Guest post by Sandip Goswami, author of Epic of Time
The word ‘bread’ is used here in the general sense of material food, the food we eat. Next to air and water, it is the most important thing for life. A person may live without it for some time; but after that he will surely die if he does not get it. This is why man wants food so keenly. In fact, want of food is the principle cause of most of the crimes committed by men, and of the political revolutions recorded in history.
But important as bread is, it is not the only food man wants. It meets only his physical needs; but as a rational being, he requires food for other kinds of hunger-hunger of the mind and the heart, hunger of the intellect and of the spirit. It is these hungers that distinguish him from the brute and have made him the lord of creation. It is these again that bind society together and have led to all the progress in civilization.
We also know how love and affection enable a person to go without material food for days together and bear great physical suffering with a smiling face. Intellectual hunger has led mankind from more to more of the light of knowledge. It has produced the masterpieces of science, literature and philosophy.
So, he hungers for something that will enable him to go through the joys and sorrows of life with cheerfulness of spirit, and set him free from the bonds of life. And this he finds in spiritualism. So, we see that, however important material food may be in a man’s life, he has other interests also to inspire and guide him, to make his life worth living and to give him true happiness.
At the end of the article I am grateful to our teacher Late P.K. De Sarkar, who inspired me to understand the reality of hunger and poverty.
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Books by Sandip Goswami
Epic of Time ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon