Breathing in Vain

There was a time when I was deep in books, old and new. Even though it were the mystic books of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa (an early 20^th c. Buddhist monk from Tibet, author of The Third Eye) that attracted me most, my weakness is Acharya Rajanish, popularly known Osho. Every time I go through one of his works, I used to convince myself that Osho has summerised his best advices, in that one book. My assumptions lasted only till the moment I opened his next book. Once Osho said, “A comfortable, convenient life is not a real life – the more comfortable, the less alive. The most comfortable life is in the grave. If you are alive there is inconvenience.

If you are alive, there are challenges. If you are alive then every moment you have to face reality, encounter reality. Every moment you have to be ready to change and to move. Reality has no security and that is its’ beauty. Life has no security and that is its’ beauty. Because there is no security, there is adventure. Because the future is unknown, nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. That’s why there is challenge, growth, adventure. If you miss adventure, you miss all. If your life is not that of an adventure, of a search into the unknown, then you are living in vain.”

This quote I recalled once again, as I went through a few thrilling Indian success stories. The first was the story of a visually impaired 23 year old guy (blind from 11 years) from Hyderabad who has become India’s first blind CA (Chartered Accountant). The next was the sterling success story of a poor Tamil girl, Prema Jayakumar, who came first in the CA final exam last year. What is special with her is that she is daughter of a poor Auto Rikshaw driver in Mumbai and live with her family in a one room house in Malad there. The third story is about a guy who got into Google! Naga Naresh Karutura, son of illiterate parents is an IIT pass out, who has no legs. I’m sure that there are many more, who truly live according to the parameters set by Osho. The sad thing is that the number of people truly living is very low when compared to the many who breathe in vain.

Joseph Mattappally