My Journey to becoming better human being

Journey to becoming a better human being - 3 Looking at the parts. Should I look at the whole also? We were on a retreat. Away from the hustle and bustle of the daily routine. No phones, no newspapers. Repeating a mantra - when I am in the retreat, I am in the retreat – several times. We did a mental exercise to relax the body and the mind. Reducing the distractions, we could now focus on the topic. Initially I thought the topic was simple. Sharing our experiences of asking what for and exploring the essence of – the meaning of whatever we were doing. There was a suggestion. What we are doing with parts, can we do with the whole also? I was puzzled. Then came the clarification. While it is good to explore the meaning of the different tasks we are doing, can we ask the same question about our life itself? ‘Why not?’ was my immediate response. But slowly the significance of the sentence sank in . I had never thought from this angle. The word ‘life’ itself appeared t

Journey to becoming better human being - 2 What for am I doing, what I am doing? As I began the journey, one of the things that I realised was the meaning of the word ‘meaning’. In the journey, I had a casual discussion with a friend on the topic of love marriage v/s arranged marriage. A point emerged that it is not love marriage or arranged marriage, it is what you do after the marriage that is important. The point was baffling. Is it that, often we get lost in the secondary aspects and miss out the ‘essence’? If so, is it a point of only a debate or it has to do with everything we do in life? That led me to explore the ‘essence’ of what I was doing. I started doing that with asking a question – ‘what for?’ In those days, I was a student and had a pattern for studies. In last one month, I will withdraw from everything, buy books and study for the exams. I was never a topper but would get above average marks. Applying my new learning to this aspect, I asked myself ‘what f