100 Paths

So it’s been ongoing, this discussion with the Voice in my head.

***

“Things have been really great around here,” I said. “All’s really quiet and calm and peaceful. Life is good.”

The best of all monopoly profits is a quiet life, the Voice replied. The economist JR Hicks said that, not me. So enjoy yourself.

“But is this the purpose of life? To quietly enjoy oneself as time goes by? To sit here reading all day, writing all day, doing a bit of laid-back work and being paid for it?” I probed.

And why not?

“Because it’s too easy,” I said. “I thought life is a struggle, that we have to fight for our happiness.”

But you’re happy, so what do you need to fight for?

“Precisely. Aren’t I supposed to be fighting for something?”

Who says so? Who made up these rules?

“I don’t know. I just thought that’s how things worked. That we are supposed to do our samsaric (worldly) karma and all that. Fulfil our social obligations, get a gruelling job, make a lot of money, take our kids on foreign holidays, all that. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

Think of the Gita class you attended today at the Aurobindo ashram. What did Krishna say to you in that? About your Swadharma?

“Our Swadharma (supreme duty) is to follow our Swabhava (inner calling),” I recalled. “Our purpose in being alive is to follow our nature, our calling, our inner voice. Even if it comes at a cost to our social obligations or our ‘shoulds’ and ‘supposed tos’.”‘

So what does that tell you? Are you following your Swadharma based on your Swabhava?

“I am tranquil by Swabhava. This quiet life suits me wonderfully. I can spend time with my loved ones, I can sit and read books all day, this is nirvana. But is this my real Swabhava or is this an escape? Is this my real Swabhava or sheer laziness?”

What else did Krishna say? What do you do if you don’t know your real Swabhava?

“He said that then there is only one Swadharma and that is to find our real Swabhava and thus Him,” I said, with wonder as realisation dawned on me. “The entire purpose of my life is to find my real Swabhava, to find Krishna within me. And then to dedicate the rest of my life to that.”

Will getting back in the corporate rat race or fighting for someone else’s definition of happiness take you closer or further from that mission?

“I don’t know yet. I suspect not. But I am too happy and comfortable right now to bother to find out.”

So do then what comes most naturally to your Swabhava. Don’t fight for the sake of it. Don’t expend energy for the obligation of it. Seek your Krishna, your real calling. That’s all Life wants from you. Everything else is white noise.

***

So it’s been ongoing, this discussion with the Voice in my head. I noticed today, though, that it all happens in silence.