Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
26 January 2020
Appreciation (7)
“Knowledge and Wisdom”
Life’s intelligence conditions man that he can do, speak and think. If you can do, speak and think, you can stop growing at a certain age and say ‘I am fine now at this age and will remain at this age.’
You cannot do that. The body comes and goes just as a fruit comes from the tree: falls, rots, decays and gets absorbed in the ground or gets plucked by somebody, eaten and gone.
It must make you wonder and appreciate: does man pick an apple up and eat it? Or what is happening here? Does man go to a market and buy his vegetables? Did he walk, did he speak, did he do anything to get vegetables, separate from this wholeness of life where everything happens, if it is meant to happen in life?
Only as far as man is concerned does he make it happen. What type of logic is this? Where does man fit into the wholeness of life? Wonderful life.
Can you be the doer in this life where everything else just happens in the moment, including the moment, and you do not make any moment in life? Then you begin to watch.
What can you exactly see, not think? And that will shock you. My god, man simply moves just like the leaves waving in the breeze. Just as the sun is moving across the sky. Just as the clouds come and pass by.
Nobody arranges the clouds in which formation they should be. They just come and go. Sun comes and goes. Moon comes and goes. Flowers are in the tree. Fruit are in the tree. Has any man been able to determine the number of fruit a tree bears every year? Is it the same quantity? Is it in the same place?
Does any man determine how many leaves a tree has this spring? What is the number of leaves it has lost during winter? How does it lose them? How does the leaf become brown, yellow, green, in spring? Does it make it itself?
The tree does not make any change in colour or number, because the tree does not make the moment in life for it to be in the moment. Nevertheless, the tree is in the moment by the intelligence in life in the moment. So too the changes in the tree, flowers, fruit and colour of the leaves are changed by the intelligence in life in the moment and not by the tree.
Similarly, you are in the moment and you do not make any moment in life. This signifies that all the changes in you are not done by you, but are manifested for you by the intelligence in life. The changes cannot be other than the changes that are in any moment.
When this wisdom evolves in you, you will appreciate every moment as it is and will appreciate nature as it is in every moment, which includes you as well.
The enlightened appreciate life as it is in every moment.
Author: Dr. Vijai S .Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2020
Editor’s Note:
Man believes that there is a hierarchy in living beings, with man at the apex. Furthermore, he has no doubt that of all living beings, including the whole of nature, only he or she has the intelligence to speak, to think, to make a decision and so forth. Yet, he readily acknowledges that change is constantly happening in the animate and inanimate world around him over which he cannot have any control. Nor does he ascribe the determination for change to the manifestation itself, but to nature. The intelligence of life, however, has conditioned man to claim responsibility for action and opinion. Thus, he alone, if he so wills – and he does so will - can identify and modify the causes of climate change or, if he so wills– and he does will - speak out against racism. All this is by the intelligence of life. Appreciation of the intelligence in life and understanding as the wise understand, will gradually lead to enlightenment, if it is meant to.
Julian Capper. UK