Who am I ?

[M Suresh]

Gummuluru Murthy <gmurthy at MORGAN.UCS.MUN.CA> :

> 1. I find it distressing that there are very few humans that are not
> controlled by the Arishadvargams (kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada, matsarya).
> We (the humans) kill unnecessarily, not only other humans but other life
> forms, occupy the whole Earth and yet call ourselves superior intellectually
> to all other life forms.  It was told repeatedly  that human life form is
> durlabham and rare.  When I asked various swamijis why it is so, I was told
> that humans have that rare sense of discrimination, while other life forms do
> not have it.  I wonder.  It is only we, the humans that say that other life
> forms do not have the discriminating power.  If the humans have that
> discriminating sense, I have not seen many humans that use it for
> Self-realization.  It seems to me that only very rare humans use this
> discriminating sense to realize "tat thvam asi" or "aham brahmasmi".  More
> than 99% of the humans have never used this sense and they simply follow the
> samsara and as mentioned in Bhaja-Govindam "punarapi maranam, punarapi
> jananam ..... " and while away their life.

  It is not only humans who have bad qualities. Animals too have bad qualities
  but they are more or less determinate. This is evident if we watch wild life
  channels on TV where the law of the jungle is shown.

  The discriminatory power of humans acts as a double edged sword, leading to
  either vices or virtues as you have noted above. Both virues and vices exceed
  those of animals.

> 2.  I am also concerned with the concept of long life.  Any life-form will be
> in that form only until the punyas and papas of the previous lives have been
> completely met, and not for a second more. The learned sages know that.  Then
> why do the sages and learned men bless "ayushman bhava (may you live long)" ?
> Further, this blessing is not consistent with the concept that prarabdha
> karma of previous life determines the length of life now.  Thus, if that were
> the case, the blessing "may you live long" does not mean anything.  Or is this
> blessing only  in the itihasas and puranas only and not in the upanishads? My
> concept is " If one's sins are cleared, then one gives up that life form.  It
> means that short life is a desirable one.   We read in the puranas that people
> that were blessed do have short lives, whereas people that were cursed do have
> long lives to complete their sins".

  I am not sure if short life means lesser accumulated bad karma. Short life
 itself
  could be a result of bad karma. Because the process of birth and death is
 itself a
  painful one, is'nt is better to live long ( with good health of course )?

Namaskar,
Suresh.