KISHOR KULKARNI suggests that by trusting the Divine and adopting a spiritual attitude, it may be possible to cope with the Covid crisis
These are very difficult times for mankind with Covid-19 raging all over the world. Suffering and death has become commonplace and almost every other person has experienced it within his own household or that of some near and dear ones. Vaccination as well as treatment for Covid-19 are both proving to be difficult to get.
While lockdowns are the way for government authorities to stem the spread of the coronavirus, this makes it difficult for the poor to sustain themselves, since their survival depends on going to work every day. This situation has caused widespread fear and despair among most people.
I, for one, feel that with so much negativity around, we need to adopt a spiritual attitude to cope with the situation.
We feel pain in these circumstances only because of our conditioning that is the result of our limited body and limited ego. So to get over the pain, we need to think beyond our limited body and the associated ‘my/mine.’ We need to constantly keep reminding ourselves that this universe is a Divine creation and that the Divine knows what is happening, which fits His big purpose ― it just can’t be otherwise.
Each one of us should realise that “I am nobody to ask questions of the Divine about why this is happening, to me and my loved ones.” If we can bring ourselves to firmly believe that everything belongs to its space and time, we become free of all the “unnecessary burden” of events around us.
We then accept everything, as it is, as a Divine plan. We stop harbouring expectations one way or the other. Then we have no desires, no fears and no anxieties. Just bliss!
However, this doesn’t mean we should not do anything and simply sit back putting our feet up! No, not at all. We should keep doing our due karma as we think fit in every given situation, while remembering that the Divine is inspiring us to do that karma for His purpose, and not for our conditioned purpose.
We water a plant at its root. However, the water nourishes not just the roots, but the whole tree including the leaves at the top of the tree. That is the concept of the ‘big picture’.
We live our life with each of our actions from time to time ‘appearing’ to be directed towards a limited objective. However, we should remember that each action has a bigger purpose in the Creator’s scheme of things. Thus, the water of our karma that may be seemingly going to the roots (our limited selfish objective), serves a much bigger purpose for the entire tree of creation.
For example, we give the best medical care to a sick loved one. The immediate and obvious objective is to save the person’s life and bring her or him back to good health. But it also serves some more remote objectives as follows:
(1) Income for the medical staff, hospital, pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers.
(2) An opportunity for us, as also the sick relative to settle our respective past karmic debts.
(3) Retained learning for the doctors and other staff by way of the particular experience of the case, which can be helpful in the handling of future similar cases.
The above objectives are of the kind that we can at least imagine if we apply our minds to it. But we should keep in mind that there may be some other objectives in a given situation that may not be visible or even imaginable in our wildest dreams. So, just do the work that seems necessary in a given situation, without questioning “What’s there in it for me?”
When you look at a hill from a distance, it looks nice, smooth and pleasantly blue. But if you go near it, it looks dusty, rocky and brown.
If you stand at the right distance from the fire place on a winter night, it feels nicely warm. But if you go too close, it feels uncomfortably hot.
So, stand afar from worldly life and it will feel nice. But go too close to it and it will cause suffering.
Kishor Kulkarni is a technologist by education with work experience of about 30 years, spanning banking and information technology. After he developed spiritual interests around the age of 50, he quit his job to pursue spirituality. He has written many books on spirituality and self-published them on Amazon. Many of his articles have been published in the ‘Speaking Tree’ column of the ‘Times of India’.
Beautiful analysis of the benefit stepping out of ‘me-mine’ obsession which is the root cause of all our plight, and it’s possible remedy is the honing and nurturing of the larger perspective. Yes sir, we are used to take pain and suffering as body-mind centric locality of experience and hence it becomes for us an almost insurmountable excruciating experience.
But once we systematically train ourselves to step out from the sense of a personality and impersonally look at the universe, the pain-factor in us associated with me-mine tag drops and melts away on its own on the backdrop of “sense of universality”, which in it itself an overwhelming experience.
Incidentally, as and when my wife’s oxygen level was fluctuating between nineties and eighties during our Covid experience, I would ask my wife to sleep in prone position, do Pranayama like Anulom-Vilom periodically and in the process kept reminding her that doing so, you are not breathing for yourself alone but breathing as well for the entire universe…And like any wonder, it wonderfully worked!
I completely endorse the spirit behind the blog: Looking at the Big Picture.
Yes, once one succeeds in that, one aligns with the way of Divinity and becomes a part and parcel of the way Divine Spirit works.
Yes … one reaches almost at the right goal when reflects unconditionally subjectively.
Every thought that converted into action brings a reaction. No way to avoid that reaction.
Acceptance and calm observation shows the path to goal.
You discussed current times very wisely Kishore jee! ? nice blog.