Tuesday, May 29, 2007

the ultimate 'why?'

here's a mind exercise.

let's ask ourselves the question 'why?' for anything that we do... and when i say anything i mean anything.


why do i go to work?

why am i saving money?

why do i study/ go to college?

why do i aspire for greater things?

why do i listen to music/read books/cook?

... and so on and so forth....

and let us ask the same question to every response we come up with. where do you think this would lead us to?

would you arrive at some ultimate answer? what would be your ultimate answer? do you think each one of us would have a unique answer? or would we all have the same final answer?

watch this space for the answer :-)

(send in your responses and then lets see what we get.)

4 comments:

comingtoterms said...

guru,

this sounds like that great philosophical debate between yagnavalkya and gargi in the upanishads.

Anupam said...

I've discovered happiness by NOT asking the question WHY to most things which I do, and also to most stuff that others do ! It's a really interesting state of disconcern and bliss ... like watching the world from 30,000 feet above

MG said...

i could not write a reply to this post without getting entangled into reasoning and counter-reasoning.

in essence, everything i do (or did) is inspired by an inner motivation to discover the outcome and learn something new.

as i ask myself 'why', i am further entagled into more reasoning and counter-reasoning which makes me wonder if there can ever be an ultimate answer to this question.

manasi

Guruprasad said...

hi manasi :

i agree that we all do whatever we do 'inspired by an inner motivation'.

and most of us, most of the time, do not pause to think too much into the reason for most of the things we do. ('amm khana hai ya gutli ginna hai?')

and sometimes when weo do look into the motives behind our actions, we are usually able to fool ourselves about the necessity/ importance/ nobility/ etc of our decisions.

but if we strip away all justifications and be honest to ourselves, there can be only one ultimate reason, only one ultimate answer to the question 'why?'.

guru