PURPOSE OF LIFE
Career making et cetra are only short term goals of our life. Then, what is the long term goal i.e. purpose of our lives? It will be agreed by all that short term goals should be in accordance with our long term goals or in other words we can say that short term goals are made or prepared for the purpose of achieving our long term goals. But, when we do not know our long term goal, then how can our short term goals be right. This is the root cause of problems in our society. Only a small segment of our society, which is less than 0.00001% of the total population, knows the long term goal of their lives. Knowledge of long term goal of life by a few persons can hardly contribute anything towards resolving the problems of the society. As such, the way out to resolve the present problems of our society lies in the fact that most of the persons consisting of our society know the long term goals of their lives, so that their short term goals are in consonance with their long term goals.
– The greatest mean to know the purpose i. e. long term goals of our lives is our parents and teachers. The task of educating the individuals is handled by the parents in the initial stage, thereafter the task is taken over by the teachers. When the teachers are unable to be physically approachable to solve our problems, we should depend upon ‘self study’ and listening to the views of the great personalities, who themselves have resolved mysteries of life. Utmost care is needed for deciding the purpose of our life. At every step, in this direction we should be guided by RATIONALITY AND LOGIC.
– Our purpose of life is not to be Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian etc. but to become human beings. We, to become human beings must imbibe the principles of Spirituality in us. Like the presence of physical principles (characteristics of sound, electricity, magnetism, water, fire, revolving of earth et cetra) in our physical world, there are certain principles in the spiritual world also. We must know them to become human beings. Broadly, these principles can be categorized in three parts. These parts are: to have knowledge about God (Ishwar), Souls (Jivatmas) and nature (Prakriti), to know about a thing as it is and Methodology to proceed towards God. Rationality and logic lie at the base of knowing the principles of spirituality.
-When human species is better than other species, then purpose of it, too, should be better. Eating, producing offsprings and bringing them up etc. cannot be the purpose of human beings since all these activities are done by other species also. Purpose of human life is getting rid of miseries. It is meaningless to ponder over the miseries of the past. Whatever, miseries are being suffered by us in the present time are the result of our past actions & it is impossible to escape these results but we can concentrate our actions and should do so to escape miseries of our future. Miseries are attached with our birth. All our life (during birth, during life & at the time of death), we are constantly grilled by miseries. To escape miseries is the very purpose of human life. For escaping or removing miseries, we are needed to end this cycle of birth & death and realization of God is the solution to this.
-Following example will make the concept of ‘purpose of life’ more clear. Suppose, you are to go from Delhi to Chandigarh to attend a marriage function, an interview, a business meet etc. on a specific date & time. Though, you are to reach Chandigarh for a specific purpose on a specific date, on the way to Chandigarh, you make certain sub-purposes like meeting an old friend in Panipat and purchasing sweets from a renowned shop in Ambala et cetra. But, on the way, you meet traffic hazards and the like, because of which, if you meet the old friend in Panipat and purchase sweets in Ambala, you cannot reach Chandigarh in time. Now, if you happen to focus on your purpose, you will have to forgo your sub-purposes and otherwise if you concentrate on fulfilling your sub-purposes, your purpose of going to Chandigarh will not be served. Right course is-you skip your sub-purposes with a thought that these will be met some other time and you strive hard to reach Chandigarh in time. Same thing happens with most of the people. First of all, they are not clear as to their ‘purpose of life’ and its importance. Secondly, they get engrossed in fulfilling sub-purposes of their lives and towards this end, they spend whole of their resources. For not getting allured by the sub-purposes, they must be very clear regarding importance of purposes of their lives.
–Thoughts of Acharya Vageesh
-Not even the most foolish person does any work without an objective but most of the intellectuals attend different types of gatherings without understanding the purposefulness of the rituals etc., which are carried in such gatherings. Let’s take an instance. Till now, you may have attended many Hindu marriage ceremonies, but why the questions like why revolving?, why revolving around fire only? etc. haven’t arisen in your minds? There should be one main purpose of one’s life and to attain that many sub-purposes can be made. These are generally called long term goal and short term goals. Short term goals loses their meaningfulness, if they act as distraction from long term goal. For success, four things are said to be very basic to it. These are-time, action, intellect and direction. If we spend sufficient time for fulfilling our objective and put necessary efforts with the fullest use of the intellect needed for that but apply all these things in the wrong direction, then it is certain that we cannot reach our goal. Here, direction refers to our purpose of life. Everyone’s main objective is to get pleasure and bliss. Every action of ours should aim at receiving pleasure and bliss and we should avoid doing acts which do not bring pleasure and bliss. But, here, there is a strange principle at work. Principle is-we get eligible to obtain bliss, only if we think of the pleasures of others ahead of our own pleasures. To clarify this concept, we consider an example. Every time a woman on entering her kitchen for cooking thinks as to what should be cooked. She takes the decision keeping the tastes of other members of the family ahead of her own taste. Accordingly, if we succeed in developing a habit of thinking of pleasures of others before all our actions, then certainly, goal of obtaining bliss comes closer. Also, acting for the pleasures of others lie at the base of good social bondage.
–Thoughts of Acharya Vagish