New Year Message for 2011

SWAMI BODHANANDA

Time is a flowing river, so is life. In the flood of time, thoughts and emotions flower and fade and experiences frost into memories. We may defrost memories in reflection and integrate them into the flow of life as wisdom. But it rarely happens. Often memories remain a frosted unbearable load in our mind. And as we age we increasingly become prisoners of our past. Thus though time brings new opportunities we fail to recognize them and waste precious moments lamenting our fate. But the truth is that there is no fate other than what we make of our past and future in the present.

The year 2011 will bring its own set of bouquets and brick bats, successes and failures, pleasures and pains. Some will win and some will lose; but as the year rolls on some winners will find they are actual losers and some losers will find they are real winners.

Time is a great magician. Like the interconnected principle of Yin and Yang, everything has a little of everything else. Time humbles all, the whole finds itself part of another whole and the process goes ad infinitum. The thistle protects roses and roses give meaning and purpose to thistles. The pointedness of the thorn and the waviness of the flower, like the quanta and the wave function in physics, make up the core of reality.

If you stretch a straight line beyond a point it curves on itself and comes back to the starting point. That is the central theme of life. All enterprises end in the beginning point. The creator is the ultimate destroyer. To the greedy life is frustrating. For the generous life is a play. Winning and losing are part of the game.

All solutions are part of the problem and all problems are part of the solution. The 2008 financial crisis was the result of the unprecedented economic boom of the previous decade. When China prospers America perspires. When America consumes, China conserves. Such is the irony of life.

Spiritual wisdom alone can save us in times of utter confusion and uncertainty. And the situation worsens year by year. The speed of change accelerates and the tangle of complexity gets snarled. The cost of material solutions are becoming more and more unsustainable. Statistical reasoning comes to a dead end. Scientists put up their hands in exasperation. Technology muffles the blossom of freshness and spontaneity. And the human soul weeps in silent agony.

Returning to the SOURCE is the only solution. Reducing needs and sharing resources are the royal path. We no more can afford to wait for a scientific miracle solution. For before science works its magic, the humankind would have long been history.
Let this be the message for 2011.

Is anybody listening?

SWAMI BODHANANDA
Sambodh Sadanalayam
Palakkad, Kerala
26th December, 2010