Waking Up

It is said that when The Compassionate Buddha entered a town, he radiated such security and joy that crowds gathered around him just to gaze at his blissful face.

" Blessed One," they asked timidly, "are you God?"

" No, " he said.

" Are you an Angel? "

" No".

" Are you a Prophet? "

" No. "

" Then who are you? "

"I Am Awake. " he said.

This is the literal meaning of the word "Buddha", from the sanskrit root budh, " To Wake Up".

We all usually think we are fully conscious, fully awake. We all are quite certain that all our friends, aquaintances and near and dear ones too are awake.

We think we are fully active in what we normally call Living life: pursuing private satisfactions, trying to earn a living through respective careers, living out the dailyroutine, accumulating material possesions, trying to live in harmony and peace and playing our own parts in our relationships.

Such a life, The Buddha would say with compassion, is the life of a Somnambulist. We are sleep-walking and sleep living every single moment of our lives.

Today if we look around we can see that we live in a sleeping society- asleep and dreaming of wealth and pleasure and power even as the environmental foundations of our lives are being eroded by the unconscious forces of greed, ignorance, hostility and conditional love in all our relationships.

Its high time we wake up fully from our deep slumber of these vices and learn to give to life and our relationships rather than be ever ready to be at the receiving ends always.

Lets be " Awake ".