The Divine Spark

The Greek philosophers had understood the essential nature of human beings in its most profound manner, when they said that every human person has a divine spark in him/her, and we cannot exclude anyone from this category. All of us are born with the divine face, but this face is marred in the world, as we come in touch with the notion of good and evil. Unfortunately it is only the human beings who have this sense of distinction between good and evil; look at the plants and animals, for them everyone is the same; there is no difference between friend and foe, they go beyond this marked distinction, and that is what makes them so happy and contended with life on earth. They have nothing to grumble about, nothing to complain about. All is well with them.

One of the most important role and function of religion is to help humanity recognize the divine spark in them, and attain it through a disciplined way. In very simplistic terms, all religions show us the way to recognize that we have the divine spark in us, and it is possible to regain it. And the Bhagavad Gita, one chapter of the epic poem the Mahabharata, shows us one simple way, which is possible for every person. In chapter 9 of the Gita, Lord Krishna teaches his disciple Arjuna the path to eternal friendship with the Lord. Answering the question who is dear to the Lord, Lord Krishna shows his disciple the path of equanimity, or to use an Ignatian term ‘indifference’.

We are so used to black and white distinction, that we cannot think of grey, the in-between, and strangely the Lord teaches Arjuna he has to be untouched by happiness and sadness, not desiring holy and unholy; the one who is the same to friends and foes, to cold and heat, such is dear to the Lord. Ultimately what matters is that the devotee is able to offer himself/herself to the Lord of the Universe, in whose hands is our destiny. But it is not easy to reach this stage, and it is next to impossible to find persons who have reached this stage. We could call the people who are close to this stage as saints and sages, and it may be possible to find one or two persons during one’s generation.

The spiritual sages of our nation have shown that the path to freedom and sanctity is not easy to reach; one has to renounce everything, including the desire to attain complete freedom and remain in perpetual ananda. When we seek this freedom, we realize that everything on earth is equally good and valid pathway to reach the divine in us. We realize that the divine spark is in all beings, both animate and inanimate, and the moment when we realize the divine even in our foes, those who do evil to us, and relate to them as if we are relating to the divine personality, then we can be sure that we are closer to reaching our destination.

It is true that true saints and sages would talk to the plants and animals, stones and rocks as if they had life, just as human beings. What is more surprising is that often they believed they received a positive response from these so-called inanimate and animate beings too, which is quite unintelligible to us mortals. It is possible that we do not take pains to learn the language of the birds and plants, stones and rocks; it might take just a life-long sadhana to really understand their language, and that is the language of divinity. For when we have mastered this language, everything around us becomes divine, and the whole world is charged with divinity. We become part of God-head, and we are gods!

Passion with Com-passion

In the entertainment world, which is dominated by commercial films and videos, a film of this sort is rare and rather unheard of! I am not talking about the films of the sort which Indian film doyen Satyajit Ray made, which ran empty halls in the city, while acclaimed all over the world. I am talking about Bommalattam (Doll's play), a full-length feature film in Tamil made by the famous film director Bharati Raja! It is not that I am fond of the films of Bharati Raja, who always had a social issue to present in his films, but as I sat to relax in front of the television, I found something very different in this film, very different from the usual soap-operas and the tear-jerkers!

The fact that Nana Patekar, whom I consider as a serious actor, happened to act in a Tamil feature film meant that it was not going to be yet another love story! The theme looked so very complicated, but after the denoument, one realizes that the plot has been weaved in such a way that the story was hanging together, and one could vibrate with the hero fighting a fierce battle against a society which only knows how to condemn the vulnerable! The director had handled the characters in the film not only with the usual passion, but more with com-passion, and that made this film a very different sort for me!

I consider myself a person who has limited, selective memory! In certain cases, my memory is shart, though I cannot claim it is photographic, but fairly good; but when it comes to storylines, novels, and even blogs, I have a bad memory! Sometimes when I go back to some of my old writings, I feel amazed and ask myself if I had done it! I might have read a novel some years ago, but when I read it again, without realizing that I had read it earlier, I can vaguely remember some isolated characters, but not the story. I feel terrible when many of my friends can remember the storyline of a novel or a film they had read/seen many years ago. I even envy them.

In all walks of life today, the slogan is 'passion', and if there is one life-force which is keeping the present world alive, it is the passion of a handful of people, igniting the lives of others. Passion in life, passion in workplace, passion in relationships, and passion in being. What perhaps the today's world lacks is com-passion! I am not talking about charity or gift or obligatory social commitment corporate houses are expected to fulfil, in order to get the tax exemption! Compassion goes beyond all scales and measurements, and one gets countless number of opportunities to show one's compassion today: it would be wrong to consider that only the human beings demand our compassion, the plants and beasts, the earth and the universe - all are in need of human compassion.

Compassion also demands that we throw away our law-books in order to uphold humanity, or life in one form or other. If the law of the land becomes the most important criteria for judging people (and I would not belittle the importance of the law of the land in any way), then we would be forced to throttle true justice, which goes beyond laws and regulations. The Doll's Play fortunately upholds such a kind of compassionate justice, which can change the face of the world sooner than we think! Every human person is invited to become agents of compassion, and the day when even a toddler looks at the plants and beasts, other toddlers with compassion, then we can see a thousand suns and moons rising around us!