Peer pressure

I have observed people in India live under tremendous peer pressure. Here, I use the term peer to mean friend, co-worker, neighbor, relative or sibling.

Now, if one is motivated to do fine things because of this pressure, it is fine...but, as is to be expected, the results are almost never positive. Consider the kinds of pressure that a materially-attached middle or upper-middle class Mumbaikar is subjected to:

• Peer gets better marks than me
• Peer gets into a better college/university than me
• Peer has bought a car and I haven't
• Peer has bought a bigger car and I have a smaller one
• Peer has visited abroad and I haven't yet
• Peer visits different countries 4 times a year and I only have a trip once a year
• Peer is now the big-shot of a well-known company
• Peer has bought a new house
• Peer has better interiors in his house than mine
• ...and the list goes on

Believe it or not, this is the driving factor for most people. I know of a co-worker who got promoted and happened to get a car as part of his new renumeration package. Being eligible for the "small-sized" car, he naturally bought the small-sized car. Within 6 months, I could hear him say that he should have bought a bigger car.

Very recently, a middle-aged woman lost her life due to this car-owning craze of her neighbor. The details are to be found in this article in the Mid-Day. It seems that a newly-trained car owner was trying to drive the car on her own and in the process she crushed her neighbor to death. She accidentally pressed the accelerator instead of the brake.

For the spiritually-inclined, however, there is no such pressure. Whether that is good or bad for the society depends on how you look at it.

It might be important to understand what great thinkers like the Adi Shakarcharya have to say about this. In Bhaja Govindam by Adi Shankaracharya, one comes across the following:

sura mandira taru mUla nivAsa:
shayyA bhUtalam ajinam vAsa:
sarva parigraha bhoga tyAga:
kasya sukham na karoti virAga:

The translation is:

Living in temples or at the foot of the trees,
sleeping on the ground, wearing deer-skin, renouncing all possession
and thier enjoyment - to whom will not dispassion bring happiness?

Who is wiser? Us or Adi Shankaracharya?