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Sorry for the short delay. I just found some time to think and write about a interesting topic of pleasure and pain we experience in Life We don't wish to answer things in a point by point way. Because there exists no answers to any questions. What looks like an answer is merely a point of view, which will be contested and re-contested, and consequently become an argument, or fight, or friendship, or enmity - depending on the intensity and other factors. So, what remain then are questions. Mere QUESTIONS. We urge to answer them and finish them off, because questions are uncomfortable when remained unanswered. In fact the most simple questions are UNANSWERED, while we feel we have got the "answers", or busy fighting over with ourselves or others with what we perceive as answers. what is "happiness"??? Consider this. There is a young prince. Had everything he could imagine- money, fame, pleasure, wife, children, knowledge, anything the mind can imagine. (Perhaps, even the cable TV). But this prince one-day walks out of all this. OF ALL THIS to become a beggar and spends 12 years to find out what is happiness. His name, we remember, is Gautama. And spends rest of his life enjoying and sharing what he has found. And, Buddha finds out precisely one thing. THERE IS MISERY IN LIFE. Any form of life. Be it the life led in India or the USA. Or be it the life led with money. With enough bank balance. Or not with enough bank balance. Whether your son, daughter, wife leave you alone. Or not leave you alone. Whether you have 2 bed rooms in the house. Or the entire palace. Whether you are a CEO or a sweeper. All forms of lives are full of misery. And given our usual tendency to find answers for any question, we FALSLY identify that OUR PRESENT STATE AND POSITION is the cause for the misery. And, therefore there arises the arguments for or against leading a certain pattern of life. And, we MISTAKINGLY strive for the opposites of the current "status and position" to come out of misery. So, what you see is Indians coming to the US. And all those come here want to go back. And a whole list of pair of opposites. We can continue to oscillate this way until we have the energy to do so. And we don't mind doing it because we are busy doing them. And as with anything, even the energy depletes one day and then we can no longer find the way put of this misery and we find ourselves in big soup. Or there is another way to put this. WE WANT TO LEAD A NORMAL LIFE. The moment we encounter any uncomfortable question that threatens our current inertia, we immediately CONSOLE ourselves, that "we are normal and the question does not concern us". So, we get the license to continue the way we do until we loose the energy to continue and at which point we lament. So, either we ignore. Or we oppose the questions. Or in a hurry to answer and finish them off. IS THERE NO WAY OUT of this? The same gentleman, Buddha, says one more thing. THERE IS A WAY OUT OF THIS MISERY. Now, wow! What is it? He says, first find the cause for this MISERY. And for those of us, whom we think we lack the capacity to find, he tells, "TRISHNA or TANKA" (= craving) is the root cause. Hell, what does he mean? WE KNOW WE DON'T CRAVE. We have always done things for others. We always lead a noble life. We have never touched meat or liquor or a lady or anything immoral. So, what the heck do “craving” mean? Precisely. The very busy oscillation to opposites is called craving. The more we observe, the more clearly we see the pattern. If, ever, there is an impulse in us which says, this is all rubbish, then in that instant, the self is curiously craving for the opposite. OK Sir, we agree. We have craving, WHAT DO WE DO THEN? "Welcome to the club", says Mr.Buddha. We are one step towards finding the solution. We have half-found the solution, the moment we have acknowledged the question. There is a definite way to understand this. First of all, he says, we need "samma dishti". Equal view. Or the "Correct view". This is the first thing. We need to take stock of the questions that we face. We take stock of the patterns in our life. Oscillations. And he follows this with seven other steps. Fantastic. We are used to look outwards, because 1) it is easy 2) we don’t know any other way. There is one more place to look to. Inside. A beautiful story of Ramakrishna is the ideal way to tell this. A merchant was deep in a jungle to cut the trees to sell them. He saw a monk. And the monk out of compassion said, "Go further into the jungle, you will find a pot of silver coins". He went. Found that there. And became rich. Sometime later, he came and started cutting the trees (as he exhausted the silver coins), the same monk says out of love, "Go some more distance further, you will find the gold coins". He went and found again. After some time, he came again and to cut the trees for the same reason. And the same monk out of infinite compassion says,"Go inside yourself you can find everything". And, then and there the merchant realizes the truth Post a comment in response: |
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