As we near the end of this year and get ready for the next, it may be helpful to recall a Japanese parable. Chokichi was a good-for-nothing servant. Being chronically forgetful, he couldn’t hold on to any job for long, thus he had drifted from house to house and served many masters. One day his master told him: “Chokichi, this is the death anniversary of our principal ancestor, and the priest will be here soon. We must get the traditional offerings ready. So hurry to the market and get some carrots, dock, wild potatoes, mushrooms, and lotus root—these five things.”
Chokichi’s master gave him money and sent him off to the market. By the time Chokichi reached the market he had quite forgotten what he came to buy or even why he had gone there. So he just wandered in that area. Seeing some cakes in a shop window, he bought and ate about a dozen of them. Then he entered a bar and spent the remaining money on wine. Finally, he returned home grumbling that the money was not enough. The parable goes on to describe what happened when Chokichi returned home—but we will leave it at that.
If we are wondering, what has this story got to do with us? The answer is: everything. Do we see any parallels between Chokichi and ourselves? If we look deeply within our hearts, we may discover that there is a lot of similarity.
Our forgetfulness may not exactly be similar to Chokichi’s. Perhaps some of us have a prodigious memory. But how many of us can claim in all honesty that we have not forgotten anything in life? Returning home after picking up groceries and realizing that we have forgotten a few of the things that were needed is common enough. But that is still something that can be rectified without much difficulty. But what do we do when we forget things for years and never even realize that we have forgotten them?
As youths we often have rosy dreams about the future, of achieving success, greatness and recognition. In time we make new friends, develop new interests, cultivate new habits. Our childhood dreams are often forgotten or fall by the wayside. Instead of working toward our goals, we perhaps do things that take us away from it. Years later, many of us look back at our lives and sigh, “Ah, I had once dreamt of becoming this or doing that. I wish I didn’t waste my time getting distracted.” Usually it is too late to rectify the situation by then.
Such forgetfulness can occur in our relationships as well, when we have to deal with marital issues, or when we deal with our colleagues in a workplace, or with relatives and friends. Suspicion and selfishness, envy and jealousy, can produce only misery. When our lives lack mindfulness, our lower nature gets the better of us and we behave in ways that destroy rather than heal. When relationships are shattered, we look back in bitterness or sadness or bewilderment—and then the realization dawns and we feel, “Ah, I could have handled this differently and things might have been different.”
Something similar can occur in our spiritual lives as well. When we begin our spiritual practices in earnest, we exude the spirit of hope and confidence. Time is, however, a big destroyer. Somehow something goes wrong somewhere and our life gets sidetracked. I still remember a middle-aged man who came to our monastery in Mumbai a little over 40 years ago. He told me that he had studied in the Order’s college near Kolkata (Vidyamandir, which is adjacent to Belur Math). He said he used to be punctual for his daily prayers and meditation. He read Vivekananda’s books and derived much inspiration from it, which also helped him in his studies. After graduation, he focused on his career and his family, he threw himself into it so fully that he lost touch with his devotional practices. He achieved much in life, but he also lost a lot. One fine morning he was startled, he said, when the realization hit him hard. It dawned on him that he had not prayed, meditated or thought about Vedanta for thirty long years! When he remembered the days of his youth, he was filled with remorse. Barely suppressing his tears, he said he had wasted thirty years of his life. Which was not true, I assured him, but he was inconsolable. He felt he had deprived himself of the chance to grow spiritually, which would have helped him deal more maturely with his anxieties, fears and failures.
Imagine a diver who is getting ready to plumb the depth of the sea, getting distracted by the beauty of the shells and stones scattered on the beach. Instead of going deep down, what if the diver starts filling his bag with the stones and shells. Equally foolish would be those who forget why they had chosen to lead conscious spiritual lives and busy themselves instead with the very things they had sought to conquer and transcend.
We would expect that, with the passage of time, our spiritual qualities would grow and increase. But life pays no homage to logic. Experience teaches us that life has its own laws, which are not always logical. In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas á Kempis observes:
“Oftentimes we perceive that we were better and purer at the beginning of our conversion than after many years of our profession. Our fervor and profiting should increase daily: but now it is accounted a great matter, if we can retain but some part of our first zeal.”
Why does this happen? One reason is that we forget ourselves and we forget the goal. We are so busy with the world around us that we have little time to think of anything else. How often do we ask ourselves: Who am I really? What is the purpose of my life? Where is my life taking me? Will what I am doing now take me anywhere near to where I want to be?
Not many people ask such questions. Among the few who do, many are often terrified by the questions, because these don’t have easy, comfortable answers. The more we ask, the more we are confronted with the enormous gap between what we should be doing and what we are actually doing.
Such self-questioning is not easy. Facing oneself is sometimes more difficult than facing even the most difficult person. What many lack is the capacity and courage to face their own selves. To be social is all right, but to do so in order to escape from oneself is not healthy. All forms of entertainment, beyond a certain limit, are nothing but modes of escapism. They may have their utility and justification but, if used as escape routes, they become stumbling blocks to a struggling spiritual seeker.
A time comes when we feel that we just cannot proceed further without periodically reviewing our lives. How do we do it? Simply by sitting calmly with a prayerful attitude and looking back at life, beginning from our childhood, as far back as memory can take us. We can let our life proceed before us like a film. The different incidents, the varying experiences come up one by one before the mind’s eye. We should be careful not to be overcome by the feelings of self-criticism or self-pity. We are expected to witness—not sit in judgment over—our own life. This mental exercise helps us take stock of our life. We then know where we stand. We know where we excelled and where we erred. More importantly, it helps us to plan our future.
A look back must always be followed by a look forward. When mountain climbers set out to scale a peak, they look back—and then they look forward, up at the summit. The look back helps them to know how far they have come. The look forward helps them to know how far they have yet to go. The summit calls them, challenges them, and reminds them always of their goal. That is why we must also look forward. The goal of the spiritual seeker is God-realization or, what amounts to the same, Self-realization. Let us remind ourselves of the goal as often as we can and gather up all our forces to reach it as soon as we can.
A look back and a look forward can even be converted into a daily exercise. We then need not run back to our childhood every time. Taking stock of the day every night would be sufficient. This is what many spiritual teachers advise. Before we retire for the night, they ask us to think of all the things that we did that day. Remembering the things that we did well encourages us. The things we ought not to have done remind us of the weaknesses we are yet to overcome. We are then asked to surrender to God all of our actions done on that day, and to pray for grace and protection. The teachers also advise that it is best to glide into sleep gradually with a prayerful attitude, silently repeating one’s mantra if possible.
We have all been born countless number of times before. And we shall be born countless number of times in the future (I hope not!), unless we become spiritually enlightened and manage to get out of this seemingly endless chain of birth and death. If we have not become illumined yet, it is only because we keep forgetting the goal. In every one of our past lives we had the opportunity to get out of this mess called life, but we didn’t, for the simple reason that we forgot the goal, our ignorance clouded our understanding and veiled our memory. Whether we like it or not, let us face the truth that forgetfulness has been deeply rooted in us, it has become our second nature. Can we overcome it?
Thankfully, it is only our second nature, not the first. The practice of looking back and looking forward will help us get rid of this awful habit of forgetting the purpose of life. The time to begin correcting past mistakes is now. The place to begin doing it is here, wherever we are at this moment.
If not now, when?
If not here, where?
When we look back a year from now, hopefully everyone of us will see a better me, a newer me, an illumined me.