Co-existence or Struggle for Existence

Often we experience failure and rejection and often, those who succeed are oblivious of the contribution they make  in the success of those who have achieved what they could not.  


All of us completely focused on our own goals and on how to achieve it. Little are we aware of all those who have similar dreams and are striving to live them too. Only if we use this thread to bind us together, then the struggle to achieve our goals and objectives will transform into a concerted effort to co-exist.  This also reduces the animosity and ill will the struggle generates and we harbour resentment which only makes us feel that we have struggled to achieve our goal and have come out triumphant.


It was a track and field event of Annual Sports and all the sprinters had taken their positions on the start line and were waiting for the crack of the pistol to sprint five hundred meters to victory. When. Atul, the front runner was at his final lap of the race, found that Raghu, who began first, but was lagging behind suddenly tumbled and fell with hardly a couple of yards away from the Finish line. He immediately ran back to him nd picked him up on his shoulder and reached the Finish line. When the judges reached the duo and where about to raise Atul's hand to proclaim him to be the victor of the sporting event, he immediately grabbed Raghu's hand and placed it in the judge's hand said, Sir, he is has won the event, not I.


 

Set the Family Right to Set the World Right

On a Sunday morning after church, Sam’s Father sat in his arm chair reading the morning paper patiently answering each and every question Sam asked him time and again.



After some time, Sam’s father tore a portion of the morning paper which had a picture of the globe on it and tore it into pieces. He then handed over the pieces of the picture to Sam and said, “Son, please set the picture of the World and show it to me.” He was glad that he had succeeded in keeping his son busy so that he could read the newspaper without any interruptions.


Within a couple of minutes Sam tugged at his Father’s arm and said, “Papa, I have set the picture, you can see it”.


Sam’s Father then looked away from the paper in towards the floor his son was pointing at and saw the pieces of news paper neatly arranged on the floor, but instead of the picture of the world was the picture of a family and said, “Sam, but I had given you the picture of the world to set?”


To this his son replied, “Papa, if you turn the page you will find your world, I saw it when I was setting the picture and so I set the family to set the world for you.”




This was narrated by Fr. Cyril at an Orientation session.

Adam, Eve and the Forbidden Fruit

When I read the news that Dr. Craig Venter with his team of twenty four researchers  has been able to create artificial genome or self replicating cells after more than fifteen years of research , it reminded me of the religious myth of Adam and Eve, who were warned of the forbidden fruit, also called the fruit of knowledge that would bring misery upon them, but their curiosity took the better of them making them relent to the enticement to taste the fruit. The knowledge they gained from eating the fruit made them learn what unhappiness means. 

Why God prevented Adam and Eve from gaining knowledge and why did they disobey God? These are the questions I am trying to answer:

"Adam and Eve" is the bipolar concept of the world and the harmony between them is the crux of the existence of the world. The ultimate truth therefore in harmonious existence is to be aware of "True Knowledge", in other words, wise use of knowledge. The wisdom of true knowledge is imperative for harmonious existence and unscrupulous use of knowledge disturbs harmony of bipolar existence, thus leading to unhappiness and causing imbalance in existential harmony.  

Therefore, it is pertinent to have the wisdom to use knowledge in maintaining the existential harmony.  

The answer to how we gain wisdom from religious point of view is through the spiritual aspect of the religion and not the material practice of religious dogmas and rituals. Through spirituality we can appreciate and understand all that is around us that we are an integral part of and this helps us to inquire about the unknown as an extension of what we know. This also means learning through association and not dissociation, because when we try to find out about the unknown to "acquire" knowledge then we alienate it from the absolute whole it is part of ignoring the very essence of its existence and try to develop our knowledge of it on our preconceived ideas and notions. This only encourages us to replicate it artificially, rather than understand and appreciate its natural existence as an integral part of very nature, the macrocosm. This process of dissociated learning has added to human plastic or artificial knowledge that only reflects our desire to master nature and the macrocosm and not to to accentuate our awareness of its integrity by associating ourselves with it. 

So, God prevented Adam and Eve from gaining knowledge without the wisdom of appreciating it. Knowledge without wisdom culminates to existential imbalance therefore disturbing the natural harmony. What we mean by disobeying God is acquiring knowledge through dissociation and this is an act of defying nature, the macrocosm and trying to master what we are a part of. 


This is the question that society at large is asking after learning about the human feat of creating artificial genome. Will this not lead to biological warfare? Will this not lead to unethical practices of genetic engineering? How can we prevent the misuse of such material knowledge in the vested interest of powerful few?