Rebirth

Can we really control what we are born to be?

I had this discussion with my mother. There are a few people in this world who think the grass is always greener on the other side. So, all they do day and night is talk about people who are sucessful. You and I may be their favorite topic of discussion. "Oh, she is so lucky to have her daughters settled!", "That girl is so lucky to have such a husband", "They live in the USA, so life must be really good!", "She earns so much money for no work", "She has a grandson!!(Her greatest achievement in life!)"..... a few things you might hear from such people. Lets call these people "mongers".

These mongers get into our skins to such an extent that we cannot but help think of them day and night. So, now we have mongers thinking about us and we thinking about them.

The Vedas say that a man will be born as that thing in his next birth about which he was thinking most at the time of his death. Therefore wise men advise people to think about God as much as possible during their daily life, so that the mind gets conditioned enough to think about God at the time of death.

The following story appears in the Bhagavatam (Bhagavat Mahapuranam):

There was a King Bharat, who was the son of King Rishabh of the Solar dynasty. King Bharat ruled the earth for a long time in a just manner. The country India or "Bharatvarsha" is named after this king. The king had five sons. When the time came, the king divided the kingdom among his sons and retired to the forest to perform tapas.

One day when the king went to the riverside for his prayers, he saw a pregnant doe that had come to quench its thirst. Suddenly, there was a huge roar. The doe got frightened and jumped into the river to get to the other side. But, because of shock, the doe gave birth to a fawn in midstream and itself reached the other side of the river and died. King Bharat was moved to pity at the plight of this fawn and rescued it from the river. He started taking care of this fawn like his own child. He was so attached to the fawn that he forgot his spiritual pursuit. Day and night he was absorbed in the thoughts of this fawn, now a deer. Even so when King Bharat was about to die he was thinking about the deer. As a result, as soon as the soul left King Bharat's body, it was born as a deer in a nearby forest.

The story goes on to say how the deer(King Bharat in his previous birth) had to earn a human birth and then in the human birth (as Jadabharat) had to live without any attachment to any material thing in order to attain moksha.

Now, back to my discussion about the mongers....So if the mongers think about us day in and day out, they will be reborn as somebody like us. The world surely will be a better place to live in.

Having said that, if we keep thinking about them, we may have to be reborn as them. This won't make the world a good place. So for the good of this world, we have to shut out such people in life. Whenever the mind wanders to them, "switch off", think about God. You then at least have a chance to think about God at the time of death!