ENJOYMENT OF SWEET AND HOT DISHES IN LIFE

Several devotees are posing a problem on the concept of equally enjoying the happy and unhappy scenes in the life like the sweet and hot dishes in the meals or like the happy and unhappy scenes in a cinema. The enjoyment of the scenes in the cinema may be different from the enjoyment of the sweet and hot dishes in the meals. In the cinema, the happy and unhappy scenes roll alternatively, but, those are related to the story of somebody else. In the case of meals, you are directly eating the sweet and hot dishes. The enjoyment of sweet and hot dishes can be the exact simile to the enjoyment of happy and unhappy scenes in one’s own life. The reason is that in both these cases, the enjoyer is directly involved. In the case of cinema, the enjoyer is not directly involved because the scenes are related to somebody else in the story. Therefore, as you have grown, you have become capable of enjoying sweet and hot dishes in the meals. In the childhood, which is the beginning stage of the life, you might have felt difficulty in enjoying the hot dishes and you enjoyed the sweet dishes only. The elders start giving hot dishes to the child in the childhood itself so that the child will not be bored by sweets in course of time if only sweets are continued. In the case of continuing the sweets, the child will never like any sweet in its life even after becoming adult. In course of time, you have started tasting the hot dishes introduced by elders with great reluctance and inconvenience. But, as time proceeded, you have overcome the reluctance and inconvenience in tasting the hot dishes. After sometime, you have developed the taste for hot dishes also and slowly you have started enjoying the hot dishes like the sweets.

The concept in our issue arises from this simile itself. The concept is that you may develop reluctance and inconvenience to the unhappy scenes in the beginning, but, in course of time, this reluctance turned into liking and the inconvenience turned into attraction. Not only the hot dishes, any worst material like the sour tobacco, sour wine etc., also develop reluctance and inconvenience in the beginning. But, after sometime, people become addicted to these materials to such extent that they cannot live without tasting these materials! Therefore, coming to the actual concept, you may have reluctance and inconvenience to the unhappy scenes in the beginning for sometime as you had the same to hot dishes in your childhood. But, after sometime, you will enjoy the unhappy scenes also in the life. The continuous happy scenes will certainly bore you and lead to permanent unhappiness. If you eat the sweets continuously for sometime, you will never taste the sweet again in your life time! Without tasting anything, you will get bored and such state itself is the state of unhappiness. Hence, the unhappiness is inevitable. Instead of developing reluctance to the inevitable situations, it is better to enjoy the inevitable situation. By avoiding the unhappy scene always, you cannot get rid of it since continuous happiness also results in unhappiness only. Since the unhappiness is inevitable, better to enjoy it so that you can maintain the state of continuous happiness in the life. This continuous happiness is called as bliss, which is the divine state of God. In fact, God is continuously enjoying the unhappy and happy scenes by involving Himself directly by coming to this world as human incarnations continuously.

The Gita says that you can achieve anything by practice (Abhyasena tu…). This practice can be implemented in the beginning stage of facing the unhappy scenes so that in course of time, you will start enjoying the unhappy scenes also. Anyway, you have to start tasting the unhappy scene one day or other. In such case, why to postpone? If you face the unhappy scene now itself, start facing it and try to enjoy it, instead of trying to avoid it by praying God. Realized souls never pray God to avoid the problems and difficulties in the life. The unhappy scene acts as interval between two happy scenes. An unhappy scene is like tasting the sour pickle between two sweets. The sour pickle tasted in the interval gives you the real taste of the sweet once again. If you taste the second sweet after the first sweet, the second sweet cannot be enjoyed. This is the reason for the elder people eating the sweet and hot items alternatively in the meals. After facing some unhappy scenes in your lifetime, you will certainly develop the taste of enjoying the unhappy scenes so that you will enjoy both the sweet and hot scenes in the life alternatively without any inconvenience and reluctance.

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