When I was in my teens, I wanted to change a lot of things. The political system, the education system and even the social system of India. This was furthered by the program – the Big Fight of Rajdeep Sirdesai. Once my father told me – “world will remain the same, it was same at the time of the Buddha (people pelted stones on him, conspired against him), it was same at the time of Kabir. Jesus was crucified, Mira poisoned and so was Osho. The world still, is the same and would remain the same. Why do you want to change the world? Look at yourself and why do not you think of changing yourself.”
My father is right the world is the same and will remain the same. The need of the hour is to change oneself, because everything starts with ‘I’ and surprisingly everything ends with ‘I’ (earlier blog on Forbidden word). Is not it an irony? I did not understand the deeper level of my fathers message for a long long time. Many ‘I” create the world, and each single ‘I’, has its own definition of ‘perfect’. Interestingly, the definition of perfect keeps on changing and therefore, the single definition of a perfect does not remain intact within the mind of ‘I’. This starts one conflict then the other and so on. The conflicts are -at least – as many as the ‘I’ in the world.
The world is imperfect, the world will remain imperfect or perhaps we – as individuals – are not attuned to accept it and live with it. Effectively, perhaps we – as individuals – are not perfect. I think this is why we suffer and perhaps this is where the Buddha started on the four noble truth – there is suffering, there is cause of suffering, there is a solution and lastly ‘the path’. I believe, the suffering is not because of the world, but because we see things as we want to see and when something does not work according to our logic we feel the world is imperfect.
Related blog based on The book of Mirdad – Ego and Forbidden word
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