Caught in an endless loop

           Any programmer with moderate experience would watch out for the fiasco of an endless loop. Though this has been an integral part of my watch-list for over a decade, something interesting caught my attention last saturday morning. A basketball floating around freely in our pool for the last few days got caught under the waterfall from the spa. It has happened before and has always fascinated me and my girls. But only this time my mind made a connection between the basketball spinning continuously thus caught under the waterfall and "We Humans" caught continuously in the cycle of birth and death. I quickly grabbed my camera and rushed out to capture this scene. My mind was thinking how sad it is that the ball can't extricate itself, needs an external source to come to its aid. I took a still shot and realized it does not convey the abnormality of the situation. May be at a given point of time our life seems normal to us too, but if we realized that that we had been born and dead, a few thousand times, the gravity of the situation dawns :)

        
            Then as I stopped capturing the scene, should I call it a coincidence? a draft of wind moved the ball away. I was so excited like a child, telling my daughter, who by now followed me to see what caught my attention in the morning, how happy I was to have captured the ball under the spell and also watch it get released.

        I then thought, we as humans have an ability to release ourselves from this cycle, if we truly desired to do so. Then I corrected myself - How can I be sure? May be we are no different, despite our efforts we need the help of GOD to come to our rescue, may be in the form of a teacher, friend or a challenge in life. The whole event made me understand in a new light what the Great Spiritual Teachers and Masters have been trying to tell us.