We have come to the close: my final day dances with delights. I am up early, yoga and my morning ablutions. The lady of the house makes me a truly sumptuous English breakfast: bacon, sausages, eggs, tomatoes, beans, toast, and jam — I am forgetting the percolating coffee! (1) I sense a tinge of guilt concerning last night’s water, or lack thereof. This permeates the crisp linen tablecloth and polished silverware. “What century am I in?” I ask myself. In an earlier age, I would have graciously accepted the meal and suffered from gluttony for the rest of the morning. Seniority has its advantages: I opt for a small bowl of yogurt and, as a concession to her kindness, a cup of black coffee. I refuse to feel the requisite guilt at the unconsumed meal. I take my leave and say my goodbyes: the driver is waiting. I suddenly have more luggage than I remember, though this is not possible. The woman sensing something amiss summons a nearby neighbor to act as valet: remember — 1.25 billion people. She pays him a pittance which she states, condescendingly, is already too much. The man trundles my, now overweight, suitcases to the entrance of the building. As if acknowledging he has been overpaid, he carries them to the taxi. He proceeds initially in the wrong direction. Exhausted but morally satiated, he deposits them in front of the vehicle. His fee has been equitably used. We are off. New Delhi is a leafy and beautiful city. I, of course, have come just after a typhoon so I have no exposure to the choking air pollution that I often read about.  

 

As we glide through the traffic, to visit our final notable destinations, I can’t “shake off” my sense of adventure. I am a spy in a John le Carre novel. (2) Why have I come to this society? What is my surveillance focused on? I am searching for the self, the being who finds himself alive and then must question why? This is a perennial question and an interesting one. It is a query that is aggressively asked by the Millennials, (3) for example. To quote one opinion: “We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushion, employment stability, and material possessions of our parents. We are often more educated, experienced, informed, and digitally fluent than prior generations, yet are constantly haunted by the trauma of coming of age during the detonation of the societal structure we were born into. But perhaps we are overlooking the silver lining. We will have less money to buy the material possessions that entrap us. We will have more compassion and empathy because our struggles have taught us that even the most privileged can fall from grace. We will have the courage to pursue our dreams because we have absolutely nothing to lose. … Maybe having roommates and buying our clothes at thrift stores isn’t so horrible as long as we are making a point to pursue genuine happiness.” I suspect that the path to that joy lies in this subcontinent:  conceivably in the Velliangiri Hills, (4) the Kailash of the south or Varanasi. Perhaps, just perhaps, I have discovered the true India and opened its magical portal. Bharatavarsha (5) does not reside in a physical location, it lingers in the hearts of all men who desire to be spiritually free and understand their place in the cosmos. As Swami Vivekananda tells us: “May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians give strength to you to carry out your noble idea.”That idea, I am convinced more than ever, is to search for “your” meaning to life. This is not an easy exploration. If it were we would not elect, nor accept, the political leaders that we do. No — the voyage to the true “you” is long and arduous, and perhaps takes a lifetime. In spite of this, it is a mission worth undertaking. You do this for yourself and for everyone that you love: you experience, analyze and gain wisdom, (we hope) only to give back to future generations. As with so many great pilgrimages, however, it is the voyage that has the value, not the arrival. Socrates (469-399 BC) leaves us with a thought as quoted in the Apology (6): I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.

 

A closing thought: The only path to knowledge resides in the realization that “you only know what you know,” to paraphrase Sadhguru. This then opens the gate to a lifetime filled with great inquisitiveness.  

 

A small joke: While volunteering at a soup kitchen, a young woman “hit it off” with a very attractive single man. It was a relief since her mother always laughed and said that the men “she was drawn to” were inevitably married. So, optimistic about her chances for a relationship, she asked her new friend what he did for a living. “I’m a priest,” he replied.

This week, please meditate on your meaning to life.

Every day look for something magical and beautiful.

Quote: All answers lie within, all secrets can be uncovered, all meaning is self-evident.

 

Footnotes:

1)   English breakfast

2)   John le Carré 

3)   Millennials

4)  Velliangiri – A Mountain of a Temple

5)  Names of India

6)   The Apology