“I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.”
– William Penn
Kabir – The couplet
काजल कारी कोठरी, तैसा यह संसार ।
बलिहारी वोह दास की, पैठि के निक्सन हार ||
Transliterated:
Kajal Kaari Kothari, Taisa Yeh Sansaar |
Balihari Wo Das Ki, Paithi Ke Niksan Haar ||
Translation:
A cellar as dark and dirty as coal, that is how this world is |
Great is that devotee, who passes through this cellar unsoiled ||
My understanding:
Another interesting thought – what is our relation to life on earth?
The guidance the masters have continuously sought to give us is that while it looks like this is all we have at the moment, this life is but one more path we have to traverse in our journey to rejoining the ultimate.
If we take care and focus on the objective, it is possible not to get distracted, attracted to trivia or mislead the self onto incorrect paths. But each of these is a decision we have to consciously make. Each decision has a consequence. Each choice we make means we are consciously giving up something and selecting the other. Do we choose to satisfy desire in the hope of instant gratification, or suppress and conquer desire, and perhaps never know what that satisfaction of feeding desire may have felt like?
This is the stranglehold desire and ego have on us – even if we do not satisfy them or satiate them, they show us visions of a promised land and dangle it in front of us – the carrot at the end of a stick that never comes closer or moves any further away.
How do we overcome the attraction to the carrot we never will reach? By giving up any attachment to the attraction itself. Easier said than done, especially since that is the one constant feed into the physical senses. So we have to master the art of shutting down the physical senses long enough to awaken the inner senses, and focus well enough to be able to understand and follow their direction.
One more step in a long journey, one that we have to take at some time. No matter how long or when.