Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Sutapa das
Someone I know recently started a new job. "I have to put on such an act with my new colleagues" he complained, "The best time of the day is when I get back home – I can just be myself again!" We all have this experience. We feel happiest with our closest friends and family - where there is no artificiality, no acting, no masks. We can just relax and freely express ourselves.
The foundational teaching of all Vedic philosophy is that our identity goes beyond this physical body and all the designations that go with it. The Bhagavad-gita repeatedly stresses how we are eternal spirit souls entangled in a temporary machine, in a temporary situation. All anxieties, all fears, all dissatisfaction comes because we identify with the temporary machine we are using. Imagine the satisfaction, happiness, and sense of fulfilment we can experience if we realise who we really are... spirit souls. That’s the ultimate in 'being yourself'.
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players"
- Shakespeare
