Editorial
July 2020
I
The Vedanta Kesari
10
Purpose of Life
n a sense the Covid-19 pandemic is doing us some good. As the virus infections and deaths come closer and touch their friends and family circles, even minds soaked in mundane life are tending to reflect and ask – If life is so uncertain, and if a tiny virus can upset or erase in a moment all our plans and labours, then what is the meaning of life? If they hold on to this question, they will arrive at other fundamental Vedantic questions like: Who am I? Where have I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? What is my relationship with people around me? What is our collective relationship with the universe? And in seeking answers to these questions they will discover the true purpose of human life.
What indeed is the purpose of man’s existence? We find an answer in Swami Vivekananda’s life mission statement where he says, “My ideal, indeed, can be put into a few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.” In other words, there are two purposes to our life, corresponding to the two dimensions of life – inner and outer. The first is the inner life purpose which is to discover our divine identity as the Atman; and the second is the outer life purpose which is to discover the same divinity in the manifest world and serve it. To achive these twin purposes of life, Swami Vivekananda gave us two tools: renunciation and service. In an interview to Prabuddha Bharata, he declared, “The national ideals of India are renunciation and service. Intensify her in those channels, and the rest will take care of itself.” Renunciation is the tool to realise the inner life purpose. To renounce means to
restrain the outgoing tendencies of the senses and the mind and rise above our identification with them. It is to also sublimate our unripe ego into a ripened ego – an ego which perfectly reflects Pure Consciousness, or which functions as the child or servant of God.
Service is the tool to realise our outer life purpose. To serve is to perform our everyday work as a worshipful service of the Virat. It is to also fulfill the needs of the poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the hungry, the sick, and the afflicted, seeing them as tangible manifestations of God.
Swami Vivekananda encapsulated these twin life purposes in the motto of the Ramakrishna Order: अात्मनो मोक्षार्थं जगद्धिताय च, which means ‘For one’s own salvation and the welfare of the world.’ This is the ideal that every sannyasi and devotee of the Ramakrishna Order strives to attain.
The current pandemic conditions are expected to continue for some more months. This is a time when serious spiritual aspirants should struggle to realise their inner and outer life purposes, and stand as beacons of hope for the society at large. Making an unusual proposition Swami Vivekananda says, “If one millionth part of the men and women who live in this world simply sit down and for a few minutes say, “You are all God, O ye men and O ye animals and living beings, you are all the manifestations of the one living Deity!” the whole world will be changed in half an hour.” Without succumbing to the pandemic hysteria let us, even while taking all necessary precautions and efforts to defeat this virus, assert our divinity and remind others of their divinity.
