“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” – Plutarch
The swollen leg looked scary. “You are walking too much on these
slippers; you need to get shoes” said one concerned friend. As my
friend negotiated the pain on his right foot, he
saw his left one swell alarmingly, in just ten hours. A few other
well-intentioned but ill-informed friends wondered if the cause was
too much load on his feet because he stands all the time. Others said
it could be because of his not wearing socks. As opinions swelled more
than his feet, the orthopaedic surgeon was also clueless. Then,
suddenly, as if in an epiphany, the doctor declared, “Since the pain
and swelling hasn’t abated, it’s clear it’s not a problem of the bone
or tissues; this could be reactive arthritis, caused by a
gastro-intestinal tract infection.” The Intravenous antibiotics were
administered and sure enough, in a week, he recovered, after having
suffered for more than three months.
I was amused because the cause was at the stomach but the effect
showed up at his feet. I wondered how deceiving life can be. A child
cries incessantly and parents think he is hungry. But the baby could
be feeling hot and uncomfortable. We fret and fume at tragedies; we
have angry outbursts; we break and make new relationships; we get
cheated; we speak lies, and we suffer endlessly. But what appears as a
problem is not the real problem. It’s simply a manifestation at the
‘feet’ when the cause lies elsewhere. To the problems of our lives,
what’s the ‘gastro’ problem- the root cause of our miseries?
The scriptures reveal ‘avidya’ or ignorance of our constitutional
position as the root cause of our suffering. We are essentially
servants of God, Krishna but somehow we play the role of an enjoyer.
One thing then leads to another, and we land up with many lifetimes of
entanglements, trying to make our world of enjoyment a better place.
The more we try and exploit the resources, the more we suffer. The
root cause is we are in ‘avidya’ or ‘ignorance’ of who we are and how
we could be happy.
It’s as if your laptop has conked out. If you aren’t a computer
expert, and yet you open the machine and try to fix the parts, what
would happen? You’d create a bigger problem than the original one.
Often in life when we fix problems superficially, especially in a
state of ignorance, then our solutions lead to more complications than
the earlier issue.
So it’s time we think out of the box! We need to fix ‘ignorance’ with
‘knowledge.’
To be continued…
