Have you ever thought of yourself as a river? It is a useful exercise. I sometimes think I am a river. I feel that is what we all are—millions of rivers, all flowing towards one destination, the ocean. As rivers we are all different from each other. When we reach the ocean, however, we lose our river-identity. We are no longer different rivers. Our differences evaporate when we empty ourselves into the ocean. We become the ocean. Maybe “we” is not the right term. The rivers were many, so “we” made sense then. Now it’s just the ocean and it is one. I am the ocean.
But we are getting ahead of our story. Let us begin from the beginning and trace the course of the river of our life. If we interview a river, what would she say?
I was born on the heights of a mountain peak. My real source, though, was somewhere even higher. I heard later that I came from God. That may be true, but I don’t really remember my time with God. For, immediately after my birth I started moving away from God. I began to descend the steep slopes of the mountain all at once. The going was not easy. But I was young, full of energy and bubbling with enthusiasm. I was also curious. My karma drove me down. Sometimes in spite of myself.
I came crashing down the mountainside. Many wondrous sights greeted me on the way. I saw a dazzling variety of stones, colorful and glittering. Innumerable plants and creepers nodded their heads as I rolled past them. They became my friends. Their beauty captivated me. I was enthralled by the sweet fragrance of flowers and the aroma of the soil. The twittering of birds was sweet music to my ears. The touch of the bent boughs of trees was soothing and assuring. Everything looked so promising. I was still a child, and to a child everything is promising. Full of hope and cheer I moved on.
I met several other streams on the way. I chatted with them and played with them. Sometimes they helped me by cutting a way across a formidable obstruction in my path, and at times by donating to me a little of their own water. My childhood thus was nourished by the love, care and companionship of wonderful friends. I too helped them whenever I could. After some time most of them went their way, I went mine. Perhaps we were never to meet one another again. Memories persisted, sweet and bitter. Sweet, of the good times I had with them. Bitter, that I couldn’t live with my loyal friends long enough to be able to return what I had received from them. I moved on, experiencing life, learning from life, and discovering life.
It was no small sacrifice on the part of my parents. To see one’s little child rapidly moving away would break the heart of any parent. But my parents knew that that was my path, my destiny. Keeping all personal considerations aside, they wiped off their tears and bade me farewell. They cleared the path for my journey. I was too young to know and understand the numerous sacrifices they had undergone for my sake. As I grew up, this thought was to bother me again and again. I wondered, “How can I repay this debt? Can this debt ever be repaid?” I moved on. More questions, more doubts, more anxieties welling up in my heart.
My formal education began. My teachers began to arrive. I was no more a stream now. I had grown. From a tiny trickle of water that had begun its journey hundreds of feet above the plains, now I had grown into a rivulet and I needed to know the future course of my journey. A different kind of life awaited me, life in the plains. How was I going to face it? How was I going to meet the challenges?
Teachers came. They were also rivulets, but were bigger than me and had travelled a longer distance. They had more experience and, what is even more important, they were eager to share it with me and my friends. Under their careful training and guidance, my intellectual horizon expanded. They shared some of their water with me and my friends, and along with it, gave us the push we needed to move on. We were grateful to them. But can a mere expression of gratitude repay the selfless labors of our teachers? We might have served them, we might have paid them their fees. Still, had we really given back everything we’d received? Can anyone really do it? This thought remained weighing on my mind. But I couldn’t remain still. To move on was my dharma. And I went ahead.
I had learnt now how to cut my way across steep, rocky hills. I was taught how it was judicious not to meet every obstruction head-on, so I sometimes went around mountain ranges. My teachers taught me how to be accommodative with regard to the nonessential details of life and how to follow the path of least resistance. But, they said, you should never ever compromise the basic principles of life. In matters of opinion, they said, learn to swim with the current. But in matters of principle, stand firm like a rock!
“What are the basic principles of my life?” I wondered. Build your life, they said, on the strong foundation of truthfulness, self-restraint, love, sacrifice, and purity. You will receive many things, you must also learn to give. But what is it all meant for—all this cultivation of virtues and giving and receiving of things? The teachers said, all these were preparations to reach the destination.
The destination? It had never struck me before that I had a destination to reach. Until then I had only looked forward to immediate goals before me: a mountain to be crossed, a distant valley to be reached, and the like. I had looked forward to graduating from my school and from the university. I had dreamt of a successful career and a happy family. But now I learnt that I had a destination, and unless and until I reached the destination my journey couldn’t be complete. An incomplete journey is an incomplete life.
At once I remembered how I had seen some other rivers ending up nowhere: they had dried up, burnt and consumed by their own follies and carelessness. The sun-god had lifted them up and taken them away, to begin all over again. Failure meant repetition. They had failed in life, so they had to die and repeat life. I had seen some others merging themselves completely in larger rivers. They had surrendered themselves to the collective. The strain and anxiety of the journey was too much for them. They could bear them no longer. Individual courage had failed, confidence to face the world had been shattered. They had surrendered their freedom to chart their own route, they had surrendered their own selves and sought security in the collective. They were a defeated lot. Even they would have to begin all over again. I had to reach the destination myself, not riding on the shoulder of somebody else. The teachers had told me that my destination was the ocean. I think I heard them say “God” whenever they told me about the ocean. The two were probably the same.
As I encountered life in all its varied colors, this thought of God bothered me now and then. I asked myself, when shall I reach the ocean, my destination? How far is it from here? How shall I reach there? The questions became more persistent and I longed to know the answers. I had heard somewhere: “It is a mysterious law of nature that as soon as the field is ready, the seed must come, as soon as the soul wants religion, the transmitter of religious force must come.” I did not know then much about religion, certainly nothing about what true religion was. But the questions related to my “destination” became stronger and stronger. Perhaps the field was ready, for soon a momentous event occurred in my life. I saw for the first time in my life a huge, luminous river, flowing with a divine rhythm, calm, composed and compassionate.
My spiritual education began. The big river—my Guru—told me what this life was all about. My ideas about the ultimate destination became clearer, my ideas about myself became clearer, my ideas about the future course of my journey became clearer. In my school days I had heard about the basic principles of life. Now their significance was revealed to me. Life had a higher purpose, much higher than all the ambitions I had foolishly cultivated until then. The goal of life was to realize God, to reach my destination, my true home, and to become one with it forever.
The Guru taught me the method and showed me the way. I felt myself rejuvenated. A new kind of power entered into me. Until then life had been more or less meaningless. Now I discovered the meaning and couldn’t rest satisfied until I reached home. I had lived in many houses and each of them had felt like a home. For the first time in my life, I began asking myself: which is my real home?
Yes, a change had taken place. The ocean was no more a mere “destination.” I realized at last that it was my real home. Somehow I had become separated from it. Some said it was due to māyā. Others said it was due to my disobedience to God. Many said it was my own karma. It mattered little what it was due to. The reality was simple enough: I had been separated from my real home and I had to go back to where I belonged. The path was shown to me by my Guru. All I had to do now was to abide by his instructions. I moved on, armed with the blessings and love of my spiritual teacher.
My own personal experience taught me many things. I learnt, for instance, the law of sacrifice. I had received such a lot from nature, from my parents, teachers and friends, that I had at one time wondered how I could repay it all. Now I knew the secret. Nature had provided me with air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. She had not asked me for anything in return. I resolved to offer her my dedication to keeping the air clean, water pure, and food healthy and abundant. People around me had given me so much. I had received love, I knew I have to love all in return. I had received help, I have to give help. I had received inspiration, I must now inspire others. Whatever I received, I have to give back. It would not always be possible or even necessary to compensate in some way the very same people who had given me all these things. That hardly mattered. I have to find a way to return to the world whatever the world had given me.
Now I also understood two more things: first, whatever I sent out came back to me. If I loved others, others loved me back. If I smiled, they smiled. If I frowned, they frowned. If I complained about them, they complained about me. If I hated someone, they hated me back with equal ferocity. Seems obvious, but a lesson that is often forgotten. The other thing I learnt was that the more I gave, the more came back to me. I began to share my water with others—fellow human beings, animals and plants. Fishes and other aquatic creatures found in me a charming host. Sitting on my banks people practiced meditation and I helped them by the melodious rhythm of my flowing waters. I confirmed the ancient law by my experience. I gave love and I received love. I gave help and I received help. I prayed for others and found others praying for me. In my own heart I found the perennial spring of love, bliss, strength, and purity. But it took a while to realize all of this and practicing it was by no means easy.
I saw the havoc created by egoism, selfishness, pride, jealousy, licentiousness. Puffed up with pride some rivers had swollen up and flooded the adjoining areas, causing destruction of life and property. Blinded by their own vanity and sensual cravings some rivers had lost track of their destination and were meandering along crooked paths taking them more and more away from the ocean. Trapped in the snares of attachment to persons, places and things, some rivers had simply discontinued their journey. They had stopped moving and become lakes. They did some good, no doubt, to the people and places around. But their progress was arrested. They became stagnant. The goal was forgotten. In spite of the good they were doing to a few, their life’s purpose remained unaccomplished. They would have to come back again to continue their journey.
I saw all this happen in the lives of so many around me. I trembled with fear. Will my fate be also the same? Will I ever reach my true home? In sheer desperation I turned to God and prayed for protection and guidance. That strengthened me somewhat. My faith brought me hope that one day I will be home.
My real home, I was told, was infinite. A finite, little me was to reach there one day. And I would live in it for ever, I thought. Some days later I learnt that reaching this real home, I don’t just get to live in it, but I become the home myself. The river meets the ocean and merges into it fully, inseparably. The river doesn’t live in the ocean, the river becomes the ocean.
What a shock it was when one day they told me that I was not a river really. I was the ocean, they said. That felt like arrant nonsense. How could a finite, little river be mistaken for the infinite, unbounded ocean! But slowly I learnt to accept the idea. I was told that it was a very ancient idea, taught in books called the Vedas. Also, that the illumined ones—those who had merged into the ocean—had actually experienced it in their own lives. Intellectually I began to appreciate the truth behind it. It was nice to feel that I was in reality someone big, infinite in every respect, untouched by any kind of narrowness and impurity.
But intellectual understanding and actual experience are quite different things. The former does not automatically lead to the latter. Much greater is the misery of one who understands the truth but has not reached it than of one who doesn’t know the goal and doesn’t care for it. My heart began to pant for the goal. They said this intense longing was one of the vital prerequisites to reach the ocean.
I reminded myself again and again: life is uncertain. I must find my way home as quickly as possible. I must somehow connect myself with my home, the ocean. A voice that called itself Vedanta whispered to me that I was never really disconnected from the ocean. I am eternally related to the ocean, I am eternally one with the ocean. All I have to do is to continue to flow along the channel that already exists between me and the ocean. If I do that without taking detours, I am sure to reach the ocean one day. I learnt that, after reaching the ocean, I will discover that I never really left the place. I was always there. The river-me is a dream. The ocean-me is the real me. That is what I always was and always will be. Wow.
I smile to myself and move ahead. Faith and hope have now taken charge of my life. A new kind of vitality is coursing through my veins. Now there’s no stopping until the ocean is reached. No time to sleep now, for I hear the words coming from afar: “Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached.”
An early version of this reflection was published as editorial in The Vedanta Kesari (January 1990). A longer version, given as a talk at the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society on June 12, 2012, can be downloaded from the Store.