Take the Command of Your Life in Your Own Hand

Once upon the time there was an old farmer in a village living with his small family. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe yes; Maybe No,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe yes; Maybe No,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the wild horses and he was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“Maybe yes; Maybe No,” answered the farmer without showing any emotion.

A few days later, military officials came to the village to induct young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe yes; Maybe No,” again said the farmer.

 

This famous Zen story reveals the unpredictability of life in the world. Every day we hear horror stories of crime, murders, and accidents and often conclude that there is no guarantee of life and that most of things are not in our control.

Since the life is uncertain, many people like to enjoy the present and often give in to instant gratifications following the philosophy of ‘Eat, Drink and Merry’. They follow the lifestyle that provides them instant pleasure even if it is harmful to their body and mind. They believe that it is foolish to bother about future which is so uncertain.

Contrary to the popular believe, our life is far more certain now than ever before. Even though the media is filled with negative stories like crime and death, the real world is far safer and civilized.

One of the best methods to prove that the chance of causality is extremely low now is to find out the insurance premium. For example, the term premium for Rs One Crore (10 Million ) is around  Rs 6000 per annum only.  This means that the possibility of being killed in next one year for any person is less than 1 in 1667 or 0.006%.  In reality, the actual figure must be much lower as the insurance companies must be making some profit also. Thus, in reality, even in the span of 10 years, the causality rate can’t be more than 1 in 250. The rest 249 survives to suffer the consequences of the actions of immoral and illegal life taken today.

It may be better to live a healthy life and follow moral and legal principles as if you are going to live forever. The role of chance is quite negligible in the real-life once you analyze it statistically and study it rationally. Einstein has rightly said. “God does not play dice with the world.”

Let us shape our future by taking the command of life in our own hand rather than remaining always confused with “May be yes, May be no.”

Everything Happens Here ‘With the Grace of God’

There are two ways to deal with the life. One way is to believe that everything is planned by God and we are mere pawns in His hand. The other approach of life is that there is no God and we have to take responsibility of our life. Some people believe in both and so they are confused lifelong. They are always wondering if they are responsible for their life or God!  Our Scriptures reinforce the belief that everything is destined. 

Yudhishtra blames himself for the loss of lives in the Kurukshetra war and goes to Bhishma for advice. Bhishma tells Yudhishtra a story to illustrate our lack of control over some things that happen in life.

‘The six-year-old son of a lady called Gautami is bitten by a snake and dies. A hunter captures the snake and tells Gautami that it deserves to be killed. The snake argues that it is not to be blamed. Gautami says that killing the snake will not bring back her son to life, and that she will not be vengeful. Moreover, punishment can be handed down only by a ruler’.

The god of death, Yama, comes there, and he says that he too is helpless in the matter of taking a life. That is decided by the Supreme One- Lord Vishnu.

Bhishma thus shows Yudishtra using this story that those who died in the Kurukshetra war were destined to die and he should not blame himself for their deaths.

  

We Indians often leave everything to God and destiny.  The recent instance of the death of 14 women after sterilization surgeries in Chhattisgarh is one such recent example. It now appears that medicines past their expiry date were given to the patients and the surgeries were conducted in an extremely unhygienic place. 

Dr RK Gupta, who conducted 83 laparoscopic surgeries in just five hours, was arrested and he shifted the blame to the poor quality of medicines. He had been doing the similar things from a long time and the Raman Singh government had awarded him on January 26 this year for conducting a record number of female sterilizations.  He must have been doing the operations in the same way for long, but none was killed earlier with the grace of God. This time, however, God did not save the poor women, perhaps because they were predestined to die. In all likelihood, nothing much would happen to the doctor and his team and we would again wake up when next such incident occurs in future.

So much so that even the security of Prime Minister of India is left to God. During the recent visit of PM Narendra Modi to Varanasi, it was found that many CCTV were not working. I am sure that those CCTV would not be working even now after the security lapse was discovered and an IB investigation was ordered.   Just a few days ago, a major security breach took place, when an unauthorized person was found sitting on the dais right next to PM and many other Chief Ministers during the swearing-in-ceremony of the Chief Minsiter.  Anything could have been happened that day but ‘with the grace of God’, nothing happened.

Even if something would have happened, we could have blamed destiny for the accident.  We could have also argued against giving harsh punishment to the erring officers as punishing him would not bring back the dead person.

What was argued by Gautami many thousand years ago in the Mahabharatha, continues to guide us even today in the twenty-first century.

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