Does God laugh? This is what someone asked. And a reply from a friend followed: “I am not sure if God laughs, but I think He smiles. He smiles every time sun rises and every time the moon lights up the sky.” What do I think of this reply?
Sun never rises and moon never lights up the sky; the way we look at these celestial bodies. Sun and moon are always just moving on their respective trajectories. It is we who sees a sun "rising" and we smile at a sunrise because it brings energy to us. Also, when one side of the earth is lighted by the Sun, the opposite side of the very earth falls into darkness! What we see Day here, is called Night on the other side of the same earth! And the idea of moon lighting the night sky is also absurd if we think about it. The light which we see coming from the moon is actually Sun’s light; moon is only reflecting it towards earth! But we take things on face value and hence we see greatness or meanness, good or bad, day or night, light or darkness…
Therefore, it is too difficult to say that God smiles at events of this universe... I think smiling and crying are human or jeeva-related phenomena. Did you ever wonder if plants and trees smile and crack jokes too? And just because apparently they did not, they would become unlikable for us? I think we humans are too narrow-minded and hence judge every other thing according to our own set of principles and customs.
I think if God would smile, God won’t smile at sunrises alone. He would smile both at what we call sunrises and sunsets; both on days and nights; and so on... For God, both of what we call days and night, light and darkness, etc, would appear the same… If God ‘smiles’, God would ‘smile’ always…
There is an interesting episode from Ramayana. Princes Rama and Bharat were so much similar in looks that people often used to get confused about who was who. Some people saw Rama going to forest after he needed to go in order to fulfill his parent’s wishes, to keep his Dharma. Sometime afterwards Bharat went to persuade him to return to the throne and people watched him going on the same path too. Someone asked the other about how come Rama was going on the same path twice; not able to understand who was who! The wise person was able to know who was who. That wise person said something like: “the first one who went on this path was Rama and the second one was Bharat. How I am sure about it? Because first one who went on this path had a smile on his face and he looked no sad; the second one was sad. So first one must be Ram and second one Bharat!”
Is not it interesting that the prospect of losing his right to the throne did not make Rama sad? How could he keep his smile? One can say that he could still smile because he remembered that he was able to obey to his parents’ words! But I think it was more than that. He was smiling because that was His nature! God is like God. We call God nice if we find things appearing favorable to us and we call God harsh if we find things tough around us. But God is always God like!
- Rahul
- Rahul
6 comments:
It was nice reading Rahul like always,
i remember after marriage i went to village for few rituals and my mom in law told me not to use hand pump in the night cuz hand pump will cry.... i had no option but trust out in laugh.....so its just a case of narrowness or illitracy,
this post is more about correcting your friend...original views are limited.. not a good read.
Thanks Priyanka...
For the handpump and such anecdotes, I think we should see their real purpose. If we run a handpump in the night, its metallic body will make much noise which can disturb others with its sound who would be sleeping. So they must have made this saying. I don't think it is a case of either illiteracy or narrow thinking :) I loved this episode you shared. Thanks a lot...
@Anonymous: No, it was not about correcting my friend. Actually a text was shared by Devdutt Pattanaik on his Facebook post where he was talking about if Upnishadas and the scriptures had humor in them or not. If Rishis and sages in ancient India cracked jokes or not. There, someone had made that comment which I put in inverted comma “Not sure if God laughs, but I think He smiles seeing Sunrise…”. I had replied to that comment there in 1-2 sentences but later more thoughts kept coming to my mind and hence I wrote it and shared it here. It was not a case of settling personal scores or something like that. I don’t know that person and I only extended the thought.
I had read this episode from Ramayana and the explanation in Vivek Jyoti magazine which is published by Ramakrishna Vivekananda Ashram, Raipur. I just happened to remember it and thought to share it (added this portion afterwards in the original piece) because this question of “when does God smile?” was connected with it. I found the explanation of recognizing Lord Rama in a happy face, very profound and hence just wrote it…
Film actor Mike Myers (whose guru is Deepak chopra) wrote a book (I think) title is "god is laughing". Why? Because he gets the joke. :-)
According to Vedanta, God is Akarta.
Ok, I did not know. I think God is whatever we want Him to be. So no one is wrong and no one is right.
Thanks for mentioning that God is Akarta... Would love to read more on this, so making a note of it...
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