Our Life and our Nature

One of the fundamental causes which lead to miscalculations and disappointments in our lives is our not appreciating the limitations of our powers and capabilities. Being too much, and in fact most of the time, turned outward to the external and the physical, our mind which forms and judges our impressions and ideas is left unchecked and unstudied. In the natural course, the mind thus grows presumptuous, and its consequential egoistic outlook makes it dogmatic and assertive in its inferences and conclusions. What is beyond its orbit of comprehension it will pooh-pooh; what is mysterious it will consider in a way that satisfies its vanity; what is beyond its power and control it will not see or admit. Some seeming and generally elusive success in some physical experiences encourage and support this attitude. We want to think and believe that we can mould even our human nature which we are far from understanding, and change and fashion it according to plan and to our wish. Give me a kid and I shall make it a lamb to my liking, we say, if I only have the means and opportunity for doing it.

But does not such wishful thinking lead invariably to bitter disappointment? With all the love and care given to children, parents one day may be cruelly disappointed to find them going astray from the track marked out for them. They become differently inclined, differently shaped, differently natured, though the environment, association and living conditions have been the same for each one.

Such disappointments come to all at sometime or the other. And many people look for a reason for it in, quarters other than in the inevitable individuality of human nature. We come to the world with a nature characteristically our own, and we move on through the span of this life on a marked track, like railway train rolling over fixed rails. I avoid the word predestination because it is associated with some theological implications of controversial nature. For the same reason I refrain from asserting that, according to Sankhya philosophy, at the time of the end of life a balance sheet, so to say, of one’s doings is made up which decides the course of one’s next life – although there may be something in this hypothesis to think over and reflect upon. I shall therefore confine myself to facts and realities coming under our direct observation and experience.

We observe and experience so many things, but when we want to understand and explain, then we are inclined to make even unconsciously, suppositions which conform to our faith, belief or likings, rather than to what may seem to be more rational and true; and, oftener than not, we thus go the wrong way. On looking deeper into events, happenings and our own experiences, however, what do we find? If we look into our life, through its ups and downs, and its many vicissitudes, how many of them do we find have been of our choice, aim and plan? On how many occasions did our will prevail? What sharp bends could or did we effect in our nature and inclinations?

We are often inclined to argue, but even then we discriminate between those events and happenings which turned to our liking and desires and for which we take credit, saying that they were due to our will and effort, and those other events which went against our calculations and which we attribute to fate. The good qualities in those who have been under my care have been due to me, but their faults and defects were to their having had a bad ground in past lives. Is there any rational justification in such thinking and judging?

Our nature works and has been working, perhaps in a system and according to a law, but are we the planners of that system and makers of that law? When a river comes from its source and bends and turns, and flows over or round boulders, we might as well think that all that was willed, directed and controlled by itself. But when we sit on its bank and watch it coursing along, we see how causes altogether out of its control regulate and determine its onward flow. Its nipples and murmurs seem to display its enthusiasm and satisfaction at its own doings, but we see that they are not of its own wishing and doing. The levelling of its course, the hard or soil, the stones and boulders on its bed, were not of its choice, but due to altogether external agencies.

The sea waves come majestically upon the shore, then break and playfully recede to the depths they came from; but I laugh at their swelling with pride for nothing, for nothing is done by their own will or power. So, also, I am amused when I watch from the balcony the stream of human beings going both ways, in different moods with different purposes and with different feelings of assumed self-importance. Each one evidently thinks that his own will is acting and deciding every step of his way, but as I extend my vision and look behind or ahead, I can see the road and motor-bus is going, turning aside a little from its route because of an incident happening ahead of it on the road, but the men whom I see from the balcony, who are going that way, do not know of the occurrence of that incident as yet; to them that incident is still in their future.

Thus we all go, each one rolling over the rails on which he is placed and meeting events and occurrences which await ahead. Scenery changes, weather changes, but the track keeps on the rails; and so does man and his nature. The impulses and inclinations which come, come in a sequence which is characterised by the path he is treading. “Behold, Arjun” said Krishna, “they will, be all killed in spite of you, ………they are all killed by Me.” And what Arjun was disinclined to do, he saw already done in the yonder where the present and the future merged.

One’s nature is not changing but only evolving in its own manner as determined by the track it has to follow. Little minute creatures are we within an incomprehensible vastness, wherefrom – how we do not know – come excitements and impulses which make us do, work and function as we do. If individuals were left free to be willful and playful as they liked could the system work? If influence and environment could change one’s inborn nature, amidst royal luxuries and attractions Siddhartha (Buddha) would not have turned an ascetic and a Bhikshu. If teaching and preaching could produce results, the world’s great teachers, preachers and prophets would not have failed to change at least their own men and society. Within the direct sphere of their influence what crimes, what atrocities were not committed?