Celebrating one's birthday is a great way of reciprocating love and affection to near and dear ones. It is a nice way to inform some one that we care for them and also show our love and feelings to them. Birthdays are celebrated in thousands in any community. Personally with 2500+ connections in facebook,Linkedin ,Insta, I send greetings no less than 30 per day on an average. But post coming to Krishna Consciousness I have started wondering we spend billions of dollar in celebrating some thing which has relevance till we exist in this life. Do we prepare to celebrate our real birthday. Liberation from Life Cycle.
Bhagavad Gita. 2.13
देहिनोऽस्मिन्यथा देहे कौमारं यौवनं जरा । तथा देहान्तरप्राप्तिर्धीरस्तत्र न मुह्यति ॥ १३ ॥
As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.
When we know that our very existence in this world is temporary ,then in addition to celebration of the day when we were blessed with this body ,should we not invest our time in preparing for the day of our real birth.
The material opulence,wealth,relatives, fame,praise,education ,whatever we have earned in this life is for sure will fall apart over a period of time. We spend our full energy in maintaining the same,growing the same and when time comes we leave all as it is and move on.. It is like little children playing with sand and making house on sea shore and when parents start going back to hotel/home the sand houses remain there to be washed out by next waves. So when we spend energy in decorating our house and organising big birthday bash let us also spend some time to prepare ourselves to welcome the real birthday , the day of being liberated from this material world.
Well easier said than done, How do we prepare us and what are the steps.
Srila Prabhupada writes in " The Science of Self Realisation
“According to Vedic civilization, the perfection of life is to realize one’s relationship with Kṛṣṇa, or God.… All living entities are parts and parcels of God. The parts are meant for serving the whole, just as the legs, hands, fingers, and ears are meant for serving the total body. We living entities, being parts and parcels of God, are duty-bound to serve Him.”
And to make ourselves offerable to Krishna Srila Rupa Goswami says in Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu which in turn has been translated and commented by Srila Prabhupada in simple steps as follows:
Control the Urge of Speech,Demand of Mind,Urge of Tongue,Urge of Belly and Urge of Genital
Avoid
eating more than necessary or collecting more funds than required;
over-endeavoring for mundane things that are very difficult to obtain;
talking unnecessarily about mundane subject matters;
practicing the scriptural rules and regulations only for the sake of following them and not for the sake of spiritual advancement, or rejecting the rules and regulations of the scriptures and working independently or whimsically;
associating with worldly-minded persons who are not interested in Kṛṣṇa consciousness; and
being greedy for mundane achievements.
In this way we shall collect Sukriti ( Pious reactions of our work) and the effect of the same will be permanent in our intelligence . Since Mind ,Intelligence,False Ego continue to travel with our soul till we exist in material world and therefore ,these impacts will be helpful life after life. We will be ensured of receiving results of the same ,birth after birth and finally shall move back to Godhead being freed from the cycle of repeated Birth & Death..Let us prepare us for celebrating that birthday.. and till then we feel humble and thankful to God in each birthday for providing us human body so that we can collect sukriti . We also start our journey to enjoy and celebrate ultimate happiness & Bliss.
Hare Krsna.
PS : this article I wrote on 31st March 2023 on my birthday but forgot to post the same..Now I have retrieved and hence instead of waiting till 31st March 2024 thought of sharing today. Who knows it may be helpful to many of us.
Very insightful