HINDUISM: The simplest of questions

The simplest looking questions are the most complicated ones. Let’s try to answer, and mind you, watch your answers change.

Q1. “Where were you born?” Oh sure, the answer could be New York, Delhi, Tokyo, but weren’t you alive before that, kicking in your mother’s womb? Oh yes… and before that, alive as the seed in your father’s body? Where from did you arrive there? Who put you there? You must’ve been alive before. So?

Q2. Where is your home? Yes you may quickly type “Gully no: 4, Kholi no: 420”. Or “The White House, Washington”. Even in this life, how many addresses have you changed? For nine months you were housed in your mom’s tummy. What about before that?

Q3. Where are you going? The office, the market, the mall? No, no, I mean where are you ultimately heading to? Generally, there is a planned destination of a trip ? Do you know your life’s destination? Or is there none? Where are you going when the body and mind which you call “me” drop you? Any idea?

Q4. What are you doing? Oh yes simple: I am teaching, I am working in an MNC, I work for the government, I am a NASA scientist. We now have to ask who is this very important entity called “I”? You cannot describe this “I” without its supportive baggage.

Your name, your father’s name, your address, education, workplace, position, etc. But they are not you, they help to identify you.

What are you minus them? If you say that you are the body, then how come you call it “my body”? Why do you say “my mind”?

So who is the teacher or the scientist? To whom does the mind and the body belong? Who then is the real doer? Who are you?

Prarthna Saran, President Chinmaya Mission Delhi.