Wisdom Munches 18: What is fixed in life?

Transcript

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area of movement is finite is limited so Krishna uses this example to talk about how we are like the wind and we could say destiny is like the sky that means we are more specifically we means our free will so we have free will to choose but within certain limitations so for example right now each one of you had the free will to whether come for this program or not come for this program you have the free will to decide whether to hear the talk attentively or let your mind wander in various directions at the same time we as human beings have certain limitations if you want to leave you can’t just fly away from here we can speak in human tongues each of us may know 2,3,4 languages we can’t speak say we can’t make sounds the way animals make sounds some of us can a little bit but we are not as natural as that so we have free will but there are certain limitations to that free will some of us may have great musical talent some of us when we sing people look forward to when we start singing some others when we start singing people look forward to when we end singing maybe we don’t have the ability so we all have certain limitations within which we function so those limitations within which we function is what is called as destiny and everyone has these limitations so daiva or destiny is about acknowledging the limitations within which we function so our daiva, destiny can come to us in different ways we consider the journey of life then we all have a significant level of our destiny comes to us as our starting point so for example the family in which we are born the country in which we are born the genes that we get shape us significantly they can shape our complexion they can shape our physical features they can shape our IQ level to some extent so there are certain parameters which are fixed right at the beginning so now if we consider a cricket match as a metaphor now in a cricket match the pitch is fixed not in the sense that there is some cheating going on over here but in different countries the pitches are in particular ways some pitches may be batsman friendly, some pitches may be ballers friendly some pitches may be spin ballers friendly some pitches may be fast ballers friendly whatever it is so now the batsman or the batsperson to be more politically correct nowadays is expected to accept the pitch that is there there is no point in complaining oh why is this a baller friendly pitch well if that’s the pitch you have that’s the pitch you need to play on so the players who are playing don’t have the free will generally to choose the pitch but how they play on the pitch is up to them so similarly for all of us the pitch of our life is to some extent fixed for us and we can’t really change that much having said that destiny also determines certain things there could be some major incidents in our life that could be destined that means that maybe during the course of our life we might meet with some accident we might get some disease or we might we might not win a lottery but we might invest somewhere and we get returns that are just like winning a lottery we might get some good luck so both good and bad will come upon us during the course of our life and that is also fixed by destiny to take another example to illustrate this just continue the cricket example first say okay batsman has to play on a particular pitch and while the player is batting on that pitch at that time maybe in the opposite side there are some bowlers who are really terrific bowlers they are terrific bowlers and they are terrible for the bats player so they have to just endure those bowlers don’t try to play any aggressive strokes just wait it out and then there might be some bowlers who are inexperienced or not that good and then those bowlers you can capitalize on them maximize the scoring so once the team is fixed we know this is the team then there are certain things which are going to be good certain things which are not going to be not so good so similarly during the course of our life there are certain phases where good things will happen to us and there are certain phases where maybe not so good things will happen to us if we have this understanding then so much of life will start making more sense to us so destiny determines how much we can use our free will so that means