Peace on Earth: Drawing The Line - LoC To Infinity

By AMIT SHEKHAR

There'sa crooked line drawn on land: One side of it is called India, the other side, Pakistan. People living on either side of this human made line could well kill one another - in fact, precious lives have been sacrificed to ensure that the line stays where it is.

Allegiance to this line, called the Line of Control or LoC, is considered a great virtue, by both sides. And yet, 'India"and 'Pakistan"did not always exist the way they do now.

A quick recap of political history reveals how, worldwide, such lines have been drawn and re-drawn, time and again. Artificial concepts are created, they are around for some time, and then, they die out.

Yet, we cling to them in a show of great possessiveness. Twining ourselves with transitory events and issues, we get bogged down in the play of maya or illusion, losing sight of the whole.

Down the ages, individuals who have this ability to 'see"beyond the transitory, have tried explaining to the rest that we live in illusion, that the very nature of our existence is ephemeral.

Today, scientists declare that even the sun will die one day. Kabir said much the same, hundreds of years ago: "...Suraj marihain, chanda marihain, marihain dharni-akasa...sadho, yeh murdon ka gaon. .." (The sun will die, the moon will die, the earth and sky will die...oh saints, this village - this creation, this universe - is of the dead.)

In another poem, Kabir says: " Rehna nahin des birana hai/ Yeh sansar kagaz ki puriya, boond pare ghul jana hai..." (One doesn"t stay on in this desolate world forever/ The world is like a ball of paper, it will dissolve away when water falls on it.).

All round us in the galaxy, we know that even constituents of the cosmos are going through a birth and death cycle; stars are being born; stars are dying. Since ages this has been happening; it is happening now, and will happen in future too.

What, then, is the fate of our own sun, our planet, our homes and lives, our India and Pakistan, our international borders? They spring from nothingness, exist in nothingness and then, get lost in nothingness. Yet, we will live and die for these ephemeral things. We cling to maya.

Neither life, nor death, is permanent. Once either becomes permanent, it becomes Absolute, a state that is beyond life and death. In the relative world, war and peace, light and darkness, pain and pleasure and love and hate, for example, states of opposites, will continue to coexist. Even the silly will coexist with the profound. So no one state can exist to the exclusion of the other.

You cannot have only peace, only love or only light, how much ever you wish it were so. Yin and Yang, Shiv and the Shakti, Krishna and Radha, are in perfect equilibrium in the cosmos. Their play is this universe, without and within. This unceasing play of opposites generates infinite hues. Murder and mayhem exist; so do loving and caring.

In a manner of speaking, there is constant change. But look back, and you"ll find that nothing, in fact, has changed. Man'snature has not changed. The nature of non-ending creation, preservation and destruction has not changed.

The cosmos is like a flower with infinite petals. While continuously, some petals are dying, new petals are sprouting. Hence the Truth, in all this infinity, is well beyond any concept of relativity. The Truth is something that is even beyond the Absolute. It is indescribable.

"Infinity was born not, will die not; you can take nothing out of it, put nothing into it," wrote sages. So, India and Pakistan, love and hate, pain and pleasure, being and non-being - all these pairs of opposites lose their significance in the infinite nature of the cosmos.

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See also: Peace of Mind, Peace on Earth, Life and Beyond, Love and Happiness, Body Mind and Soul)