We live life like a dream in reality. We experience hunger and passion, desire and fulfillment. We go through pains and pleasures. We make friends and enemies. We build families, clans, and societies. We also draw boundaries; call lands of the earth as states and nations. We form alliances. We talk peace, also wage wars. We pit ourselves against each other for survival. We do a million other things until we quit the body. Does life end there?
Today, as humans we take pride in our advancement in science. We also take pride in our achievements in various fields of knowledge and our flourishing industrial civilization. They certainly have changed the way humans live. But can we say life’s objective ends with experiencing luxurious ways, inventing and engaging swifter gadgets alone?
Unfortunately, even remarkable inventions, philosophies, and theories have not answered vital questions on life. Though some of them give us valuable clues and understandings that can help look beyond, unreason in the form of assumptions and wild speculations still plague many of them. They leave behind no definite answers.
Do we know, where we were, before we were born or do we know what happens to us after we quit the body? Do we know who made the choice of our land of birth, parents, and lineage or what decided how we must look like? Or do we know a purpose for human life other than fulfilling our basic needs like food, clothing and shelter, nurturing relationships, and protecting one’s people and resources?
Using science and technology we might have minimized our discomforts in fulfilling these human needs. But in what way is it superior to species life? If human life too, is spent merely on fulfilling bodily needs, then there is nothing great in saying, "as humans, we have the ability to reason and use our free will to act outside the realm of bodily instinct."
Perhaps human life has the key to bust the mystery of life by finding answers to questions, to which we have no credible answer to date. So, living and perishing like animals would serve no distinct purpose in holding the power of reasoning we are endowed with. But then, how can we do, what generations of seeking by humanity has not achieved?
In fact, great human efforts have begun with least resources in hand. "The self-ability in a human to gain wisdom is his greatest resource, which also distinguishes him from other species on earth." Mankind has, over generations of seeking, left us with what it has come to know as ‘breakthrough in wisdom’, time and again. They then might have been the science of the past or a path-breaking realization. Today such wisdom is with us in the form of lifestyle practices, cultures, and traditions. Of them, some are meaningful, some distorted and some others without reason. But we are largely dependent on them. The wisdom of what 'grain and fruit' are edible, to ways to cook and consume them, has only come to us through our predecessors.
We cannot shun all of them as myth. But, we cannot embrace them fully as wisdom either. So we must reason them with a fair mind, free from bias, ‘reject unreason’ and ‘keep reasonable understandings’ as our stepping stones. But we ought to remember that these are just stepping stones. Man-made institutions like 'religion and science' have been selling us 'conclusions'. Some of us believe them, some of us do not. But the truth is, we still live life like a dream in reality, with no credible answers to a lot of unanswered questions.
Today, as humans we take pride in our advancement in science. We also take pride in our achievements in various fields of knowledge and our flourishing industrial civilization. They certainly have changed the way humans live. But can we say life’s objective ends with experiencing luxurious ways, inventing and engaging swifter gadgets alone?
Unfortunately, even remarkable inventions, philosophies, and theories have not answered vital questions on life. Though some of them give us valuable clues and understandings that can help look beyond, unreason in the form of assumptions and wild speculations still plague many of them. They leave behind no definite answers.
Do we know, where we were, before we were born or do we know what happens to us after we quit the body? Do we know who made the choice of our land of birth, parents, and lineage or what decided how we must look like? Or do we know a purpose for human life other than fulfilling our basic needs like food, clothing and shelter, nurturing relationships, and protecting one’s people and resources?
Using science and technology we might have minimized our discomforts in fulfilling these human needs. But in what way is it superior to species life? If human life too, is spent merely on fulfilling bodily needs, then there is nothing great in saying, "as humans, we have the ability to reason and use our free will to act outside the realm of bodily instinct."
Perhaps human life has the key to bust the mystery of life by finding answers to questions, to which we have no credible answer to date. So, living and perishing like animals would serve no distinct purpose in holding the power of reasoning we are endowed with. But then, how can we do, what generations of seeking by humanity has not achieved?
In fact, great human efforts have begun with least resources in hand. "The self-ability in a human to gain wisdom is his greatest resource, which also distinguishes him from other species on earth." Mankind has, over generations of seeking, left us with what it has come to know as ‘breakthrough in wisdom’, time and again. They then might have been the science of the past or a path-breaking realization. Today such wisdom is with us in the form of lifestyle practices, cultures, and traditions. Of them, some are meaningful, some distorted and some others without reason. But we are largely dependent on them. The wisdom of what 'grain and fruit' are edible, to ways to cook and consume them, has only come to us through our predecessors.
We cannot shun all of them as myth. But, we cannot embrace them fully as wisdom either. So we must reason them with a fair mind, free from bias, ‘reject unreason’ and ‘keep reasonable understandings’ as our stepping stones. But we ought to remember that these are just stepping stones. Man-made institutions like 'religion and science' have been selling us 'conclusions'. Some of us believe them, some of us do not. But the truth is, we still live life like a dream in reality, with no credible answers to a lot of unanswered questions.