A respected senior teacher once asked us, a group of young medicos, our idea of God. The teacher is a renowned plastic surgeon and has also authored several books and lectures on the Gita and the Dnyaneshwari.
One of us described God as a Supreme power, which directs all events in this world. I replied to the question with the example of the senior theatre actor-director Jayadev Hattangady.
Jayadev, alumnus of the National School of Drama, has been in theatre for the last 30 years. Once, one of his students asked him, "What is acting? How do you define it?" To this he replied, "I am yet to know. If I had known by now, I would have been greatly enlightened!" Here was a man who had lived theatre for decades but was humble enough to declare that his search for 'acting' was far from over.
To me, God does not need to be defined. I am happy to let God be fuzzy logic. God has to be lived. I think of God as a feeling; of wellness, of inner bliss, of an inner sparkle that fills the heart with warm cheer and optimism.
Books, idols and places of worship are guides to finding God but look: God actually lives all around, within and without, coming to us in varied forms. Of awareness of our milieu, internal and external. Of appropriate and timely responses to the events around us. Of compassion to the deserving with the wisdom that I am part of the whole and the whole is part of me. Of clarity to know the moment. Of courage to listen to the still small voice within and to obey without fear. Of love for the earth we live on and all her beings. Of a worthwhile existence – that feeling that puts one to a good night’s sleep at the end of the day.
Truth, goodwill and friendship are forms of God. If all of us applied these criteria to all our acts, life would be heaven on earth.
HT
