When you can relate to the Gods

Reading Rama complain in the Yoga Vasistha about how meaningless life is, I could draw parallels with how I've been feeling lately. What I understood, that like me, actually like most of us Rama understood the intricacies and the greater philosophy of life. He could go on & on about how everything is transient, how everything is a delusion created by the mind and how we are trapped in this world of Maya (sort of what the movie, the Matrix conveyed). Some people might think drawing parallels to the Matrix is childish, but everytime I watch that movie I learn something new -- it tells me something that I can match back to my search of the absolute. Like the time when Morpheus tells Neo, "I can only show you the path. You have to walk through it." Or when he says, "there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it." I could go on and on, but really that should be another discussion.

Talking to a friend yesterday I realized that a lot of people are asking the same question Rama did all those years ago. Why? Why are we here? The answer to which we sort of know but don't understand perhaps because we are bound by the mind.

The one thing that brings me to what started this is when I read Rama say - "I am puzzled, holy sir, that a man roams here and there seemingly busy throughout the day and is all the time engaged in selfish activity..."

Past few days at work have been keeping me occupied but yesterday I once again went the route of asking why? And what for? Perhaps the biggest question for me is who is this benefitting? It's good that I am busy, but busy doing what? Can I go home and tell myself, yes I was busy helping someone today? By help I don't mean filling the coffers of someone better off than most people, but someone who really needs it.

Krishna said you can realize the absolute simply by doing your job and so he convinced Arjuna to fight the war because as a warrior, Arjuna's duty was to fight. What if my duty isn't what I am doing right now, but helping someone build their life? Or bring a smile on someone's face or just do something that puts someone's aching heart at ease? What if?