We call it the night, The mere absence of the sunlight…

Author Raja Krishnamoorthy / Kitty - Mar 15, 2024

Raja's Musings on Dharma:

It was 1.30 am early morning, or you may say beyond late night. As I got up to go to the loo, I noticed the beauty of the bright window, against the thick frame of the night’s darkness and the sheer beauty of the night enthralled my mind. I stood watching them all. It was amazing.

The quietness so powerful, with its gentle but strong enveloping of everything. No human sound. No animal noise. No birdcall. Not a hint of a vehicle. Even the large trees outside seem to collaborate in silence. And when you are almost convinced about it, a gentle breeze and a few leaves flutter helplessly and nature does a “thumbs up” almost saying “I got you on the wrong foot, isn’t it ?”

The night is so romantic, so beautiful, so evocative…I reflected.

I was asking this question, what does night mean? What does the darkness of the evening really mean? And I realized that there is nothing called night or darkness per se, other than the absence of the light from the sun.

We call that the beauty of nature. The earth rotates and as a very natural phenomenon, there is an exposure to the sunlight which we call the day and a moving away from the sunlight for part of the earth which we call as the night. The sun is the same, the earth is the same. The only dynamic lesson, such a beautiful lesson of life itself that in creation the opposite realities are to be held together in balance.

What an amazing way in which nature creates this. First the duality of one which is held steady, the sun stays steady as it looks like and the rest of the planets including the earth move around. So there is “static” ness with dynamism, that's one part, one part of the duality.

And then there is the earth which is rotating and we interpret this rotation as day and night. Again a time of brightness and a time of darkness and these seem to be essential. During the day we are awake, we struggle, we strive, we work hard into activities we are and then the evening comes and the night sets in. We are tired, we rest, we are asleep and this is not just about human beings, it's about the other beings, the birds, the animals.

Even the plants. Their behaviour changes, apparently they give out the carbon dioxide and the human beings are breathing out carbon dioxide, they take it in and they give oxygen to us.

Such an amazing lesson in nature that for creation and existence to continue needs to hold the opposites in balance and any imbalance soon we see how it affects the very existence. So we complain about environmental disasters, and environmental exploitation because we just lose sense of this balance.

By the way, this holding of the balance in opposite or holding of the opposite balances in equity and harmony is the very principle of dharma, the Indian word dharma. So when they say “dharmam nilaikkattum” in Tamil we say that “let dharma persist”.

The real appeal to human beings is to not get carried away one way or the other because the moment you get carried away one way or the other, there is an excess that happens. The excess could be of consumption, the excess could be of power, and the excess could be of usage and exploitation. Excess exploitation of nature leads to environmental imbalance and serious consequences.

Excess desire for power leads to control and dictatorship and therefore exploitation of the human species itself. Excess greed leads to vandalizing human property. Theft, robbery, cheating, a whole lot of things. So when the imbalance takes place, the fundamental truth is a human being treats others different from himself and he does things that he may not like to be done to himself.

For example, one doesn't like to be exploited by others but thinks that he has the right of exploitation. One doesn't want to be controlled by others but wants to control. One doesn't want to be cheated, or duped by others but chooses to cheat or do. So whatever you are not granting to yourself, when you exercise that on others, then you are violating the Dharma. But fundamentally, if you are human enough and you recognize the value of peace, wholesomeness would be so amazingly, amazingly powerful that all of us as a civilization, as a society- would have a fabulous coexistence.

As I stood there looking at the beauty of this darkness and night, slowly these thoughts travelled through my mind and I smiled and said thank you.

“Thank you darkness, thank you night. Thank you so much for the lesson stated in silence!

In awareness & Love

Raja Krishnamoorthy

15-3-2024-8.00am