MEANING OF RENUNCIATION AND DETATCHMENT

About 5000 years old concepts of renunciation and detachment are still hard to understand and yet survive in our philosophy of life.
The principal cause is that human mind gives too much importance to birth and death and forgets the value of means of achieving self-gratification during one span of life, that too, at the cost of system of other levels of existence (other living-beings and environment).
Variety of religious paths that have come into place have avoided to dwell on these concepts as difficult to practice.
The net result is, the world has been becoming more and more threatened with growth of human civilization.
Prince Siddharth renounced the world and then came back enlightened to it as Lord Budha advising us the path called: middle path.
Lord Krishna clarified in the Bhagwad Geeta that 'desire for only self-growth and happiness is the whole cause of misery in this world'. It means that individualistic growth at the cost of other beings and environment around is dangerous.
The conclusion is thus one has to renounce undue desires for ego-fulfilment in this world and observe own deeds impartially by being detached from the fruit or acquisitions.

GOD, RELIGIONS, ALTARS and SOCIETY

GOD alone is ABSOULTE. God's creation is relative - subject to time, space and substance. All beings are rightfully confident in their own trasit identities because, they all are part and parcel of ONE God.  Visible universe is only a tip of the iceberg of God's creation. A much larger invisible part of creation exerts its influence on the visible universe. Man is always studying this process through wisdom of science and religion. Thus, science and religion have no authority to claim understanding God or His creation and, have thusfar, only created diversity from unity. Therefore, sole purpose of a religion is to make man a goodman, failing which its whole purpose is defeated. Similarly, sole purpose of temple/church/mosque/altar for a man is to learn to bow and shed un-necessary ego of identity, failing which these places are likely to be misused to create discord among believers of God. A section of people, who are atrociously ambitious, have always tried to misuse both science and reilgions to their selfish advantage to rise to power and enjoy undue resources. They are the demons of the times. Intellectuals of all societies of the world have to be duty-bound to spot such demonic individuals and inform the society in time, so as to minimize conflict among peace-loving majority of the world. Press and media must highlight good values so as to cooperate in world peace.

GOD'S FEMALE/MALE MANIFESTATIONS

God is ONE with innumerable manifestations, exhort Vedas and Bhagvad Gita: Eko Brahmasti. According to Bhagwad Gita, all form manifestations of God come out of one Infinite or Virat source called Brahmn whose formless version is called Omn. In Bhagwad Gita, Virat form has 330 million gods with their feminine versions in their respective hearts. In order to maintain the cosmic balance, Brahmn appears in form as Par-Brahmn ( meaning: through and through Brahm/trans-Brahmn) or Param Brahaman male Vishnu or His 10 avatars. Likewise, Brahm also appears as feminine form Vaishnavi and her 9 avatars (Nav-Durga), according to Devi-Bhagavatam. Vishnu and Vashnavi took concurrent avatars as Krishna and Radha as cosmic lovers. The explanation that Krishna gave to Radha before leaving her at the age of 12 was, that He Himself is Radha (by dressing Himself as Radha).

IS MAN A DIANASAUR BORN-AGAIN?

Thinkers, philosophers and scientists are constantly looking at ways to increase the level of happiness. Nature, too is helping us achieve this through evolution. That is why most humans are happy to believe that they are better off than chimps and apes: what to talk of amoebae, bacteria or viruses. As man equips himself to let down microbes devouring him, nature helps microbes to mutate to even deadlier versions. The war is always on, on top of men terrorizing fellow-men. All progress has culminated into a 'happy' worried man. Man distinguishes himself from rest of the animal kingdom in that he, alone has been given wisdom by the owner of existence (call Him God). And yet, man is proving to become responsible for bringing all life on this earth on the edge of extinction - all, just in fear of fellow-men, who want to rule the earth. Remember, once dianasaurs ruled this earth. Is man a dianasaur-incarnate?

MEANING OF DETATCHMENT FROM WORLD

On the first look, detachment from the world appears impossible to achieve. Nonetheless, this concept has been forcefully endorsed by God Almighty, while describing Himself in first person in Bhagwad Gita, direct to man, who seeks Him. We are born, brought-up and trained to prosper in this world - why then to be detached from it? In short-term view, detachment sounds wierd, but, however, in the long-term view, we shall discover that we are naturally detached from so many possessions of life, which we may have cherished as a baby, child and grown-ups. Why we have become detached from these, is either they are out-of-date, boring or there are better things we are drawn to. Logically, detachment from some worldly possessions comes naturally if we want to achieve still better. So, our attachment to our accomplishments in this world, may become hadicap to further progress. Thus, detachment is good ploy for self-management that Krishna preached about 5000 years ago.

One can practice detachment by being an impartial observer of one's own-self. It is possible only if one hands-over the charge of oneself to another. But, the fear that one may not receive the charge back, may hold one to do so. For this, one has to find out another-one who loves us truthfully, and who is not attached to our possessions. It is most probable that we may not find even one such person throughout our life. In this regard, God Himself declares "Love is my innermost nature, Truth I am" (Bhagwad Gita). Because God is Truth-all conscious-eternal bliss (Sat-chit-Anand), He is the most dependable-ONE for our sharing and caring. When, we are attached to God, we automatically become detached from His virtual image/creation (universe). The secret of achieving this state of mind was given to an iconic duty-bound man, Arjun by Krishna. The secret was: whenever, we pause while performing duty, imagine God's Universal form (Virat-Brahm), bow and whisper the fundamental mantra "Omn Tat Sat" (Omn is the extract of Truth). This message is coincidently present in different modes of worship as Omn-Omen-Amen-Amin.

WHAT IS GOD?

The most ancient authority of human wisdom - the Vedas - accept their defeat in not being able to understand what is God as NETI-NETI: not this, not that. And yet, they accept the best definition of God is SAT-CHIT-ANAND = TRUTH-ALL KNOWING CONSCIOUSNESS-BLISSFUL

TRUTH is timeless or eternal, indestructible (avinaashi), without any beginning, middle and end.
CHIT = AWARENESS, CONSCIOUSNESS, ALL-KNOWING.
BLISSFUL = Param-anand, above states of happiness and unhappiness, non-suffering

Out of all holy scriptures that exist, God is described in first person, only in Srimad Bhagwad Gita as: ONE IN ALL and ALL IN ONE, VIRAT-BRAHM in form and also, unimaginable bright-light of infinite suns shining at once as formless GOD with universal vibration OMN.

Bhagwad Gita advises that it is easier to relate to God in form (Viraat) and more difficult to identify ourselves with formless God. As God alone exists, all perceptible identities must be viewed as part and parcel of ONE God. The universe and its variety as observed is creative sport of God (please refer to post above 'Truth and Justice') that, invariably surrenders to God. Gita advises that the shortest-cut to God-realization is the determined total surrender of mind (which hides our true identity) to God by performing one's prescribed duty to the best of ability for establishing truth and justice in the society without attachment to the fruit of work, so as to share it with all (just like our stomach shares the essence of food with all cells of our body, fairly, rather than to selfishly pile on the belly alone to make us ugly). Just as, all our body cells are a variety of manifestations of our same DNA, the whole universe is a variety of manifestations the same ONE God.

TRUTH AND JUSTICE

ONE God creates the universe as a sport and permeates every bit of creation as omnipresent. He hides behind all visible and invisible identities like a thief/Hari. All these created identities are searching for this hidden thief everywhere (Ancient/Sanaatan Wisdom). This hide-and-seek sport continues throughout the created realms of time and space. Earthlings participate in this sport by evolving from microbes to man, with all living-beings constantly involved in sharpening their skills and defensive/aggressive arsenal. God becomes a mere observer and judges the behaviour of us all - the players. This play is the work/duty of all beings. Evolving over innumerable births, an extremely small fraction of people start understanding this game and try to avoid foul-play. They slowly become detached from the result - victory or defeat - and keenly meditate over Truth behind the scene/universe. For such few great persons, work becomes worship. Thence, they see their own image in all living beings and treat their enemies and friends alike; thereby, they try level-best to give justice to all. Always seeking the greatest Truth in all their actions done to give justice to all beings, such people become immortals. In the last century, one person who tried this path sincerely was Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji declared to the world "There is no religion above Truth".