LIFE - WITHOUT CHOICE & LIVING - WITH CHOICE

Name anything that you chose all by your self, while coming in to this LIFE?

Did you choose your parents?

Did you choose any thing like your place of birth, time of birth, your sex, skin colour, your bones, your heart, your genetic disposition, your brothers, sisters, uncles or any one else, or any thing else that you can think of in coming to your LIFE ?  Well. You didn't. Neither did I nor anybody else on earth we know of.

If you had the choice - would you have chosen your present parents, your country of birth, your skin colour, your whole lot of other attributes? Given a choice, you would have exercised that choice, in favour of some thing better.

But, there wasn't a darned choice for any of us in coming to Life. All the factors are fixed by some one else or some other force.

We had no choice in coming to LIFE. But, probably we have some choice in how we live our life.

What do we really want in our LIFE? In what areas do we really want to exercise any choice?

First and foremost - we want to LIVE! For how long? We don't seem to know. If possible, we want to live forever in a hale and healthy way. We want to be beautiful / handsome forever, healthy forever and alive forever. We don't want to lose life or limb or suffer any ill-health. This is the LONGING for ETERNITY. It is one of our innate desires. Even if we know  that we will get sick, get old and die one day, the WISH within us is, we do not want to fall sick and we do not want to become old and we do not want to die. I am emphasizing the WISH aspect. Most of us are half reconciled to sickness, old age and death. Like Buddha did. If Buddha the enlightened did not survive, will we? if Christ, Mohammed, Krishna, Moses etc did not survive, will we? We may not. But our wish to LIVE continues.Therefore we go on searching for drugs,methods and techniques to avoid sickness, avoid old age and avoid death. It always seems to be round the bend, but as we approach the bend, the goal recedes further from us. The search will continue forever. So it seems.

The second is - our wish to know our environment and our SELF. At this point of time, we know neither of them adequately. We are constantly learning new things. But, as we learn new things, we understand how much more is there to learn! Our knowledge is constantly expanding, but, so is our thirst for new knowledge. As we learn, another thing is happening, our SELF  is changing very fast, and our environment, too, is changing very fast. It seems, we will never know our SELF or our environment adequately. The thirst for knowledge or wisdom will continue forever, unabated.

The third is - our innate need to be joyful. We want to be happy, joyous, smiling,and so on. JOY is our third requirement. Mere LIFE will lack meaning for us, the human beings. Mere knowledge too, is just boring. You can't always watch Discovery channel, all your life. You need  other Channels, other methods to ignite our life into liveliness. LIVELINESS is what we want.JOY is what we want.

These three requirements were researched in great depth in India, by the BEST OF SCIENTISTS and ANALYSTS  that the world can produce. They gave the three requirements, three beautiful sanskrit names as below :

1. SAT : For Eternal existence ( pronounced as Sa (as U in cut) and T (as  TH in with);

2. CHIT : For supreme, boundless consciousness (T pronounced as in with);

3.ANANDA : For unlimited, continuous, eternal JOY (firsr A pronounce as on COT; Second A as U in CUT; Third A as a short vowel.

SAT - CHIT - ANANDA  have therefore become the primary Life Choices or Goals, in the opinion of these great scientists.

And, Achievement of these three goals is very well WITHIN OUR CHOICE. So, they say.

Name anything else as your choice, it will all fall under one of these three categories. You just can't want any thing else beyond these three.

Thus, Life is not our choice, Living is - Living long, Living with wisdom and living with joy.