Letter # 7: "The Frog King"

Our civilisation depends on communication. Once, when having the usual philosophical banter with my younger brother, also a doctor, and I'm proud to say a very prominent professor of public health in Britain, he asked me, "Jas, do you know what really separates us from the animals?" I think, "Here we go again with Raj's wonderful tidbits." My curiosity pestered me. I asked, "What". "The hyoid bone", he said. "Humans have one but animals don't." The hyoid bone is the Adam's apple. It enables speech. Animals don't have one, so their ability to vocalize is less. Of course, my mind immediately goes to spiritual concepts - Adam's apple - Adam - human - the Bible.

So here we are in the computer age, where our speech is converted to the babble of bits and bytes and we communicate over cyberspace, God bless the computer scientists by whose efforts we can communicate so effortlessly and with so many people all over the world in literally seconds. This brings me to junk mail. I get so much, and some of you might consider my mailings junk. No offence. Just let me know and I'll take you off my mailing list. You see, we don't need hundreds or thousands of people to enjoy the spiritual together. We only need two or three - Matthew 18: 20 "... For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."

And now the Frog King:

I often reflect on the statements in the ancient yet still relevant spiritual writings of India, the Vedas, that from the time we are born until we die, that we and all other life forms are always busy sleeping, eating, maintaining our bodies, and surviving. The Vedas also say that we all experience birth, disease, aging and death. These are inescapable. This is true for everyone, and for all living forms. And during this life we are all subject to the passions and darkness of material existence, with fleeting moments of goodness. Indeed material existence is a struggle. “Everyone is suffering”, said Guru Nanak, and he sang that the cure is spiritual. But I try to overcome this suffering by trying to indulge in gratifying my senses and tastes, and trying to “enjoy” life, and it’s fleeting. An amazing fact is that I as a human being am given a huge brain with a huge capacity to think, feel, and direct my actions. But how much attention do I really pay to getting true freedom from the entanglement of my daily struggle? And an essential question is, “How do I go about freeing myself?”
Let me tell you about Shrek-3, a movie that I watched earlier this year. In one of the scenes, the dying frog king is gasping his last breaths as he appoints Shrek, the ogre hero, to be the new king. With his life ebbing away fast, the frog king gasps a laboured breath to tell his queen to remember to pay the gardener the monies owed. Indeed, our chores are not finished even on our deathbeds, even while we’re contending with the final miseries of the body. Then the frog king dies. A fly lands and crawls on his glazed right eye. This tells me that nature will have its way. Our bodies will begin to decompose and to be eaten immediately on death. People will back off and flies and worms approach to enjoy the dead body. To get back to the movie: the fly flies off the dead frog’s eye. But lo, the frog king is suddenly wide-awake. Deftly, he puts out his long sticky tongue and catches the fly in mid air. Then the frog dies. He knew he was dying. He died only after putting the fly in his stomach. What use will the fly be to him after death? I am still amazed by this scene. Hats off to the writers of the scene. It tells me that my greed, or lobh, will not go away even up until my last breath.
Let’s get back to Guru Nanak’s suggested cure for getting free of all this material entanglement (maya)? Firstly, can our large and complex brains help us to figure out the answer by ourselves? Perhaps yes, and if we ponder over the matter for years on end, or meditate and study. Or, if we’re lucky, we could avail ourselves of a transformative teacher, a guru, who might by his grace point us to the right path. Interestingly, the word guru is made up of two syllables - gu which means light and ru which means soul. Guru means the enlightener of the soul. I believe that enlightenment, or transcendence is approachable through diligent personal spiritual practice, and more so if guided by a living teacher. Yes, I have learned a lot from books and films and songs, and still do, but I continue to learn from those that I converse with.
I am blessed that Maharaj Tarlochan Das is delighted to have such conversations with me, and with anyone else who is interested in spiritual matters. I am blessed by his sharing of his spirituality. After he leaves from his visits to Vancouver, I usually go back to being like the frog king - busy sleeping, eating, maintaining my bodies, and trying to survive. But I hope that I will think more about the true purpose of life, even as I greedily swallow what might be my last morsel of food. Wish me luck that the last morsel is not a fly!


God Bless; Allah Hu Akbar; May The Forces Of The Universe Bring You Harmony; Hare Krishna; Radha-Swami; and Nanak Naam Chardi Kala Tere Bhane Sarbat Dha Bhalla.

I wish to express my gratitude for your comments, which inspire me to carry on writing. Please forgive my fallibilities in presenting this material. Also, feel free to send this message on to someone that you might think would like to receive it. If you do send it on, my only request of you is that you send it as it is, in its entirety, and to not alter or modify any of the text, references or authorship information. Thus you will help to give credit or liability to where they are properly due.

Jas Bhopal
Copyright© 2007
“Practicing goodwill makes for a good life."
Tel: 604 273 6641 (also for fax on request)

http://jasbhopal.com/

References: "The Holy Bible" Online version; "The Koran" as translated by SV Mir Ahmed Ali 2005 ISBN 0-9761870-0-0); "The Bhagavad Gita As it Is" as translated by Srila Prabhupada ISBN 0-89213-268-X; The Srimad Bhagavatum as translated by Srila Prabhupada ISBN0-89213-259-0; "I Am That. Talks With Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj” ISBN 0-89386-022-0; The Dhammapada ISBN-10:1-84483-344-5; The Sacred Sukhmani ISBN 81-7205-098-4; Wikipedia.