musings 210

What is the difference between swarga and moksha ?

This question was put to me.

The answer I know is this. You can agree or disagree.

"Sir..Swarga is the kingdom of Gods, a cozy Shangrila where people who have too much of punyam to their credit are taken after they give up the physical body on death in a particular Janma. Of course the accommodation and board there are not free of cost. As the person enjoys his sojourn in swargam he is spending away all the good points or punyams and when his balance reaches nil the person will be unceremoniously pushed back to earth to live there again either to accumulate paap or punya. And the circle or cycle repeats for ever.

However, it is believed that by adopting one of the three Yogas namely Bhakti,Jnana or Jarma the jeeva can just burn off all the connections on earth itself and give up both credit and debit balance and attain a velocity enabling him to escape the orbit of birth and death cycle and attain a higher plane where he would remain free from everything be it good or bad. This escape is called moksham

The methodology and finer details would vary according to variant schools of thoughts but this is the fundamental difference between swarga and moksha."