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The role of the ruler
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Swami Suddhananda |
A man in need of healthy food may not afford to get it. It is the
responsibility of each man to see to it that the other man gets his
need but really it is a tall order – just nice to be talking about –
whereas in reality the solution lies only in the hands of the people
who have power and position.
They can certainly impose a tremendous discipline among the
masses, creating awareness for the fellow human beings. When the
people see that the ruler is not interested in carving out a place
for himself to be immortal and he has no personal motives behind his
actions, the whole nation shall follow such a ruler and that is the
easiest method to change the mood of a country or the world. Such
leaders are visionaries, who have seen beyond this perceptible world
and have understood their own essential nature.
Nothing shall lack in such a country as even
nothing lacks in a family where the head of the family has given
himself for the family’s sake. First all the members are fed and
then only he eats. Rarely we have come across such rulers in the
history of the world – except in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata
where either the kings themselves are wise or they were guided by
wise men, their Gurus, the wise men who have seen their own nature
as ‘Consciousness’ that is All-Pervasive and thus have gained the
identity with the whole creation.
They have nothing to gain or nothing to lose by
doing an action. Such people alone can rule who can be full of
compassion, so much so that even in their cruelty, there shall be
the touch of compassion. The punishment they give is a boon, their
reward is the recognition of other man’s greatness. They are so full
and complete that nothing can create jealousy in their hearts,
neither anything can invoke the feeling of inferiority. They are
second to none as there is no one else and that is why they do not
exist even as ‘one’. Indeed indescribable is the wisdom.
The leaders must learn to identify with the whole
creation and not with parts. That is why today we are in such deep
trouble. We are no more humans, but Indians, Pakistanis, Americans,
English, Australians, Africans, etc. We are Hindus, Buddhists,
Muslims, Christians, etc. We are Democrats, Capitalists and
Communists – Oh god! How many factions and factions! Always the
leaders are responsible for the factions. The leaders are few and
they must change their vision. Or people with vision should be in
power and position. Then only they are fit to rule the State,
Country or the World. Their mind should be essentially with
everything, but particularly in the state or country, they rule.
The whole State must be the body of the ruler as
even the whole industry should be the body of the industrialist, as
the family should be the extension of the body of the family – head.
Then only the ruler can feel the pangs of the people, share in their
joys and sorrows, transferring and adjusting the prosperity of one
region with the poverty of another. If even ‘a’ man goes without
food, the ruler should not eat. Opposed to this, we have the most
obsessed politicians, economists, scientists and saints – the most
luxurious class who always claim to ‘struggle’ for the uplift of the
poor, while they are busy enriching themselves in the process.
If still that idea of getting ‘richer’ is there
in the mind, instead of already being rich and fulfilled in himself,
how can such a ‘poor’ man rule in the garb of a ‘ruler’, prime
minister, administrator, industrialist or saint?
A clear example today is a ruler who breaks down
when his son is only ‘lost’ in a desert, but does not mind ordering
to kill thousands of sons and husbands in a battle far away from the
home, a ruler who has all the wealth of the world and enjoy them
thoroughly when the ordinary man in the countryside toils hard with
nobody to look after his bare minimum necessities. Bureaucrats and
officers demanding higher and higher wages, while the tiller rots in
the mud with no medicine, no food, no roof over his head. He
produces the best rice and eats the worst, produces the best fruits
and eats the rotten, produces the best clothes, and lives with a
loin cloth! How can any such ruler, in whatever position he may be,
live a peaceful life!
It is all the expressions of a grown-up body with
too many thoughts, but no direction. Such people struggle to have a
body which can eat more, wear more, luxuriate more, see more, listen
more, experience more. They must have the biggest and most spacious
mansions to keep the body in and lo, the whole world shall not be
enough to satisfy their thoughts. And we have such men; at all
crucial positions, who rule the fate of the mankind! They do not
know the place they rule, they do not identify with the people they
rule.
Thus if one knows about his own body, the needs
and demands of it, the mind or the thoughts never pose a problem.
How beautiful it is to know that the world of food grains realise as
thoughts only when hunger sets in! If we keep the hunger physical,
we can satisfy it with any available hygienic food, but the moment
we make it the hunger of the mind, ‘I’ the individual, the body can
never, never cope with it. Once the rich men, intelligent men,
recognise this, there would be a spontaneous sharing with other
people.
Many a government machinery has such wings which
direct such surpluses to the less fortunate. But this is done to win
votes. Many religious organisations are doing it to win new
converts. These political and religious-political groups are the
first people who want to gratify themselves and there is no better
way of doing it than to take it all in the name of the people – to
have the cake and to eat it too!
Therefore, education becomes more important where
the children and youth are given the right values – not fixing their
eyes only on the riches but something subtler – their own self. With
today’s education they are not only not capable of solving the
problems around, but they are the first problems to themselves and
they don’t know how to handle themselves.
Somewhere it must happen. Either through leaders.
Or through the youth who are the rulers of tomorrow. And our own
body is the first thing to be understood – and ‘stomach’ is good
enough to begin with.
Food is not only important and the basic
necessity for keeping the body alive, but also sense object wise the
food or the food – eating involves all the sense organs. It not only
satisfies our hunger but also satisfies all the five sense organs –
the sound, touch, form or colour, taste and smell. The sound of food
being served or the spoon touching the plates, the warm or cold
touch, the different colours of different dishes with different
shapes of food stuff, the myriad tastes, and the lovely aroma – all
these at a time absorb the complete personality –
‘I-am-hungry-individuality’, - and there is only one ‘Consciousness’
left over. Usually, nobody cares to keep track of it and goes on
attributing the happiness to the food, whereas the food only helped
in absorbing all the thoughts – the thoughts that once were
triggered by the same food and in turn triggered for the food to be
at one’s disposal now!
Once we are aware of this fact, we can really
enjoy our food or eat our food instead of being eaten up by the food
and thereby suffering diseases like diabetes, cholesterol, cirossis
of the liver or obesity, etc. Then suddenly we shall discover that
we need indeed very, very little food to keep ourselves alive and
our thoughts of food kill us more than the food itself! The food for
the sense organs is never a must or a necessity i.e. without those
sense objects one is not going to collapse. The need boils down to
the basic bare minimum – food for living and not living for food.
Naturally, such a man enjoys enough leisure to
pursue the creative arts. The leisurely mind can be very, very
creative and from that mood of total contentment shall emerge the
most beautiful flowers of a cultural renaissance. If each one of us
begins to live like this, first for our own sake, and then naturally
the country or the world shall benefit depending upon the power and
position we enjoy to make our thinking effective not only in our
personal life, but in the national and international scene. Such
persons alone adore the positions they hold.
Ordinarily, the post adds glamour to an empty man
and such a man will cling to the post for his life, as he is afraid
to lose his identity without the post. He is afraid to be a
non-entity. He wants to be a master without being a servant. How can
a teacher be good unless he is a good student? In reality, such
people become slaves in the master’s robe. And that slavery begins
with themselves – slavery to their own thoughts. Such a person has
still not seen that he is the one who illumines his thinking, but is
the one who is handled by his thoughts – the ‘I’, the individuality.
Swami Suddhananda
Samvit Sagar Trust
Tiruvannamalai
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