So the million dollar question is ‘what are you seeking in your life?’

If you have to sum up the answer to one such thing that you fervently seek, what would that be?

There could be many answers as we may all have different needs, different issues and therefore different aspirations. A child may seek a balloon for imminent joy and toss away a gold coin from its hand! As we grow, our desires change and what we seek also changes from time to time. We seek so many objects, so many relationships, so many different situations in life, and all these vary according to our state of affairs, so, how can we therefore say, what we seek in life? Answers to this question depend on how we understand the question and also where we are in our ladder of experience in life.

The point is that we cannot clearly prescribe what we are seeking as long as we are thinking to answer the question in terms of ‘objects of desire’ or ’ihsta-vasthu’ . Thinking so is only natural because, we normally take the objects of desire as the source of happiness; we keep seeking so many objects in life for our happiness, making this question a tricky one to answer.

In fact, there is only one universal answer to this question. What we are seeking is the ‘fulfilment’, a state in which there is nothing more to seek; when there is nothing more to seek, then there is nothing more to do; then living is not a struggle but a sheer joyful existence, a sort of ‘total freedom’.

To test this out, consider the most pressing object of desire that you are after and keep ask the question, ‘why do I need this?’. If not for the total fulfilment, it will surely lead to conclude for your own happiness – ‘self-satisfaction’.

Shall we say, therefore, happiness is what we are seeking? A lasting happiness from total freedom, free from all sorts of fear, sorrow and obligations? This may not be obvious to many of us, as the veil of life experiences may still remain to be drawn wide.

For those who are cognizant of this fact and sort of thinking, how am I to aim for such total freedom, Veda declares the final goal – as the ultimate purushārthā, namely – ’mokShā ’ .

(to be continued – Mee. Rajagopalan – 30/05/2017)