Forgiving has never been easy for me. Being a Sagittarian (which is a fire sign) on one hand and the venomous Snake (my Chinese sign) on another, I would always place honour above forgiveness.
Recently, a friend mentioned that his prime learning from our two great epics –Ramayana and Mahabharata – is that one should stand up against dis-honor. Both the epics almost came across as scriptures professing honor (and by extension vengeance) instead of professing love. I was quick to resonate.
This is a healthy dialogue with a reader who raised objection against the concept of a Pada-yatra. This contains the original article, the objection & response.
Letting go is not easy. Each of us holds on to certainty, to security, to convenience, to the sphere of the ‘known’. I had a similar issue. All my life. Until I did an experiment that my master had exhorted many of us to do. My master, the late Guruji Rishi Prabhakar (founder of SSY), regularly undertook a padyatra, a lone voyage, by and large on foot, as a mendicant. This is actually an ancient practice favoured by Adi Shankara, Buddha, Mahavira and Swami Vivekanand among others.
He gave a definite purpose to it: The purpose was to see God in whoever you meet, make yourself useful wherever you go, and to find security in the middle of the manifest insecurity.
Letting go is not easy. Each of us holds on to certainty, to security, to convenience, to the sphere of the ‘known’. I had a similar issue. All my life. Until I did an experiment that my master had exhorted many of us to do. My master, the late Guruji Rishi Prabhakar (founder of SSY), regularly undertook a padyatra, a lone voyage, by and large on foot, as a mendicant. This is actually an ancient practice favoured by Adi Shankara, Buddha, Mahavira and Swami Vivekanand among others.
He gave a definite purpose to it: The purpose was to see God in whoever you meet, make yourself useful wherever you go, and to find security in the middle of the manifest insecurity.
