If we truly want to live, we must do an anatomy of the body to understand who we are and what we are made of. We have 5 sense organs, eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell, a tongue to taste and skin to feel. But that’s not all that we are.
If we try to understand our body further, we have the epidermis which is the outer layer of skin. If we peel the skin, it reveals the dermis that has tissue, blood vessels, hair follicles, and sweat glands. But what lies below the skin? If we cut our skin, we see blood. We also see flesh, muscles, and bone. Didn’t we learn in school that we have a brain that has millions of neurons all across the body? We also have a heart that pumps blood to every corner and every cell. The lungs purify the blood through the process of respiration. We also have kidneys that are responsible to remove the waste products and excess fluid from our bodies. If one looks at the human body, it is such a marvel! The human body the most sophisticated machine ever invented on earth. Not many of us contemplate and thus, we just live and die. We don’t get amazed by the wonders that the body possesses and instead we are flabbergasted with the wonders of the world. We don’t look within and thus, we don’t discover who we truly are. How did the journey of this body start? It started with just 2 cells, one from our mother and one from our father that fertilized as if by magic and conceived what became this most magnificent human body. That one fertilized cell that is referred to as a zygote, grew into an embryo. In a matter of a few weeks, the shape of a little baby was visible. But it took 9 months for us to be created.
We were already alive as a foetus inside our mother’s womb, much before we were delivered on earth. Then, with our birth we started our life journey on earth. Ultimately, we grow old and we die. Death of the physical body is certain. Nobody can escape death. People say that we passed away, we departed, or we moved on. Although the physical body is right here, waiting for the final rites to be performed, it is blatantly declared that these are only the ‘mortal remains’ and we, the ones who were alive, have moved on. If we depart at death, then who are we in reality? This physical body is just the habitat of who we truly are. What happened to the one who was alive? What happened to the power that kept the heart beating and the lungs breathing? We human beings live, but we don’t contemplate who we truly are. In fact, we don’t live, we just exist! We just consume this gift called ‘Life’. And instead of using our body to discover who we are and why we are here, we abuse it in every possible way, not just by what we eat and what we drink, but also by what we think and how we live. Some people realize that the gross physical body is made up of five elements – Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Space. Every living creature is made up of these. At death when the life power leaves the body, the body returns to dust. The air escapes into the atmosphere just as the water evaporates when the fire inside us leaves us. We become cold and degenerate into ashes as the space we occupy shrinks and our existence as the body comes to an end.
It’s time to stop, to think, to introspect, and to realize that the functions of the physical body are just what appears on the outside. There is something on the inside that we are blissfully ignorant about. If we break the bones of our skeleton, we will find bone marrow, but we will still not find the energy that gives us life. Isn’t it time to discover the truth beyond the body that we seem to be? Only then, we will learn how to truly live.