A Molecule in Heaven

I went for my haircut this morning at the Empire Shopping Gallery. While sitting outside waiting for my turn, I was thinking about people's idea of heaven.

Many people live a religious life with the intention of being admitted to heaven when they die. Heaven in their view is a place of perfect bliss and happiness--everything good about the earthly life without the pain and suffering: the company of loved ones, good food and perfect living environment where everyone goes around pursuing their hobbies, like playing the harp.

The problem with this idea of afterlife is that it is so limited. We are not able to imagine any kind of life that is vastly different from what we experience here. We see immortality as a continuation of everything that we cherish in this life. Heaven is just somewhere up there, occupying the same 3-D space that we know so well. And life consists of living as humans with the kind of pleasures that we are used to--things that titillate our senses and stimulate our taste-buds. 

Why can't we imagine an afterlife that's vastly different? An afterlife that will make everything that we care for now inconsequential and irrelevant. We'll look back at our earthly life and see how limited our minds were, how foolish and childish we were to think of heaven as some kind of pleasure palace where we'll be reunited with our loved ones. Think of a child who believes his toys are all that he ever needs in this world and imagine him being in a toy-store with all the time in the world and parents who would buy him anything he wants. Wouldn't the toy-store be heaven to the kid?

A river is not able to know what 'life' is like when it merges with the sea. Is a river's heaven a place where it can continue flowing majestically, irrigating large fertile plains and being praised for being a mighty, life-giving source of water to its surroundings?

We are like rivers who do not know the life of the sea. The sea does not have the petty concerns of rivers. It has its much vaster universe of water swarmed with myriads of new lifeforms. It is a world of its own, even though both rivers and seas are part of the same circulation of water on the planet.

Just like the river which do not grasp the sea, the clouds, the rain and lakes and as part of the global circulation of water, we humans only see a small fragment of the vaster life of the universe of which we are part of. We are not able to think like a 'star-child', who sees suns and planets, stars and galaxies as part of a larger scheme of divine life. Why should life be limited to a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum in human timescales?

Our brains, complex evolutionary machines they may be, have no idea what it is like to be a bat, navigating its way around using echolocation. Do bats 'see' things like we do? We can't even see into the ultraviolet range, but so many birds and insects do. The world of flowers look a lot more beautiful to the bees. Is bee heaven a more beautiful place than ours?

Let's don't fool ourselves into thinking that all religion does is teach us how to be good so that we get rewarded in heaven. If you are happy with being 'religious' that way, you are missing out on the real heaven, which is much much more than you could ever imagine. 

Chuck your mediocre idea of heaven. Touch a drop of water, imagine the vibration of the water molecules within and try to understand where heaven is for them.

The True Reward of Giving

I actually missed 1 blog post last week because my workload has been crazy lately. I am determined not to miss another one this weekend. So here I am, typing these words on a Saturday night and probably by the time I finish, it is already Sunday morning.

I had lunch today with Myra and Paul and we had a good time catching up. Meeting up with friends, exercising and updating this blog, makes a perfect Saturday. I was talking to Myra today about my golden rule on helping others: give and expect nothing in return.

The best form of charity is one that's done anonymously. That way, you have no expectation of any form of return at all. You simply give and forget. It is not something that's easy to do because as humans, we always expect gratitude. We expect someone to be at least appreciative of what we have done for them. 

That problem is, when you give with an expectation, you are setting yourself up for a fall. It might not come in the form that you want or you might not think that you are getting back a good return. You are in effect imposing a debt on the recipient.

You spend the rest of the time, unconsciously being an emotional debt collector, keeping tab on all those whom you expect a favour in return. This is not good karmic management. You make life complicated that way. 

When you give, you are actually making a karmic action, which has consequences. But you want the consequences of your action to just bring about whatever good it can to the recipient.  To expect something in return is put an entry into the accounts receivable of your mind. You've sent an emotional invoice to the person you are trying to help.

But isn't that a naturally thing in all human interactions? True. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  That's the law of karma. When you give without expecting anything in return, you are not trying to stop the effects of karma (which is impossible) but in actual fact, allowing karma to find its best reaction.

You see, every good deed does bring you some form of karmic return. Just that it does not necessarily need to come directly from the person that you just helped. The goodwill that you inject into the universe will always pay dividend in unexpected ways. You have cleared many emotional obstacles for yourself in that one moment of selflessness. You have worked out the karma of the situation by not constraining it to react in a specific way.

Trust karma to find its best course of action. And by giving without expecting anything in return, you are a karma yogi par excellence. By freeing your mind from any expectations of return, you have greatly unburdened your mind. That in itself is already a great reward.