideal is:
…The wise say that, for that, for the sake of the family, one can be abandoned, the family may be abandoned for that sake of the sake of the village, the village for the sake of the community; and everything even the world, may be abandoned for the sake of saving the soul…Vidura to Dhritarashtra on the birth of Duryodhana.— Kamala Subramanian, Mahabharata,Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1985.p.29.
Whereas Muktivedic principle is:
Love your neighbour as you love yourself.
But both have their own contexts about which we don’t have time and space to discuss here. However in the Muktiveda all the ethics and (both personal and social) dharma are centred on God, our motive is to do everything to glorify the Lord through our lives. Though motive is also important in Hinduism too, yet the ideal is to do your part with detachment (nishkamyakarma of Gita 2:47). As dharma and not God is the centre of Hindu ideal, ‘greater goodness to maximum people’ helps one to keep dharma as relative one:
… loka viruddha was adharma: whatever was conducive to their welfare, was dharma, even if it meant going against conventional morality, morality being in any case relative to time, place and circumstance.—Chaturvedi Badrinath. Dharma, India and the World Order, Saint Andrew Press, Pahl-Rugenstein, 1993. p. 35
This could motivate the view of ‘end justifies means’. Whereas Muktivedic ideal is that ‘means is equally important as the end’, though we often fail in that ideal.
29-6-14