Of the people, by the people, for the people!

No. This is not about democracy.

I read this sentence in some friend’s blog or in some short film’s script that’s now lost - "We live by standards set by people who do not know that we exist."

"What is Dharma? Who decides what Dharma is, for a given Age? Why should something be considered as Dharma in one Age and Adharma in another?" A friend asked me in a temple. I shrugged my shoulders and pointed him towards Lord Venkateswara.

We all live by certain standards, morals, ethics. We inherit most of them from our upbringing, let go off some of them as we grow, add some new things to that list. Nevertheless, every living being who is capable of thought follows a certain way of life filled based of beliefs and perceptions of the world around that being.

The problem arises when people perceive anyone who do not follow their standards to be bad, evil, alien, different and seek out either to change them or to fit them in a frame labelled as ‘uncivilized’, ‘evil’, ’sub-standard’, ’uncultured’.

At that point, boundaries get drawn. Swords unsheathed and blood shed happens to make the ‘uncivilized’, ‘civilized’, to show light to the masses living in darkness, to straighten all the fingers to be of same length.

These swords need not be the physical ones; neither do the boundaries be actual borders lined with barbed wires. Hardest of these are the ones that exist within people’s hearts and minds. These ones do more harm at an individual level than the actual boundaries between regions. When you have a strong reaction against someone, please stop, and introspect what is causing that reaction said Dale Carnegie. Often, that reaction is from our own prejudices.

 

To those who live off the grid, away from herds, follow a different way of life than others, as well as those who seek to enlighten - there is a telugu saying "మాంసం తింటున్నామని ఎముకలు మెళ్ళో వేసుకోనక్కర్లేదు". Just because you are eating meat, doesn’t mean you roam around with garland of bones around your neck. The struggle between individual’s thought and a group’s thought always exists. Often collective trumps the individual. Seeking harmony with that dissonance is hard, more so when you are that 'individual'. In this short span of life, is it so hard to try to harmonize with others? Think about it. 

Live your life and let other live theirs. Why do you seek to alienate if others are not harming you? Why do they have to follow your way of life, your beliefs when they have their own that doesn’t interfere with yours? 

Of course, it goes without saying that truth is ultimate and has to be protected at any cost.

Remember that we all live by standards – some of which are set by people so long back and those people do not even know that ‘you’ exist. These are of the people who lived at that point in time, set as standards by some of those people and made for the people who may come in future.

Know that people change. Society changes. Is that the reason why Dharma changes from Age to Age? Does Dharma translate to 'collective good'? I don't know.

Here I step down my soap box with a surreal story that I read somewhere which runs on the line of -  "A man in a village suddenly sprouts horns on his head. Rest of the villagers kill him that night. By next day morning, everyone but one in the village get horns. That one person is then killed off by rest of the village."