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Sitaram
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Joined: 14 Sep 2005
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 Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:28 pm Post subject: Why Me? Why Not Me? |
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Date: Sat Sep 27, 2003 9:43 am
Subject: Why me? Why not me?
Why me? Why not me?
Sitaram writes:
We so often hear someone afflicted with misfortune exclaim "Why me?"
Less frequently, and in a less obvious fashion, people with some great
unfulfilled desire will in so many words say "Why not me?" Why don't I win
the Lotto? The key word in these two questions is obviously "ME". Or is it
so obvious? For the majority of people, the significant word is "WHY" and
they take the word "me" for granted as a given. What I am trying to get
at by mentioning the word "me" is an exploration of the illusion of "self"
and the personal which gives rise to the question "why," which
underscores the desperate frustration and disappointment of our unfilled
desires and expectations.
Let us imagine a beautiful summer day. We gaze at the blue sky and
notice a number of white clouds. We see those clouds as "INDIVIDUAL"
clouds; that is, we impose upon them in our imagination separate unique
identities, we count and number them (which implies separation and
individuality) and we may even go further in our imagination and see
them shaped as certain animals or objects, thus endowing them with
characters and attributes and personalities. If we were to ascend in a
plane or balloon then as we approached higher and higher to a particular
cloud it would at some point loose its shape and character and uniqueness
and, as we entered into it, would become for our perception no longer a
white and fluffy shape but a gray damp fog which would surround us and
obscure our vision. Yet, whether we behold from afar or near or within,
we are never conscious of the individual water molecules and dust
particles which actually comprise the cloud nor of the wind which gives it
shape and a life of its own.
Any cloud, whether a cumulus cloud on a summer day, or a nebula of
galactic proportions, has a certain overall temperature which we can
measure. And yet we know that some of the molecules in that cloud (or
even in the air of the room in which we sit) are extremely slow and cold,
of a low energy, while others are extremely hot and excited, of a high
energy. The temperature of the cloud or our room is a composite of all
the molecules. In fact, in a sense, room-temperature itself is an illusion. If
we were to centrifuge the air in our room, and concentrate all the low
energy molecules, they would be cold enough to freeze and form ice,
while a concentration of the high energy molecules would cause steam
and be hot enough to burn us. What if each molecule in the air were a
personality saying "Why me?" Why am I a cold low energy molecule? Why
am I not a high energy molecule? The reality is that each molecule
passes at various times through high-energy states and low-energy
states.
It is the dollar tickets of millions of unlucky losers that make one lucky
winner. We understand objectively that the very nature of a Lotto is that
only one in millions can win it, because of the odds and statistics and
mathematics inherent in the process, yet we cannot understand why WE
PERSONALLY are not that one who is lucky and wins, though we fully
realize that in some LOTTO heaven, where EVERYONE wins and hits the
jackpot, why the process is rendered meaningless and unfeasible. We can
have ONE Bill Gates or Rockefeller per country, per century, but it defies
the laws of economics for everyone to be opulently wealthy. The nature of
economics and world resources cannot support such a heavenly vision of
prosperity. It takes millions of loyal subjects to make one King, one
Queen, one Throne. There are no rivers of honey and milk and wine in the
real world, only in the imagination and in hallucinations. We understand
objectively that life is not possible without the random chances
which cause mutations (both beneficial and detrimental) and malfunction
and misfortune and illness and death, yet we fail to understand when we
ourselves become the victim of that random process of chance. Why was
I born blind? Why did I develop cancer? Why did my kidneys stop
functioning? Why me?
A beautiful statue such as Michaelangelo's Pieta has a character and a
personality and a uniqueness all its own and yet for millennia that statue
remained "hidden" within a huge block of marble, until Michaelangelo's
skillful hands chiseled away all the marble which "IS NOT" the statue.
When we view the statue in a museum, we are like someone on the
ground perceiving the clouds in the "PERSONAL mode". When we think in
terms of the huge block of marble concealing the Pieta (and countless
other statues) in potentiality, then we are perceiving or conceiving of the
Pieta and the marble in the "IMPERSONAL mode".
Each of us is an individual unique character or personality with gifts and
shortcomings and a predictable nature of behaviors. But we are also like
dust particles and molecules comprising a particular society and culture
and nation, whether that is the USA or Iraq or the Australian Bush.
Furthermore, like the cloud, we are comprised of a countless myriad of
cells, molecules, electrons and quarks and muons which behave as if they
are quite unaware of the person which they comprise. In fact molecules
are constantly entering and leaving our body so that every 7 years we are
not the same person "materially," since so many molecules have been
replaced. Often we are unaware of the greater society, nation, culture,
world which is comprised of so many and of which we are but an
infinitesimal part.
Sometimes we focus in so much upon the "why me" of a loved one's
death, or the affliction of a chronic illness which causes blindness or
paralysis that we miss the "bigger picture" of life and existence and the
universe. We become so focused that we are in a different sense
unfocused since we loose sight of so many good things for the sake of a
few bad things.
I know of a case of a woman who in old age was afflicted with a stroke
and left paralyzed. She literally spent the last year of her life, her every
waking moment, constantly screaming "Why, why, die, die!" Life is not
heaven and is not of our own making, but sometimes hells are our own
creation.
When we view God as personal, then it is only natural that we assume
some relationship with God. God becomes our friend and heavenly father
whom we look to for all our needs. Or when we are disappointed then the
personal God becomes for us a cruel and sadistic prankster who
constantly disappoints us and then sits back laughing in amusement. God
can even assume a devil's mask of punisher and tormentor, angered by
our sins, or possibly simply angered because we did not sufficiently
"BELIEVE" in Him or pray in a certain fashion or bow in the correct
direction. Perhaps each of us IS God if only in the sense that we impose
such roles and natures upon God and give God a certain character and
nature andpersonality. We are a reflection of God and God is a reflection
of us. Psalm 19 curiously expresses this phenomenon of Divine
Reciprocity.
In order to explore the thoughts of Psalm 19, I shall now quote an
extensive passage from
Forgiveness and the Amish - Page 314
http://sitaram.0catch.com/page314.htm
==========================
(beginning of excerpt):
Forgiveness" IS the proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel', at
least for the Amish.
It is their hope that by cultivating a forgiving nature in themselves, that
they will one day enjoy God's forgiveness.
I think it is Psalm 18 which has a very interesting verse:
"God repaid me in accordance with my righteousness, according to the
cleanliness of my hands before His eyes. With the devout You acted
devoutly, with the wholehearted man You acted wholeheartedly, with
the pure You acted purely, and with the crooked You acted
perversely."
God is sort of like a mirror, reflecting back to us what we ourselves
are, or have become, through our free will choices.
A mirror reflects. Meditation is often called "reflection". And a "reflex" is
an action which we do not even have to think about because it arises from
our nature.
If we truly see God as merciful and forgiving towards us, it is only
because we see REFLECTED back at us our own merciful and forgiving,
patient, long-suffering nature which we have painstakingly cultivated in
the sufferings of this fire of adversity which we call life.
One of Socrates' favorite sayings in the Dialogues of Plato is:
"Chalapa ta kala" which means "Beautiful/good/noble things are
difficult.
You have touched upon the very essence of what is so difficult about
forgiveness of one's enemies.
The ability to forgive, taken to its extreme, to forgive even the most
vicious enemy and the most heinous monster of a criminal, reaches
almost supernatural proportions. Whatever faults or shortcoming one
might see in Christianity as it is practiced by the hundreds upon hundreds
of sectarian groups, one must always (as Gandhi did) see the divine
aspect of the words of Christ and the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the
Mount. When we have more than ample incomes, it is a small thing to give
a few dollars to a homeless person, or even thousands of dollars to a
charity, which will also provide some sort of tax write-off.
But the widow in the parable (the "widows mite") who had only one small
coin (called a "mite," similar to our 'nickel' or 'dime') to her name, and
contributed it to the Temple, gave all that she had, and the magnitude of
her gesture did not go unrecognized.
Forgiveness if practiced, isn't the light at the end of tunnel, but there
wouldn't be tunnel which blocks the light wisdom itself.
I was questioning the ideology of Amish people to appeal to the court
to forgive someone. Its the girl, who was hurt. Even though the girl
might have come to the court and asked the jury to forgive the guy (I
really don't know what happened), she might have been brainwashed by
many elderly heads to actually do so.
Society and community don't form the superset of the people. Its is the
people who form them. A code of conduct what one may call as religion is
framed. For a lawyer, his justice is religion..and this holds true to every
profession. Isn't it what we call as *profess*ion.
Might be I am talking more in the level of present day rules, and unable to
link with so called eternal luxuries. Sitaram, you had quoted Psalm 18,
"With the devout You acted devoutly, with the wholehearted man You
acted wholeheartedly, with the pure You acted purely, and with the
crooked You acted perversely."
With the crooked, You act perversely. This applies to this day too.
Doesn't it? Where does the pseudo-forgiveness of the Amish (in this
case only) hold a reason?
Subtitle: "I grant them unwavering devotion"
Of course, if "forgiveness" is not "your cup of tea," then perhaps
Christianity is not for you. But that is why (at least in my mind) there is
such a "smorgasbord" of religions set out before us. There are other
religions which do not stress forgiveness or "loving ones enemy" (in the
interest of political correctness, I shall refrain from naming those
religions, but you can figure it out for yourself).
In the Gita, Lord Krsna says that different people worship different things,
some worship ghosts, some demons, some ancestors, some demi-Gods,
and some say "Vasudeva is all". But God is a good sport (at least in the
Gita) and receives all forms of worship, even from those ignorant of His
nature. Furthermore, Krsna says "Whatever form they choose to worship,
I grant unto them UNWAVERING DEVOTION".
Sometimes we choose to see this unwavering devotion as something else,
and call it "pig-headedness". But there is some sublime mystical reason
why there is evil in the world, and why there are people who worship
devils but call them God, and why each of us does whatever we are
habitually drawn to do.
Everyone is born into this world (I believe again and again) to work out
some kind of issues. Some work them out as criminals, prostitutes, and
drug addicts. Others work them out as Mother Theresa, Gandhi and the
Dali Lama.
(end of excerpt)
==========================
Can we find it within ourselves to forgive ourselves for what we are and
what we are not, to forgive God for what God is not, to forgive the Lotto
for it's mathematical stinginess and subatomic molecules and life itself for
its less than perfect nature? Perfection is only in the imagination.
Even the Rakshasa demons and Ravanna have their own religion and
Satan quotes the Bible chapter and verse. There is even honor among
thieves.
The Jewish people have had great difficulty in reconciling the horror
of the Nazi Holocaust with their notion of a good God and his chosen
people. Some Jews have abandoned their religious practice and their
belief in God out of their anger and bitterness over the Holocaust
and its cruel concentration camps. We can cease to believe in the
existence of God and yet continue to feel anger and bitterness
towards something or someone which we claim does not exist.
Perhaps an ore of silver of gold, if it had consciousness, would view
the heat of the refiner;s furnace as a torment. In one instructive
story from religious tradition, the ore takes on a personality and
cries out to the refiner's apprentice saying "Oh, when will this
terrible inferno end? (Oh, why me)?" The apprentice answers, "When
you soften and melt and become so pure and tranquil and shining that
the Master sees His face in your reflection, then and only then will
the process of refinement be complete."
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