A brilliant university mate of mine has become a monk. He was very wealthy, but that wasn’t enough to hold him back. He donated most of his wealth to the needy and left home to live among the hills.

He left the material world because he felt that humans everywhere were in clamps. He, it is believed by many, felt that life was never meant to be like this. It was meant to be free. It was meant to be like an oppression-free kingdom, a beast-free wild, a storm-free wind and a burn-free fire. And, of course, a hunger-free existence. But it failed to be all that despite the arrival of great guides.

---

…Man was created to believe, but belief is now a big business.

---

The man, who quit, didn’t talk of the futility of material life and things like that. He simply said he was too unhappy to continue. He didn’t mince his views and decided to live it out in single form.

As a young man he used to emit love, his heart used to beat for the distressed, he was seen exchanging grins, smiles and hugs with all.

He used to laugh, never at others, but always at himself. Himself, why?

Because he thought he had been fooled by life into undertaking a journey that had no destination and was in essence meaningless. He saw the journey as a mad pursuit, as a fruitless till and as a cloudless monsoon day.

The rich giver argued that man was created to believe, but belief is now a big business. He was created to love, but it’s only through hatred (war) that he now becomes a real hero. He was created for union, but the most balanced and the literate of us relish the concept of self-rule.

He said the decision to name the whole civilisational process globalisation in order to generate a sense of productive unity among nations had nearly failed. That’s because most nations can’t look beyond themselves. And globalisation calls for the opposite.