” ‘जन्मदिन’ तो सब लोग मनाते हैं, परन्तु अपने ‘जन्म’ का मह्त्व, उद्देश्य भी समझना चाहिए।”

Swami ji said…

” ‘Birthdays’ are given great importance and a lot of planning and preparation goes into celebrating them with great pomp and show. The grander the celebrations, the better it is, we feel ; as the event is then talked about for a long time. This is what we tell ourselves. An inevitable question that everyone hears around the time of their birthday is – “How do you plan to celebrate your birthday?” And, the elaborate plans and well chalked out preparations for the approaching birthday are discussed, in great detail, with a lot of excitement and happiness, by us.”

” But let us, for a moment, imagine, if instead of this routine question, questions of a different nature were put to us! What if we were asked –
“So, what have you discovered about yourself this year?”
“Now that you are 50, are you closer to understanding the purpose of your life than you were when you were 20?” “What wisdom can you share about life with others after experiencing its unpredictability over the years?”

” Wouldn’t these be better questions? Wouldn’t they make us all reflect on our lives? But, perhaps, they would also make us uncomfortable, as it is possible that while chasing materialistic gains – money, fame, power, recognition – we got distracted and deviated from the main purpose of our life; our spiritual growth. While we might have the house of our dreams, the fanciest of cars, a sky rocketing career to show off; and, a great family by our side after our many ‘birthdays’ ; we could have hardly made any progress as far as spiritual awareness, self – improvement and development are concerned..”

“It is thus important to move on from purely the celebration of one’s जन्मदिन … ‘birthday’… to the most important discovery of one’s life’s purpose – ‘जन्म’ का ‘उद्देश्य’।”

” While we often refer to life as a ‘journey’, there is one major difference between the other ‘journeys’ that are undertaken by us and the ‘journey’ of our lifetime. The duration of our life is not known to us. None of us know when this journey can come to an end all of a sudden. Each ‘birthday’ is simply a milepost telling us how much distance we’ve covered in this journey in terms of our age. What ‘it’ is unable to tell us is – ‘How much of our ‘journey’ is left !’ In fact, every birthday, must be a reminder of the lesser and lesser time that we are left with, after each passing moment, and, to spend it in self-reflection and realise who we truly are !”

” Time is the only true wealth of our lives; one that starts depleting from the moment of our birth. It literally makes us ‘poor’ if we waste it by living a meaningless, selfish life, but , enriches us if we our mindful of all the things that we put into our body – emotionally, physically and spiritually. Are we watching, reading and listening to content and matter that will help us in finally reaching the spiritual goal of our life one ‘blessed’ day. Can we honestly say that we are good individuals and love all, help whenever and whoever we can and give to those who need ? We need to remember that this lifetime must not be spent only to gain temporary worldly pleasure, but, to seek permanent spiritual bliss too.”

” So involved are we in celebrating the ‘birth’ of our physical form; our perishable ‘body’ – that the purification of the imperishable ‘Atman’ appears to have taken a back seat completely! This birth should be utilised in cleansing the ‘Atman’… so that the ‘ruh’ can merge with ‘Parmatma’ in this lifetime itself.”