Stay in the game or step out -your choice.

Every morning I wake up thinking what to do to fill the day up with creative and productive activities that would benefit me from drifting into a state slothfulness and boredom which would lead to depression. One of the things i kept myself busy with is to stick to my daily routine of take care of my children's need like getting them ready for work with coffee and takeaway food as they often do not like to eat  breakfast as it is too early to eat as they decided for themselves. Then I do the laundry and whenever I feel up to it clean the house. I have been doing this for many years now ever since i lived with my daughter and now my son too has joined us. I try to figure out how or what to prepare food wise for their dinner by checking what is available to cook in the refrigerator and often worry about our financial situation ever since the COVID-19 displacement of our lives like everyone else all over the world. Life is no doubt hitting the rock bottom for most of my friends and the shift caused by the pandemic in everyone's life especially in financial situation has turned many a normal situation and relationships sour except for those who are well established already.

The well to do, the rich have many excuses not to help the poor citing giving a fishing rod instead of a fish analogy whenever they express this reasoning and it is the not so well to do that finds themselves scouring deeper into their pockets for change to help the needy. We have millionaires and billionaires in my country whose interests from their assets alone can support a whole community of poor people but chooses to further enrich themselves in the name of being successful in life. Most will tell you how they had come from very poor and humble beginnings and how they had striven to make it to what they are and thus everyone else should follow their ways. It is as though everyone has the same mindset and opportunities like them. Having made it big in life they soon forget their humble beginnings and hard work to become misers hoarding as much as they can. Gone are their humility and compassion towards the less fortunate making sure that their hard earned wealth stays and keeps growing till need becomes greed. This is the world we live in, a life of dog eat dog world. 

This is how the average dual thinking mind perceives life in a day to day state of existence, right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, rich and poor...opposites. An awakened mind strives to become free from being stuck in this rut day in day out until it seems like there is no way out and one is destined to rot in the same hole one has dug for oneself all these years; and awakened mind would rather die than submit to such a bondage. However in many instances one is held back or trapped by circumstances that is the result of past commitments or perhaps a sense of responsibility or duty towards any given situation that stops one from total renunciation of life as it is. One simply cannot up and leave it all without ramifications for oneself and to others. Perhaps this is the sacrifice that is required for one to embark upon the road towards  the ultimate self liberation. To become free of all attachments to family and friends, to home and comfort, to security and well being, this is what the sadhus and Sunnyasi India has committed themselves to, a life of complete detachment from this physical world and existence.

When choosing to step out of the game it is no more looking back, no more regrets or reflections over what has been and all the bridges are burned behind you, this is true detachment. The human mind is not capable of undertaking such a tall order, a mind that has become comfortably numbed by soft and comfortable living we have been pillowed with. The Western mind especially will find it much harder to make such a choice and being homeless in the West is not the same as letting go of the physical to embrace the spiritual like it is practiced in the East. In the West being in the state of homelessness or destitute is not by choice but from economic downturn or in some case due to one form of addiction or another. A true renunciate is one who have lived life fully having gone through the thick and thin, trials and tribulations and walk out of the game with full intention of seeking the ultimate sate of liberation from this cycle of life, death and rebirth.