Is perfect life possible?

Kshitiz Gaur

From a very long time, I was speculating about perfection and a perfect life.  And for this I again went back to reading Vedas, Upnishads and beyond that the present cosmology of Hawkins or Nobel Laureate in Physics Sir Roger Penrose. Looking for the meaning of perfection and aim of perfect life described in Hindu religion to Hindu philosophy and probing meaning of life to perfect life. I introspect what actually people, I mean common mass think about the perfect life.  

Google states that ‘perfection is a flawless state where everything is exactly right. It can also be the action of making something perfect. Since perfect things are without fault or flaw, perfection is a perfect condition — everything is 100% great. Of course, perfection is hard to find.”

Is it really possible to live a perfect life or having perfection in life and is there any example of human being lived a perfect life? If in reality, perfect life is possible and such life can leads to solace? The perfect life is painless or it have the essence of pain or it has any smell or taste? Can perfect life made really a good life?  The perfection is in right way is reality or it is virtual discussing a concept on dining table? Yes, people think of perfect life and they work their whole life to make their lives perfect but in the end they went confused to understand actually which life is perfect and how one can make their lives perfect.

Commonly I asked these questions to friends, professionals and people who are writing and lecturing on, “How to live a good and perfect life.” I also went to best sellers books on ‘how to make self happy’ and “How to live good life” but I really missed the meaning of perfection and any example of perfect life in these books and in such lecturers, no doubted they increase confidence and also change some perspectives but perfection in life is not found in it.

I asked same questions to people, common and special and many of them said that ‘yes, they can have perfect life if they get large sum of money,” and I asked people who are really having great money and they replied, “Yes by helping poor and serving humanity they can have perfect life.” I asked from people who are struggling and the most acceptable answer I got, “With the grace of god they can have perfect life.” And those who struggled their life and achieved success they answered, “Through a good health and perfection can be achieved if diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol are in control.”  And for very poor man, perfection is two times meal and good place to sleep.

There are other views on perfect life and some said that through knowledge, one can achieve perfect life. Students stated, ‘Through stability and satisfaction.” But again what is stability and satisfaction for them? The perfect life is really an empirical or rational or materialistic or either spiritual? Perfection is which can be realized or perfection is one which is seen empirically or perfection is by body or by soul? Is perfect life possible by human being?

In Hindu philosophy, perfection is literary taken as freedom. Perfection means freedom from ignorance, freedom from fancies, freedom from bondage and freedom from wrong knowledge. Perfect life is liberation and mostly every Hindu school maintain that only and only knowledge is the key of liberation and with liberation one can live a perfect life. And therefore for Hindus, philosophy started with ‘know they self.’

Katha Upnishads while describing the perfection and showing the path of perfect life in which money, land, happiness and even power is nothing to attain perfection. “The self is hidden in all beings and does not shine forth, but it is seen by subtle seers through their sharp and subtle intellect. A wise man should keep them within self which is knowledge. He should keep knowledge within the self which is great and he should keep this greatness within the self which is the quiet. Rise, awake! Having obtained your boons understand them, the sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over, difficult is the path to the self, the wise tell it” Yama, the god of death, addressing Nachiketa, a young boy in, Katha Upnisad.

The liberation is freedom from bondage, freedom from wrong knowledge, freedom from the fancies of life, to realize the importance of knowledge and coming out from the bondage of false notions. That is the reason this ideology worked for thousands of years because they were not adamant of any particular thought but applied reasoning and logic and welcome new seeds of thinking. On other hand, the salvation is not freedom but devotion to rediscover the self. It is an escape from pain and misery with the aid of divine help. Only the god is rescuer in this painful world and he who devote himself in the almighty get the opportunity to live the live in deliverance.

But Hindu mythology in Ramayana and Mahabharata, the incarnated gods were not able to lived perfect life. The Rama had to struggle to get victory of Adharma and Krishna was unable to stop the great war of Mahabharata.  Gods in Hindus, even in Christianity, struggled to live and to make bench mark to establish Dharma or justice. I gods are perfect then they can do anything but Agni cannot shower rain and so on.

But Philosophical parts said that it is individual who work hard to get liberation and the only path was knowledge and only true knowledge or realizing the knowledge and to attain this knowledge one has to perform actions as prescribed by the Vedas or Angas (Annexure of Vedas). In Liberation, liberated man is equal to the absolute liberty and therefore absolute liberty is perfection

Buddhism went beyond a step and said and explained how to attain liberation which is perfection and the process with saying that this world is full of suffering and then there is a cause of suffering and at last provides the solution by saying, there is cessation of suffering. Unorthodox Hindu philosophies added right conduct, right thinking, right action and right knowledge in the path to perfection for Hindus.

The Hindu religion path later emerged and talked about salvation (Not liberation) and said that showers of god are the way to perfect life. The most important sect is Bhakti that made it clear that without the blessings of god, one cannot attain liberation or one cannot become perfect. To please god is the pathway towards perfect life. Making gods happy with sweets and money and milk is the key these days to search for a perfect life. Whatever you do, good or bad, right or wrong, if god is pleased then think that you are living a perfect life. Because god will give you knowledge, money and all you wanted (Without any work)

Again devotion is now main key to search for perfect life and perfect life is what one desire to get (mostly money) and that leads to perfect life. Sufism and Bhakti made people more believers to the gods and portrayed him as a created of this world and who is the father of every human being. The fusion in different religions of different lands provided fuel to the fire of religious emotions of people and even in developed countries, people are adopting the ritualistic methodology of Hindu religion, just to get showers from perfect omnipotent and omnipresent god so that human beings can live a perfect life.

The philosophy started in India with the only key word of ‘know thy self’ and clear thinking and right action was the base of Hindu philosophy and knowledge was the only tool which helped liberation from suffering and pain. Philosophy schools progressively advanced on the theory of right conduct and right action and this concept shaped as religion for Hindu race to make their lives better because they had clear thinking about the concept of god.

And if liberation is perfection then how we can measure perfection as perfection because we have no instrument to measure the limit or starting point and end point of perfection. Then, perfection becomes simply an idea and importantly with what we compare the perfection attained by knowledge or through liberation. The definition of perfection differs with man to man and even Nature is not perfect and even biology and also laws of physics changes with time and places and in conditions.

Perfection is the state of end where it attained the highest place of excellence and thus it bounded in boundaries and become finite and therefore cannot be perfect because it excludes many things because it reached culmination point. And when ones reach the top point, then there is excluding of lower points and therefore perfection cannot be selective but inclusion of everything.

And attaining knowledge is perfection then it turned to be very-very subjective and therefore it exclude material world and hence lead to individuality and not objectivity. If spiritualism is perfect then the world should only emerged from spirituality and therefore science should have not studied material world but sitting on hard rock to attain spiritual accumulation.

Perfection can define as constant as like of shape and size of things. The flower is perfect in shape because it is not yet damaged or the bird is perfect because bird is flying. Perfect means, within essence and within self is perfect and if within self is the perfection then there should be no rush for the search of perfection and therefore no knowledge is required to become perfection and all liberation is useless in search of perfect life because we are within our self and what we are, we are perfect.

And if perfection is the state of no change, state of static and as it is then there is not a single thing that changes the state of constant and static. But Buddhism in Pratitya Samutpada very well stated that everything is dependent origination and everything is dependent and therefore not constant or static. If ‘A’ exists then ‘B’ exists. No ‘A’ then no ‘B’.  

A got a quote of a scientific philosopher Glenn Borchardt that, “Perfection never has been found anywhere. That would be a violation of the Ninth Assumption of Science, relativism (All things have characteristics that make them similar to all other things as well as characteristics that make them dissimilar to all other things). In this infinite universe, our existence depends on imperfection.”

Now looking to the empirical sciences on perfection, Stephen Hawking observed, “One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn't exist.....Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.” In last four decades, sciences making observation of universe found that the creation of universe is random and it is impossible to think that the universe is perfect. Certainly the Universe is about 13. 8 billion years old. For them, perfection is a state of completeness, flawless and with supreme excellence. There is no example of perfection, yet observed in the universe.

And if human beings are imperfect even universe is imperfect, Nature is also imperfect then there is a scope left for perfection as because when there is nothing exists then there is a scale of something and everything exists. Perfection therefore cannot be denied because we maintain that the Universe is imperfect and there can be a statue of perfection when imperfect exists.