Re: purpose of life
From the Bhakti List Archives
• November 7, 1995
K.P Sridharan writes: * But what * intrigues me is that why would an all merciful Lord would create a bunch * of beings only to serve Him? This is a good question, but the premise on which it is based is a mistaken one. First of all, contrary to what Eswar has written, we have not been *created* by the Lord. We are ever existent, just as he is. There was no creation of the individual, nor can there be any destruction. So there is no question of God creating us to simply serve him. It is realizing our inherent nature that dictates what our purpose in life is. What is this nature, and what is this purpose? Certainly at the one level Krish is correct. For most creatures, procreation is the highest purushaartha. Darwin's theory attests to this. However, I suspect that most people on this list believe that there must be a higher good to be attained. Suresvara, one of the chief disciples of Sankaracharya, writes that all creatures naturally seek to avoid pain and increase their own happiness. These are the incontrovertible facts of existence. Unfortunately, most worldly happiness is fleeting, because we try to seek it from subsidiary things instead of going to the source of all happiness itself. The Upanishads teach us that the source and essence of all happiness is Brahman, i.e., God. Nothing in and of itself causes happiness or sadness apart from Brahman; He, on the other hand, is the very embodiment of Bliss. Since by nature we all desire happiness, why look any further than Brahman? This is what our sampradaaya teaches. Serving the Lord fits in as we realize our essential nature as seshas of Brahman, mere instruments in his hands. The service (bhavagat-kainkarya) results from a feeling of overwhelming love and a recognition of God's presence in all things everywhere, including the individual's very self. Our acharyas have said that we regain our lost knowledge and bliss, potentially infinite but forgotten due to ignorance from time immemorial. This issue can be summarized as, ``Do we love and serve the Lord because he asks us to, or because we want something in return?'' NO -- we do it because it is our inherent nature to do so. Recognition of this nature leads to the highest bliss. Mani
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