Acharya Tulsi
How life should be, that is a question? The question is not new. It is eternal. This question must have agitated many people in ancient times. There are many people in the present age who are involved with this question. We have no specific ground to say that this situation would not prevail in the future.
Some people live, but why do they live? And what kind of life do they live? They are not interested in thinking about it. They live because they have to live. They have no time to think about the question like "Why" and "How". Nor is their understanding developed along those lines. Their destiny is to live. They are unaware about when and how the chariot of life is moving on and at what point it would come to a halt. They are aware about their rushing around from morning till evening, about food, clothing and housing so that they could continue to maintain their families.
There are some people who live with a dream, they live with a resolve. Their dream is to see all means of comfort lying at their feet. They go on thinking about turning that dream into reality, they make plans and they look for resources and also endeavour to put those plans into action. The aim of their life is to accumulate to the maximum articles of consumption and to use them to the maximum extent. While trying to reach that goal, they forget that there is a limit to the accumulation of things as well as to their consumption. No person has been born in this world so far who would have accumulated all the wealth of the world. And probably there has been no person either who would have enjoyed his accumulated wealth in a gratifying manner. In this context, a person can find a new direction if there is a high and meaningful goal of life.
There are also some people who do not live just for the sake of living. They think independently about life. They do not live by flowing with the current. The goal before them is to acquire what they desire. They wish to attain something higher. They do not wish to accomplish a task in a short time. They think only in terms of what they could really do they let their imagination fly only that far. They have a positive point of attitude. They look at every incident in its proper context and seek inspiration through it. They do not sway from their faith even in the face of difficult situations. They do not allow any selfish consideration to prevail upon them and do not let their moral stand or principles be shattered on whose basis they weave the warps and woofs of their life. Their devotion to their resolve is so deep that even the widest storms cannot shake its roots.
Let a meaningful goal of human life be fixed. Let man's movement in that direction never stop anywhere. Let the light of his faith continue to dispel the darkness of his mind. Let his devotion to resolve be like a sturdy rock even in adverse circumstances. Let him develop a mental attitude to exercise restraint and check indulgence in enjoyment in the midst of the prevailing culture of lack of restraint and over-indulgence. Anuvrat aims at relating such small things to life. It means small resolves to face his small problems of life. When small problems are taken into account, they come before us in a magnified form. The anuvrat philosophy is subtle. Instead of preventing a world war, it aims at changing the mentality that provokes war. It thinks about actions first before thinking about the result. If the action is right, then the result cannot be wrong. If this teaching of anuvrat goes deep into human life, then the answer to the question as to ‘what life should be' would be given by man himself.
