The Four Wheels of Life
Bhagavat-Sangi-Sangasya
The Four Wheels of Life
When we look up at the sky, we see many beautiful birds. There is an interesting lesson we learn from these little birds. The small birds which fly at lower altitudes are seen vigorously flapping their wings to somehow keep themselves up high. But if we look higher up, we see the hawk effortlessly gliding in the air. It does not even twitch its wings. Even if there is a storm, it would just tilt itself like a rudder in a boat. How does it manage to stay up there in perfect equilibrium? The secret lies in the art of balancing. The tiny birds struggle hard to balance themselves and rigorously flap their wings. But the hawk has mastered this art perfectly.
Human life is like a car. This car belongs to God. God has appointed us as the chauffeur of the car. Now imagine you just got a brand new Lamborghini and you entrust it to your chauffeur. He arrogantly feels, “Ha! Look at my new car. I can do whatever I want with this.” Isn’t this going to be completely illegal and unjust on the part of your chauffeur? Similarly we cannot do anything with our lives, because it is not ours. It has been entrusted to us by God, to serve His purpose, which is to find our way back to Him.
Now, this car has four wheels – our health, career goals, relationships and our spiritual endeavors. All four need to be perfectly balanced. Only then the car would move smoothly, towards the destination. Just as, even if one tyre is punctured, the car cannot move even a few meters ahead, similarly even if one of the four are neglected, our life will not move towards its goal.
Health, on a physical and mental level, requires a balanced diet, balanced sleep and adequate exercise. Not too much of time should be spent on maintaining the body. Nevertheless, it is as important because without sound health, we will not be able to utilize our God gifted intelligence to balance the other 3 aspects.
Career goals are equally important since we need to maintain our families and contribute to the society. But our career should not become our passion, so much so that we forget our families, neglect our spiritual life and disturb our health. On the other hand, we should not even be too much attached our families and become lackadaisical in our professional and spiritual life.
Our spiritual activities like regular meditation (japa), listening to discourses, studying the scriptures and voluntary services are very important to make sure that the car is heading towards the destination. It is like the steering of the car. At the same time, we must make sure that our spiritual activities do not become a source of anxiety for our family members or an impediment in our career goals.
Now, all this seems very difficult. That is exactly why God has given us intelligence. There is no need of intelligence for easy things. So, how to use this intelligence? For that we need satsang, i.e. association of devotees. Devotees have also realized these four aspects of their lives and are trying to balance them. By observing how they are using their intelligence to achieve this Herculean task, we'll get a good idea of how to do it ourselves. Hare Krishna