Human Life:

by Dr N C Ramanujachary

Human life is an admixture of happiness and sorrow. Every living person wants to be happy. Each person defines happiness in his or her own way and by experimentation; exploration finds a way to happiness. Sorrow is attempted to be totally eradicated but it reoccurs through some other door or window of life. Everything in life is in a passing stage. Even when sorrow is set aside and happiness is in full abundance, some sort of fear and doubt still lurks the mind: Will this happiness continue forever? Will somebody or fate/destiny rob away my long searched and sought findings? How to retain them forever and ever more? A sort of pessimism, skepticism enters and life becomes all uneasy. Then the question remains: How should I proceed to make this a permanent feature of my life? Search for happiness, an ultimate state of Bliss has thus become a constant factor of seeking in human life.

Human life and continuity is not in one’s own hand or beck and call. Though one sees life escaping from the body every day, each person thinks that he is permanent and his growth is imminent. This is a fundamental question that occurs to one. What is born must meet death one day, what is composed must get decomposed the other day. All know this, yet lament when the occasion comes to the door. This is explained as one mystery of Life. But what is life? Is it our own? Can it be controlled? A total understanding alone will release us from the countless doubts we entertain about our existence.

Philosophy tries to answer these and many other points. But philosophies are many in the world, one contradicting every other one. A peep into them confuses rather than console. As one studies more and more, confusions get confounded. An average person is left in dark. A learned person is left in deeper darkness. Is there a way out? There must be a way. This is not a mere hope or wishful thinking. Reading with an open mind, without anticipations and seeking quick results, and coming to one’s own understanding of things, adopting a life best suited to one’s own circumstances and situations is the key.

Happiness is an attitude of the mind. Mind places a greater role in our living. This mind again is two-fold, one up and the other down. Integrating them and making the total mind a ‘space for enlightenment’ creates the environment for total understanding. Starting from the known to the unknown might appear to be the right and reasonable way, but it is truly not. Openness alone allows the rays of unknown enter into us.