An Essay on Journal of Non Resident Indian (www.JNRI.NET )

What is the meaning of life? This question has cropped up in the minds of people from time immemorial. Even today this questions crops up almost every day, even though you do not read about it on popular web sites and newspapers. I know a very close relative who is very young and still he talks about committing suicide because he finds no meaning in living to old age.

I recently read about Leo Tolstoy and just today I read his essay “A Confession’. In this essay he writes how in his middle age, he started harboring thoughts that his life was meaningless and that it would be better for him to end it. Tolstoy was so much preoccupied with suicide that he would not take his gun to hunting trips, fearing that he might turn it on himself. He would not carry a string lest he should use it to hang himself in his room where he changed.

Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.

Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge -- were all respected.

Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk and felt that they approved of me. The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a married woman..... Another happiness she desired for me was that I should become an aide-de-camp, and if possible aide-de-camp to the Emperor. But the greatest happiness of all would be that I should marry a very rich girl and so become possessed of as many serfs as possible.

I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache. I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labor of the peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder -- there was no crime I did not commit, and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively moral man.

Tolstoy stopped thinking about suicide only after he accepted Christian teachings. Only after he found God, he found answers to his questions, “What is the meaning of my life? Why was I born?” and he stopped thinking about suicide.

In this essay I wish to deal with the perennial question about the meaning if life.

When I was a teenager, I was preoccupied with worldly success. In high school I got the best grades and got admitted into the presigious Indian Institute of Science. I spent the next five years at this prestigious institute and I was so busy trying to get the best grades that I had no time to think about the meaning of life.

During my high school years, I befriended some atheists who were older to me and they seemed more learned too. Under their influence, I too became and atheist and remained so for decades, until I came to America again towards the end of nineteenth century.

Going back to my years in India, after graduating from IIS, I got married and I came to America for higher studies. A few years later, my marriage broke and I spent a few miserable years in poverty and privation. Then I remarried and rebooted my family system, so to speak.

In those youthful years, I committed some sins. I hurt some people. But I repented for those sins and tried to pay compensations whenever I could.

But I never doubted the purpose of my life and never contemplated suicide like Tolstoy did. The reason is that being the eldest brother, I have fulfilled my duties and have helped my younger brothers and sisters, all my life. My father died when I was only ten. So, after coming to America, I had to pay for the dowry at the time of all my sisters marriage. Then I helped my brothers financially and made them financially secure.

If I had only tried to help myself grow rich and powerful, if I had never helped others, I would not have been as happy as I have been.

A few years ago, I read a quotation by Swami Vivekananda where he says that even a little bit of work done for others awakens the power within.

Because I have done not a little bit but a lot of work for others, I have had tremendous power within me, which have enabled me to stay healthy and happy.

I have also helped to maintain the web sites where we have published hundreds of pages of inspiring and morally uplifting essays, articles and poems. These web pages and web sites linked to from www.HinduTempleHouston.Net and www.MyAds.org are viewed by large numbers of people every day. When I look at the access log each evening and find so many people reading the material I have published, I get tremendous amount of satisfaction and inner peace.

I am firmly convinced that if I had worked only for myself, if I had amassed wealth only for myself, if I had never helped others, I would have had the same fate as Tolstoy. I would have suffered from great mental anguish and I would have been tormented by suicidal thoughts about the meaninglessness of my life.

Even today the guilt feelings about the hurt I caused to others in the past crop up once in a while in my mind and they tend to weaken me mentally and create a feeling of inferiority. But because in the intervening years, I helped so many people, these bad thoughts do not bother me too much.

Recently I have started studying religion and have started readings Ramayana in English after having published these as PDF files on www.HinduTempleHouston.Net.