Search for Wealth Within - Swami Atmashraddhananda

Part I

Paradoxical Nature of Life

Life is full of paradoxes. By its very nature, life is such that pairs of opposites always co-exist. Sorrow and happiness, heat and cold, wealth and poverty, abundance and scarcity—life is filled with these opposites. Paradoxes are everywhere, in our personal as well as collective lives. Mother nature, out of her infinite bounty of resources, has bestowed on us enough to fulfil all our basic needs and yet millions live everyday under the dark shadows of hunger, malnutrition, homelessness and water scarcity. Despite all the hype about programs for social change, the poor keep growing poorer and the rich, richer. International summits on peace and harmony involving astronomical figures of expenditure, continue to be held side by side with ever greater accumulation of deadly weapons and formulation of military strategies.

At our personal level, too, we encounter this paradoxical nature of reality again and again. Even though we ‘know’ quite reasonably what is noble and good, yet we fail to make use of our knowledge in the hour of need. We begin everyday with a fresh resolve to overcome our shortcomings, but how often we look back at the end of the day with gloomy eyes over our failure to carry out our resolves! We fix our ideals but our actions do not reflect our intentions. And to crown it all, somehow we have learnt to live with these paradoxes and to justify them.

(To be continued in May, 2005 issue)

© "The Vedanta Kesari" (July, 1999) published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Chennai 600 004. Website: www.sriramakrishnamath.org. Reprinted with permission.

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