The mind wanders
Once upon a time, I had a lesson in Sanskrit. Our teacher was enacting the lesson and she asked the students, "What is that thing which travels fastest ?" Somone answered 'Light'. He or she (I don't remember now) was wrong. The teacher said, the fastest thing in this universe is a human mind. It can be at one place and can be at another within a fraction of second.
Sometimes it just wanders over small things like " What to wear today ?". Somtimes over larger issues, "How can I spend $150 on a dinner for 10 people when I know it can feed a couple hundred people back in my country who are suffering from hunger ?" Sometimes its just about me, sometimes its about other people. And sometimes it just goes beyond all worldliness and asks the most fundamental questions. Why should I be bothered with small issues when I am a mere spec in this vast universe. A mere infinitesimal blip in the billion year old universe. If I do certain things how is it ever going to change anything in the universe ? I am like an electron moving about randomly in its orbit in a huge mass of some element. How does my motion even affect the huge mass ? Or does it ? If I step out of my orbit and so do many others with me, I may be able to change some properties of the mass. See again the mind is concocting some theory to control something to make me do what it wants. But what it wants afterall is dictated by some atoms in my brain.
With 24 years of human life behind me, I am still not sure if human mind is a boon or a bane. I know for sure however I can never understand its purpose in the ultimate sense. Sometimes I appreciate being born as a human. Being a mindless creature would have been really boring. But then when you are mindless, you don't even know what boring means. Maybe the destiny of a human is just to define your own scope, your own circle of influence and then work inside it forgetting all that is outside.
"Apne hi pani mein pighal jana barf ka muqaddar hota hai "
Sometimes it just wanders over small things like " What to wear today ?". Somtimes over larger issues, "How can I spend $150 on a dinner for 10 people when I know it can feed a couple hundred people back in my country who are suffering from hunger ?" Sometimes its just about me, sometimes its about other people. And sometimes it just goes beyond all worldliness and asks the most fundamental questions. Why should I be bothered with small issues when I am a mere spec in this vast universe. A mere infinitesimal blip in the billion year old universe. If I do certain things how is it ever going to change anything in the universe ? I am like an electron moving about randomly in its orbit in a huge mass of some element. How does my motion even affect the huge mass ? Or does it ? If I step out of my orbit and so do many others with me, I may be able to change some properties of the mass. See again the mind is concocting some theory to control something to make me do what it wants. But what it wants afterall is dictated by some atoms in my brain.
With 24 years of human life behind me, I am still not sure if human mind is a boon or a bane. I know for sure however I can never understand its purpose in the ultimate sense. Sometimes I appreciate being born as a human. Being a mindless creature would have been really boring. But then when you are mindless, you don't even know what boring means. Maybe the destiny of a human is just to define your own scope, your own circle of influence and then work inside it forgetting all that is outside.
"Apne hi pani mein pighal jana barf ka muqaddar hota hai "
posted by Nitin Ved at 10:50 PM
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