The Power of Inquiry

One great saintly personality remarked that everyone spends their lives within a series of questions and answers. When a bird rises in the morning, it begins asking questions and searching for answers. When it comes back to the nest at night, it is still asking questions and trying to find answers. Inhuman society the businessmen, politicians, lawyers, artists, farmers etc. all are seeking answers to their questions.
Life is a series of questions and answers:
How to solve our problems?
How to find happiness?
How to avoid suffering?
How to make friends?
How to gain power and prestige?
Of course, in today’s age the series of questions and answers is mostly abouthow to make money.
All the television shows, cinemas, newspapers, magazines, are about these questions and answers.
The Vedic scriptures explain that, now that you are a human being, inquire about who you are. The questions about eating, sleeping, mating and defendingand all of their various sub-divisions exhibit the basic trend of human intelligence in today’s world, but these are unimportant questions.
Who am I?
Why am I suffering?
Where am I coming from?
Where am I going?
Who is God?
What is the nature of this universe?
What is my relationship with God within this universe?
When a human being comes to the elevated platform of making serious inquiry on these subjects, then human life has real spiritual value.
If we really want to digest food, we have to have hunger. If we have no hunger, we have very weak digestion. Hunger is a very important part of life because it gives power to digest and that principle holds true for spiritual knowledge as well. When we feel the urgency and the hunger to solve the real problems of life and we inquire from people who act truly and who reveal the word of God in an unadulterated way, then our human life really begins.
The scriptures tell us that there is a final exam. That final exam is called death. It’s not a horrible thing unless we fail it. Death is neither good nor bad. If we fail the exam of death it’s a miserable situation. But if we pass that exam it’s the most glorious opportunity in all of creation. We can pass this examination by using our life to seek answers to the questions of the purpose of life and then following those answers which will lead us to the right path and destination of our life.

• Radhanath Swami