Can You Avoid Suffering?

What gives you happiness? Is it what you have or what others have? If our possessions would have made us happier, we should have been the happiest generations as we possess far more things now than ever before. Yet you find most people quite unhappy despite being more prosperous and enjoying more freedom that ever before.

We may be talking about ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ all the time but the fact is that we actually wish to have more than others or have more power and higher position than others to feel happy. If we become twice as rich but our neighbour becomes four-times richer, we feel miserable. You may remember the following Aesop’s Fable.

Two neighbours came before Jupiter and prayed him to grant their hearts' desire. Now the one was full of avarice, and the other eaten up with envy. So to punish them both, Jupiter granted that each might have whatever he wished for himself, but only on condition that his neighbour had twice as much.

The Avaricious man prayed to have a room full of gold. No sooner said than done; but all his joy was turned to grief when he found that his neighbour had two rooms full of the precious metal.

Then came the turn of the envious man, who could not bear to think that his neighbour had any joy at all.

So he prayed that he might have one of his own eyes put out, by which means his companion would become totally blind.

This story tells us the root cause of all the conflicts and pain in the world. We are all filled with greed and envy. We are unhappy not because we are earning less, but because others are earning more. We are unhappy not because our spouse, children, friends and organization are not good, but because others are better. Hence, we behave like the envious man of the story and try to destroy others by crime, corruption and constant criticism.

It is impossible that everyone has more wealth, power and prestige than others. Hence, it is impossible to imagine a world where everyone can be happy. The development of a country and growth of economy can never solve the human problems of pain, misery and frustration.

We can be happy only at individual level when we learn to appreciate what we have rather to bother about what others have. At the social level, however, people are bound to suffer as they can’t avoid comparing themselves with others.

Clear Thinking-Happy LIving

We are in the era of information explosion. We are bombarded with information by electronic, print and social media 24x7. Every piece of information seems to be valuable and true. While it is good to be informed but excess of information like excess of food can only harm our body and mind. We get confused by the abundance of information since these are contradictory and we are not sure what is truth and what is false.

The solution is not to avoid information and close our eyes and ears to what is happening in the world but to develop the ability to see the truth clearly by developing clear thinking. Following rules may be useful in developing clear thinking.

1: Discover Truth Yourself

Truth is like a shy maiden. It is always hidden behind the veil and its face is revealed only when the veil is removed. We have to always search the truth as it never comes to us following our desires. What comes to us of its own is not truth. We often consider the news items of the print or electronic media as true while most information is only half-truth.

There is a famous saying in media that if dog bites a man it is no news but if a man bites a dog that is news. What we see on the different types of media is nothing but a second hand truth which contains the prejudices and vested interest of the people through whom it has reached us. If there are thousand good acts by people, you may never know from media but one bad act is reported to us 24x7. This disproportionate coverage of evil gives us the impression that the world has become extremely evil while the reality is quite different which can be ascertained only if you take the pain to know the truth yourself. We are also often enamored by what we read in the different books in our schools and colleges thinking that every world written there is true. We must remember that all knowledge acquired from other people is second hand and we must develop the habit of learning the knowledge first hand, particularly if it is important for us.

2: Learn To Think Clearly

Most colleges teach us ‘what to think’ and not ‘how to think’. The difference between the two is that of day and night. If you think only what you ought to think, you only know what is already known before. Such knowledge is hardly of any use because what has worked in earlier situation on a different set of people can’t work now. Unfortunately most of the collages in India want the student not to think independently and promote rote learning by awarding highest grades to those who reproduce the tutored answers instead of answers that comes from their own mind.

We are so much accustomed to the pursuit of our second hand knowledge that when we come face to face with the real life problems, we want others to help us solve our problems as we can’t think of a creative solution. Our weakness is then exploited by many Gurus and experts in the business and religious field who often make us their slave by deciding our course of life.

It is therefore important to learn ‘how to think’ because if you develop this habit you can find solution of all problems using the expertise and knowledge of the self and others.

Let us take an example. We are often impressed by the motivational speaker who provides us the example of few successful people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Narayana Murthy, Amitabh Bacchan or Nareredra Modi who rose from their humble background to become extremely successful in their lives. While it is good to get motivated by their powerful speeches, let us also remember that if being successful would have been that easy to know, the speaker would have been running a billion dollar empire rather than motivating others for few thousands rupees. 

We must learn to face the reality, even if it is bitter. You must know that according to the statistics, only one in five ventures survive beyond five year, and only one in a million becomes a Bill Gate or Steve Jobs. For every book that is a great success, there are hundreds of books which can’t recover even their printing cost and behind every book that is published there are hundreds of authors whose books are never published. Yet every budding author expects to become a best-selling author like Chetan Bhagat or Amish Tripathi in India. In reality most creative efforts fail and the leaders, entrepreneurs, artists or writers suffer great pain and disappointment. Yet no one tells you about the failures and no case studies are done on ‘failures” and the failure punches your face when you are least prepared for it.

So whenever someone give you a great motivational speech, don’t just trust them blindly but get the facts before you accept any claim.

3: Beware of the Illusions  

We are attracted towards the successful people and try to copy them in the hope of repeating their success in our life. However, almost all copycats are disappointed. To understand their failures, we must understand what is called ‘Swimmer’s body illusion’.

We are quite attracted to the body of the professional swimmer’s because it is proportionate and streamlined. Hence many people start doing swimming regularly in the hope of developing similar bodies. However, they soon understand that however hard they try, their body does not become any closer to the body of professional swimmer. The reason is simple. You can’t get a streamlined body because you swim best, you swim best because you have streamlined body. Unless your body is designed in a particular manner you can’t become a great swimmer.

This illusion is there in many other fields. You don’t become beautiful, like the model, by using the cosmetic products because the truth is that the model was already beautiful and hence she was selected for the advertisement. Yet we believe the illusion created by the advertiser that the cosmetics are responsible for the beauty and our weakness is exploited by the companies all over the world.

4: Know Yourself

There is nothing in this world which is source of happiness or sorrow for everyone. We all have different likes and dislikes. What you like most is hated by someone. When you go to a shop, you find some cloths extremely attractive and some extremely repulsive. However, remember that even those cloths, which you would not wear even if someone pay you for it, are liked by some people—otherwise mills would not have made those cloths.

We all like something and dislike something. If you do something which you don’t like, you can’t focus on the work and you will also get tired very soon. When you like something, you automatically remain focused on your task and you also do not get tired while working for long hours. That is the reason why some students perform poorly and some very well in classes even though they study for same number of hours. Your success or failure is a result of the fact if your aptitude matches with what you do.

Your happiness increases when you do what you love and decreases when you are forced to do what you hate. Hence, try to discover what you love to do like writing, reading, music, art, sport or anything which you love to do. The best would be choose a profession where you can devote more time on what you love and least time on what you dislike instead of thinking about the remuneration. Even if you can devote only little time everyday on such activities, you shall always have joy in your life.

You must therefore know yourself from your experience and contemplation. Once you know yourself well, you are already on the road to happiness.

5: Learn to Appreciate Your Culture and Traditions

Man is a social animal. He can’t survive independently. In the modern world, the entire world is interconnected but we are most connected to the society in which we live. We inculcate the values of the society at such an early age that it goes into our subconscious mind and become part of our consciousness.

Every society has certain values which are passed on from one generation to another. Many of these values are not rational, yet these are the values which are common in the society and connect all people in one thread.    

We must understand that rational thinking can only tell us ‘what the reality is’ and not ‘what it should be’ or ‘what it could be’. The values of the society are created by religions, culture, traditions and mythologies which have penetrated into the deepest consciousness of people over generation and they deeply believe these values. If you remove common belief in people, the society shatters and every individual becomes free caring only for themselves.

This is what has happened in most developed countries. Let us take the divorce rate which reflects the sanctity of marriages in different societies. The divorce rates of most western countries and East European countries are quite high: Belgium (71%), Spain (61%), France (55%), USA (53%), UK (47%). The divorce rates in India are still less than 1%.

In fact, divorces have become so common that couples prefer live-in relationship or cohabitation rather than marriage in West.  Between 1960-2010, the number of cohabiting couples increased 17-fold in USA. While Norway tops the list with more than 50% live-in relationship, it is 23% of relationships in USA. Among women, 68% of unions formed in 1997-2001 in USA began as live-in relationship rather than as a marriage. In India, such relationships are virtually nonexistent as of now.

While being faithful is a cherished value of our country and we call our spouse as life-partner, fidelity has become an exception in most developed countries. According to one survey conducted by Durex in 2007, the average male has 29 partners in Australia while in New Zealand females have as many as 21 partners in their lives.

It would be shocking to know that in the United States of America, almost half of the children are born today from unmarried mothers. The number of live births to unmarried women in 2012 was over 1,6 million which was 40.7% of the total births of children in USA.

Hardly 10-20% of the children in developed countries have the benefit of living in unbroken families, a privilege which most children in India enjoy.

Hence, when we are impressed by the glamour and development of the Western World, we must also understand the price to be paid for individualism and breaking from our cultures and traditions. The reality of the Western World must serve us a warning not to imitate them as we too are bound to meet the same fate if we follow them blindly.

Conclusion

It is important for us to learn how to think clearly and accurately. We must not follow anyone or anything blindly lest we are exploited due to our ignorance which is like darkness. Only by clear thinking, we can see the reality as it is and achieve our goals successfully. 

An Stream of Experiences called Life

“How are you?” is often the first question, we ask while starting a conversation with our friends and even strangers. We often hear replies like “I am fine,” “Great”. Are we really fine when we are saying “I am fine”? Let us ask this question to ourselves; “Are we fine”? “Are we happy?”

We know that we are not always fine. We are feeling good, bad, bored, angry, hopeful, hopeless, frustrated, joyful, loved, hatred at different point of time. Rarely is a person in the same mood or in the same state for very long time. Even when we are hearing a song, our pleasure is wavering depending continuously. We may just stop listening when the song becomes too boring or irritating.

You go to a beautiful hill station and get enchanted by the beauty of the hills, purity of the air and peace of the valley. How nice it feels to be out from the madness of the city and relax in this beautiful divine place? Yet if you stay a little longer, just for few more days, all the charm starts vanishing like molten wax and soon the same boring and mad city life starts calling you. You are now in hurry to go back to your place once again.

Wise men have said that life is a “stream of experiences” (Hindi-anubhav -dhara). We are experiencing a new life every moment and no two moments are same. We are experiencing this world though individuals, society and media. Every moment is a new experience. Even when you are looking at the sunrise from a beautiful hill, it is not same as the position of sun is changing and the colour of the sky is getting transformed. Soon the cool lights of the sun would become brighter and you would find it difficult to stand there and stare at the sun. You are watching television and the screen is changing with new people, new faces and new dialogues every moment.

We are experiencing a new world every moment and this stream of experience is what is called life.

.

Imagine yourself as a stream of a river flowing at different speeds towards the sea where you are going to merge with it and lose your identity. On the way, every moment, the experience is different, the scene is different and the landscape is different. Sometime you are moving fast, sometime slow, and sometime stagnating before a large dam - waiting for your turn to start moving again. Sometime, you are seeing beautiful sky, sometime clouds cover the sky and sometime you witness a bright sun. Sometime you are still and sometime you are moving peacefully enjoying the scenery on the way. Sometime you are angry and agitated as torrent.

Joy and Pain

We are always in touch with life and our feelings depend on our experiences with life. If the experience is pleasant, we feel happy and if the experience is painful, we are unhappy. Sometime, we have the feeling of indifference when there is neither happiness nor pain.  A happy life is one where we have more moments of happiness than pain or indifference.

Some people say that happiness is state of mind suggesting that we create our own happiness and misery without any concern with outside world. This statement is only partly true. Is it possible to be happy when your beloved in unhappy or your children are sick or you are yourself treated ill by your boss or family?  We can’t be indifferent to our surrounding as we are part of the world having hardly any choice of being alone.

You can avoid all these pains by discarding the worldly life and becoming a monk. Yet you can’t avoid world as you need people to provide you food, shelter, water and other physical necessities of life. You have to deal with people whether you like them or not. And when you are dealing with people, you have to have the stream of experiences i.e. your life.

Do we have any control over the experiences we have in our life?

The Power of Imagination

We often have the experience of the world in our imagination much before we actually experience them in reality. Before, we meet any person or situation; we already visualize them in our imagination. We rehearse everything if it is an important event or we are going to meet an important person. We create a living image of the person or situation beforehand. So when we meet the person, our joy or pain would depend upon the accuracy of our image as compared with the reality.  If the image is accurate, we enjoy the meeting and the experience is bliss. However, if our image is inaccurate then the experience could be positive or full of joy if the experience turned out to be better than expected or that of pain when the experience happened to be worse than what we expected.

It, therefore, seems to be good idea to be pessimistic, prepare for the worst by having a negative image of the person which may lead to joy as in most cases our interaction would be better than what we expect. While it may true at the time of final meeting but we have suffered much more pain in the process of imagining. We suffer all the way during the rehearsal from the pain that comes through our wrong imagination. Hence, if we are in the habit of living with a negative image of people or world, we are suffering all the time instead of few moments of actual experience.

So many experts advise people to “think positive” i.e. to be optimistic, think for the best and enjoy the journey. People with great expectation who are filled with the positive thoughts only, are shattered when they face failure. If there is only one vacancy for a top job and there are thousands of people queuing up for the post with positive hopes, there is no doubt that most are going to be disappointed when the results are announced. Here, the pain is much more as you quickly lose esteem and also feel let down by the world. The result is bitterness and pain that lingers for long time giving rise to extreme pessimism.

Hence, only when your imagination is close to the reality, you have least chances to feeling pain in the process or at the end. You learn from your success and failure and change your perception about yourself and the world. Gradually, you develop even more accurate model of the self and the world. You are neither optimist nor pessimist but a realist whose thoughts accurately mirrors the reality. The result is neither great joy nor much suffering but a feeling of bliss which comes from contentment and wisdom. You are able to take temporary success or failure with equal ease as you learn from each experience and learning from life is the hallmark and the greatest joy for the man of wisdom.