ARANI SERIES
Spark 58
Friday, April 2, 2021
GEMS OF THOUGHT FROM VIDURA-NEETI
Work hard and finish your work by daytime so you may sleep peacefully at night.
Work hard for eight months of the year so that you may take it easy during the four months of the rainy season.
Work hard during your younger days so that you may spend your old age in contentment.
Lead your life in such a way that you can be happy even in your afterlife!
(Vidura-Neeti1, chapter 3, verses 67, 68)
The eight chapters (33 thru 40) of Udyoga Parva (5th canto) of Mahābhārata constitute the advice given by the minister Vidura to the king Dhritarāshtra. These go into 592 verses and cover such a wide range of topics that several hundreds of such messages as this one (Spark 58) can be collected from this ancient text. All these are highly relevant today also and help us in living more conscientiously and effectively.
Geetā and Upanishads, no doubt, throw a lot of light on human values but a text like Vidura-Neeti provides such valuable elaboration on aspects of right living that we can more easily recognize our errors and come upon the wise ways of judging and acting.
In the example given above, there is an appeal to us to shake off our bad habits of procrastination or doing things at the eleventh hour. The beauty of doing things well in time and celebrating the leisure we get after the successful completion of our duties is described so well here. The last line extends the logic to the period ‘post death’ too!
“Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal,” sang2 Longfellow. Wise men of India had said it in epics like Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata in their own elegant language. Their words, found here in Vidura-neeti too, awaken in us a greater sense of good thoughts, noble speech and virtuous actions. When we are aware of far better choices than before, we will surely spend our days in more meaningful ways (to attain dharma). All this paves the way to spiritual awakening, leading to Self-knowledge and liberation (moksha).
Notes:
1 The original verses:
\ divasenaiva tat kuryāt, yena rātrau sukham vaset
\ astha-māsena tat kuryāt, yena varshāh sukham vaset
\ poorve vayasi tat kuryāt, yena vriddhah sukham vaset
\ yāvad-jeevena tat kuryāt, yena pretya sukham vaset
2 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his classic poem, “A Psalm of Life”.
Swāmi Chidānanda