Janmabhoomi versus Karmabhoomi
Wherever we end up anchoring our life around actions that feed our mind, body and soul, we remain children of our Motherland.
Where and to whom we are born is not of our choosing. Our Motherland, our Janmabhoomi, the place of our birth, the home where we are raised and educated, where we come of age, where we first become one with our life, is only a finite moment in the larger scope of the arc of our lives. It binds us to memories of our childhood, both negative and positive. It has connections to relate us to our parents and perhaps theirs. It has history with our tutelage. It defines rather finitely the pattern of our life during a tender moment in our personal history.
Where we go to school, where we find love and perhaps even marriage, where we find our voice, our vocation, our métier, where we make our own home, where we most comfortably rest our head and go to sleep as an individual, alone and without baggage that connects us to human or geographic others—this is then our nesting ground, our home.
This home doesn’t come with infinite longevity either. As we further come of age, as we become newer and updated versions of ourselves, as we find professional growth, as our love life takes on new meaning and involvements, as we discover newer facets to our personalities, we go packing to new locales, with or without human others, and here we set up newer homes.
But wherever we end up anchoring our life around actions that feed our mind, body and soul, we remain children of our Motherland. Whether we look back at her with pain or pleasure, we must strive for connectivity between the past, present and future — a place where we live mindfully today, with understanding of our past and that of our human collective, and where our present is planned with actions that are responsive to the needs and challenges of tomorrow.
A Motherland’s true sons and daughters realise that a homecoming is required of them, even if — and maybe especially if — the memories from that Motherland are unpleasant. They recognise the pain of the past and seek to change the trajectory of those in the present by sowing seeds in their Motherland that will lead to peace, equality, and justice tomorrow.
When we live mindfully, and with conscientious consciousness, we truly are living in Karmabhoomi — that place where our actions make us into the women and men we really are. People who live and breathe with a consciousness that shows their actions are informed about history past are not only acutely aware of the challenges of the present and how their personal choices impact the lives around them. They are doggedly concerned about how those choices will affect the planet for tomorrow and touch lives that come after.
That child who grows up into an adult who is holistic in his respect for past, present and future equally is an asset to his Motherland, a star resident of his hometown, and a beacon of light for generations to come.
To be one with our Motherland, we thus need to be one with the present, and caring about the future. If we love our Motherland, our Karmabhoomi — the land where we act and live today — has to be worshipped as much as our birthplace.
Or else we might be proud of our Motherland, but our Motherland and its citizens hardly proud of us.
Making the present count, being counted as one in this present, that alone makes our presence one that lives tomorrow, in our Motherlands, and in lands near and far through our legacy.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)