The Buddha identified the causes for unhappiness, blocks to enlightment, if you will:
# Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering (dukkha) in one way or another.
# Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or people that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness.
# Suffering ends when craving ends, when one is freed from desire. This is achieved by eliminating all delusion, thereby reaching a liberated state of Enlightenment (bodhi);
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism#Suffering:_Causes_and_Solution)
No matter how perfect any of us tries to be, we are not. We are incapable of perfection. Whether it’s Christianity or Hinduism, the belief systems I have studied (albeit not in the detail they deserve) constantly emphasis that to be human is to be imperfect. What makes a difference is how we choose to live in our imperfection.
I for one believe that I am here for a few years and that what will make me happy will make the rest of world happy too. What many people struggle with is that definition of happiness. Deep down, all of us know and constantly rediscover the truth that material pleasures, transient pleasures and a dependence on others are temporary joys and thrills, and that happiness only comes from a conscious decision to be happy each day. What I have trouble doing on a daily basis is reconciling the ups and downs of each day, week and month, and finding that middle ground. It’s like a rubber band – how happy I can be also defines the depth of a blue mood that I can reach.
The Buddha taught that freeing oneself from attachment is the only way to be enlightened – and moksha or nirvana is the ultimate state of bliss. Anyone who’s found themselves having an OBE or a dream about flying or a particularly intense meditation experience can tell you how incredible the experience is – and nirvana is to be free and flying and beautiful, continuously. Even if you’ve ever said a prayer and realized that you’re talking to God directly, and that you’re being heard, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
I can find joy in the moment that my dog runs up to me for a cuddle, and that’s a beautiful experience to have. But if I become attached to that, and to her, I forget that she too will be gone in some years. I set myself up to be equally depressed when she’s not around anymore. The truth of the matter is that I will be sad when she goes – but I can’t live in denial of the fact that one day she will be. When I accept that, I can love her as she deserves, I can enjoy that moment with the full knowledge that it may not come again and distill the joy into a pure moment of experience, untainted by my anticipation of the future loss that I know is inevitable.
I know no one who’s mastered this way of thinking yet. I know people who go into terrible moods over the behaviour of one person in their life or a bad traffic jam, and who can be thrilled by a compliment from a stranger or over finding the ‘perfect’ partner. I am one of those people, too, but more and more I realize how important it is for me to break this pattern. I know rationally that none of these things – love, shelter, peace, money – can be taken for granted, and yet I live my life as though something is owed to me. It’s not!
I find it so difficult though not to have expectations from people and places and things. I can do that for things and people that I can rationally say are not critical to me. But there are always those exceptions and those are the ones that hurt the most, because I’m stuck in the rut of desire. Even though I feel like I’ve gotten over my desire for material gratification, I know that journey is not yet complete – and I’m still so far from being able to free myself and others of the expectations I build up.
I’ve posted on being detached and freeing oneself of attachment before but obviously it’s a lesson I’m still learning.
Being free of detachment eventually leads to the point where you can appreciate the beauty in way the wind blows the rain into patterns in the monsoons, or the delicate uncoordinated movements of a baby’s fingers, and see right into the heart of the world in those small instances. The world will go on with or without us and as permanent as you may think your life is, it is changing every minute. If you can deal with the way that a new billboard has come up outside your house, and not notice or pay heed even though five years’ later your neighbourhood looks completely different, how is it that you cannot deal with the change of a friend leaving for a new place, or the natural drifting apart from someone you shared your inner thoughts with, for a time? Sometimes I’m so busy counting the things that have changed, I can’t see the new experiences the universe is bringing to me. And while we continue to remain focused on the small things and the things that are moving away, we cannot open ourselves up to the gifts that life is bringing us and the chances we have to see more and more of the world, and learn.
When we die we will take nothing of our past lives with us except perhaps our memories and thoughts. Who knows what it’s like to take that last breath? If I’m going to be reliving my life in the last moments, let me remember the way Mishti ran around the house with a stolen potato in her mouth and let me smile, and let me remember my mother as she was on my tenth birthday and the hug she gave me this morning, and let me have released my attachment to all these people and places and have perspective.
