Dear Sri Sangom Sir,
The above para itself shows that yours is an exceptional case. May be you are seeing the whole world as if every one is like yourself. But my experience, personally, and impression from many others with whom I could interact sufficiently, has been that the vast majority is unlucky to have such fortunate circumstances which you describe you had. And, that will require inter-action with different kinds of people from different cross-sections of society. May be you were unique in having interaction only with people who were equally lucky like yourself!
My case is not exceptional just as your case is not exceptional. There are people of both types well distributed in the population ( I took the case of brahmin society alone because the op is by a brahmin and we generally speak here about brahmins. What i have said in my earlier posts are equally valid for others castes too.) You have formed your impressions from the people with whom you have come in contact. My impressions are on the basis of people with whom I have familiarity. I have many friends (many of them are not as lucky as me to have a happy home, childhood or an accident free life) who have the maturity to understand that life has to be lived here come what may. They keep their equanimity in tact in trials and tribulations and keep their faith too in tact. They may complain and plead with their kalyanagunarnavam to spare them the troubles and trials but they never suspect him or desert him. And this has nothing to do with any indoctrination from childhood. They are matured people who think well with their brain and come to logical conclusions.
I agree that people do try to reevaluate or revalidate their religious notions & beliefs when faced with crises or equally difficult situations in their lives. But, by and large, most people do make only temporary or make-shift changes so as to facilitate their (and their family's) lives going on smoothly; the fundamental beliefs inculcated right from the young age simply cannot be erased, it is ROM form inside the brain!
No. It is not as simple as that. When a catastrophe strikes the faith is shaken. So they take out that particular fundamental value from the archive and subject it to a close scrutiny. They understand that in the times of emotional upheaval caused by personal losses of enormous implications they tend to question the fundamentals of that particular value. But they are also mature enough to understand that life has to be lived here in the world and there can be pleasure as well as pain. Once the kalyanagunarnavam has been accepted there is no thanks giving every time they enjoy pleasure and similarly there can not be blaming every time they go through pain. It requires maturity to understand this and they have that. They understand that the pain, pleasure, good, bad etc of life are all transactional in nature and they have to be handled by RAM whereas the kalyanagunarnavam is precious information saved in a higher level of memory and is the sutradhari which has an OS as a part of it and handles and controls the entire input-output. LOL.
My comments are only w.r.t. the portion highlighted above, please.
My observation is that many people are not tired of chasing money and/or wealth, even after they put on their "religious cloak" after retirement from career; they take up "assignments", "consultation works", or even work on-line from their houses and make very good income. In fact very few men enjoy the luxury of real retirement because their wives do not allow this!
What to say about this! Yes “retirement’ is just another starting point for such people. But they too completely retire one day when the society finds them outdated or irreparable for reuse and discards them. I am speaking about that real retirement. Everyone has to thus “retire” one day or other.
The 'call of God' comes more because people start thinking of death which was once so far away that it was not even visible, but has come near now, after retirement and the question, possibly, arises in the minds of people, "what provision have I done for my life hereafter and what should I do?". As the colloquial saying goes, போகிற வழிக்கு ஏதோ கொஞ்சம் புண்யமா இருக்கும். (pokiṟa vaḻikku eto koñcam puṇyamā irukkum.)This, I feel is the more powerful force driving retired people, as a class, to more and more of religion, and that too overtly religious ways, because not only do people want to be religious but they also want the public recognition and approbation thereto.
There are such people no doubt. But they are not the decisive or representative majority. There are many with real bhakti. I have said this earlier somewhere once. When I was standing in the crowd in the street and was watching the deity being worshipped with “வாடினேன் வாடி வருந்தினேன்” pasuram of Azhwar in my city the sripAtham thAngikal who were carrying the deity on their shoulders were very enthusiastic and were dancing with the deity on their shoulders. An old lady standing near me was shedding tears and was loudly exclaiming “பெருமாளே என்ன பாடு படுத்தராடாப்பா உன்னை. எனக்குத் தாங்கலயேப்பா”. That was a moment of revelation for me and I understood what is bhakti. And similarly when my mother-in-law one day surprised me saying matter-of-factly, “I am not afraid of dying. I want it to come without pain. That is all I want. I am sure perumAl will grant my wish”. She was educated only upto 8[SUP]th[/SUP] standard. I have come across many such people in my life so far. And then there is this lady in my neighbourhood who has a sewing machine with which she offers the service of stitching dress for women in the neighbourhood. She depends on that income to balance her tight budget every month. She came to know (I do not know how) that I do daily ArAdhanA in my house. She came one day and hesitatingly took out a small piece (4”x6”) of good quality silk cloth well stitched at the edges and embellished with an embroidered flower in the middle and offered it to me and asked me to use it as the Asanam in the wooden box in which I keep my kalyanagunarnavam in the form of sAlagrAmam. There was no need for her to do that and yet she did that. That is real bhakti. A love for God without any expectation and she has that. I was speechless and accepted it in all humility. I never pray for anything specially from my kalyanagunarnavam. But that day I prayed to Him to bestow his grace on that lady. If I had asked her to explain the God idea she might have just blinked. But she certainly knew her God and she perhaps felt that that God needed that piece of cloth.
So dear Sir, please understand that there are many people who retire and continue to love God as they used to do before retirement. Only difference you may observe is that they have more time now and so their love manifests in more elaborate processes.
Towards the end of the para, you are juxtaposing your individual case ( I do not wish to reserve any seat either any where. What I do is just that, I enjoy the beauty in all that is there in that domain. A love without expectations which is bhakti, a certain strong belief that I do not have to worry about anything-unlike the Sunya vadis who keep ranting about the futility of everything-are things which have an unmatched beauty of their own. I have the mind and maturity to understand it and enjoy it. Those who do not have that are for ever under the oppressive load of their useless knowledge.) vis-a-vis the generality of human beings and then you think you are successfully and logically rebutting and then ridiculing Sunyavadis, their oppressive load of their useless knowledge etc. How can one individual case nullify the case of nearly 7 billion others?
What I said is in first person singular. But it is representative of the sentiments of many people and I have first hand experience of that. I have an eye for spotting such people easily and quickly which perhaps you do not have. The generality of human beings is not the exclusive preserve of a few sunyavaadis whatever they may claim. And the 7 billion people are not represented by you and your view. If my observations have people who have bhakti, your observation does not have all those who do not have bhakti forming a whopping 7 billion. We are both observers. Our samples are mixed and not homogeneous. So your logic is flawed.
Hence, it appears to me as though you live in a globule of your own creation and consider that to be the whole world!
Lo!. I can say the same about you. Don’t you think I have a case when I say your sample has to be a mixed lot and not a homogeneous lot? If you start with a homogeneous lot with all like minded people each one suddenly recalling God only after retirement and rushing to please him to ensure a seat in heaven next to him, your logic and argument starts with a handicap right in the beginning. LOL.
just as you concede that the concept of Divine Insurance and all that, is imagination, is not the concept of a sakalagunarnavam also a figment of imagination? And, if that is true, is not the idea of enjoying "the beauty in all that is there in that domain" also, equally fictitious, without any proof, mere imagination? Looked at in this way, are not Sunyavadis a shade better, because, they do not take up this play-acting, like small children do with சொப்புக்குட்டி (coppukkuṭṭi)?
kalyanagunarnavam is not a figment of imagination and enjoying the beauty in the worship of it is not fictitious because scriptures say so and I accept scriptures as pramana. Whether scriptures can be accepted as pramana is a very vast subject and this is not the place for discussing that. Whether sunyavadis understand at all about playing with anything is a subject too vast again. I believe they do not even know what they want, nor do they know it when they get it. Poor fellows living in their delusions! The ever present ego never allows them to come out of their delusions. It is an opiate to which they are irretrievably lost for ever.
I don’t believe there is any meeting point for us. You are a fence sitter intellectual stranded there waiting for some random (yes random because you do not believe any God) bonanza to come your way to get you down from where you are perched while I am an innocent little boy with my candy enjoying it immensely. There is nothing in common between us. While I understand your mental processes I do hope you too understand the alternative that I have adopted with deliberation. All the best.
