Monday 24 May 2010

The uniqueness of human mind and Hinduism!

Today let me write about the uniqueness of human mind. When I thought about it, I found it interesting to connect it with how Hinduism appreciates and celebrate that uniqueness and its delicate nature. Every mind is unique and that in turn result in every human being being different. What human being can perceive in the universe is limited to the physical capacity of his brain and how it control the senses. There is a limit to our audible voice, there is a limit to the spectra of colours which we humans can sense. So there is a limit to what we see, hear and know in this universe. This is different from what animals or other living beings can perceive. So whats real could be much different from what humans see or understand. Yet we boss around telling that we are the masters of the universe.

Our mind tends to believe that hurt, happiness, pleasure etc are bestowed upon us because of other people's actions, which is totally wrong. The story which swami Udit Chaithanya narrated really woke me up. It goes like this. A dog was eating a bone and got hurt in its mouth by its sharp edge. Blood started oozing out and still the dog continued to chew the bone thinking that the blood is really coming out from the bone and enjoyed its own blood. Similar way what we presume as pleasure or pain given by others is just because of our perception and our own body. No body can give anything more than what our mind and body can sense or perceive.

I have heard so many criticisms about Hinduism having so many 'Gods'. But the real Hinduism insists on only 'One God' the almighty which is nothing different from the energy that fills us. The total energy in the universe is a constant and matter and energy are inter convertible and is proved scientifically by Einstein. Matter as we see around us has an origin and end.  So the perishable universe we see around us has a beginning and end.But energy remains the same. This energy Hinduism considers as 'The God'. The ultimate power that has designed the tiny atoms to the cells of our brain which no supercomputer can beat yet.

Sometimes after visiting a shop I come out of it being unable to find things that I like there and tag it as 'not good'. But later I have realised that its just that it doesn't have the collection of my liking which is evolved in me due to the environment in which I am being in and the taste of my parents which later sank in to me and formed as my preference. If a shop owner just collects things of his liking, only those with his taste can buy things from there. So, the vast diversity of likings of human mind is to be taken into account while choosing to serve the public in any kind of business.So as every human mind is different, like every shop owner keeps wide variety of items for different people's liking, Hinduism is offering wide variety of Gods for each person to choose and worship in his nursery stage of understanding the religion. And as he graduates, he has to come out of the form and know and feel the divine energy in its real form. When we worship an idol its not the idol we worship, its the divine master, similar to the fact that we see the person and not the paper or the frame when we see the portrait of a person.


No human mind is same. And we can never know what is really going on in another human mind. Humans does not have the ability to like something which it cannot perceive, either see, hear, touch or smell. So, when the human race was struggling because of desire, lust, want for money, land etc, the spiritual gurus had to device stories to raise it from the puddle and bring it into a higher level. There came the great epics like Mahabharatha and Ramayana. The five pandavas in Mahabharatha are the five senses and the hundred Kauravas are the evils with which our senses has to fight every day. Our mind needs 'bhagavat gita' at times when our mind struggles between its desire to keep or kill the evils. Bhishma is the stubbornness in us which refuses to leave us. Bhishma is dying after being in the bed of arrows for eighteen days. It shows how difficult it is to overcome our stubbornness.

In the nursery stage of knowing my religion I have taken Krishna as my idol as my mother was a devotee of Krishna. As we move on to higher plains of understanding we do not really need an idol to worship. First time when I came across the fact that Krishna is just a brain child of the great guru Veda Vyasa, it hurt me, I cried. But later it increased my desire to learn more about the religion and the real facts about its diversity of Gods.

So, lets celebrate every human mind and its uniqueness, which makes it all the more interesting in this beautiful world which we are given, with the  limitations our senses can perceive, as everything else is not really necessary for us, as our creator knows what is best for His masterpiece!!!


6 comments:

  1. Bhishma lay down on the arrow for 18 days. The meaning of the number 18 is that we have to cross all of pancha boothas(5)+ pancha karmedriya(5)+ panchedriya(5)+ mind+ budhi+ pride.

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  2. Vinita Coutinho24 May 2010 at 21:42

    "Amazing sequence of thoughts Bindu......simply mindblowing.."

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  3. Chinnu Babu Korah26 May 2010 at 16:59

    Really bindhu...you said it right.That is why a temple is called khethra ( which means a body) within which there is a garbhagraha and a chithanya..The symbolic life enery or spirit (holy spirit)..the real essence of every religion points to the same one god theory.. but we just look out to see the different tips of the same ice berg claiming one ... See Morebigger than another..its amazing how our thoughts work .. in same direction...bindu only yesterday did i wrote something similar in the blog...but not as elaborate and clear like yours.. this is very well written and there is a beautiful flow.

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  4. Thanks Chins!! well written comments like this gives me the inspiraton to write more and more... man created religion for his liberation not imprisonment... My prayer is that not a single life be sacrificed in the name of relgion anymore...hope there would be a better world!!!

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