Man thinks that life is a burden. He is often really bored of life. But no one around man is bored. Trees can’t walk and animals can’t think the way man does but they don’t seem bored of life. Rather they seem to be happy in their existence. But man is unhappy and deeply anguished.
Life also seems like a long journey of suffering to man. Physical pain is tolerable, but he is suffering from greater wounds and deeper pains. The body can heal itself but the mind keeps thinking that life is painful and absolutely boring. But you must understand that life is not pain or boredom. Death will come eventually and you won’t even know when. It won’t give you any pain. It won’t cause you any suffering. But you suffer today in the anticipation of death.
What is boredom, pain and suffering? Are they real? The mind knows only one thing—to create hope. One day, when the mind decides that even hope has turned into hopelessness, it may force one to commit suicide. This is what leads to suicides in the world.
Hope is the language of the mind. The mind always creates something that cannot be here. That which cannot be here cannot be anywhere because you will always meet life here and now and everywhere. Therefore, the mind hopes of somewhere which, in fact, is nowhere.
Both hope and hopelessness exist in your thoughts. It is you who decides things today thinking that tomorrow will bring a dawn that will make you happy, and it is also you who decides that you are not happy here right now. Thus the mind deceives you. You are not unhappy—you have thoughts of unhappiness. So the mind creates a future for you in your thoughts and then it makes you run after it. But a thought remains a thought. The mind thinks that it will be happy by getting something and therefore one goes on accumulating physical things. But they don’t make you happy. Your wealth grows, your money grows, but you begin to shrink, not grow.
Man is born with a soul. The soul is his beginning, but it is not the end—the flowering of the soul is the end. This need to flower is coded into us, like an embedded reminder, which creates an anxiety within man. Man can exist as animals, following the code of the body, but man is born to be one with That-Which-Is. Man has the potential to be That-Which-Is; he carries its seed in his womb. That seed brings the ultimate flowering of the consciousness.
When the mind does not let man grow, the anxiety of it creates boredom. Boredom is a sign that something is wrong with him. Evolution wants him to get to the peak of existence and be a divine being like God, but man gets stuck with things around him and cultivates a barren land on which the fruits of happiness never grow. Such hopelessness brings deep wounds and life becomes a carriage of suffering. Buddha said there is dukkha (suffering), but there is also a way to get out of it.
The problem of man is that he never learns to live. He only hopes. Man thinks that if hope is lost, life is lost. But hope is unlike life. Hope is lifelessness. You have to learn how to live. You have to learn how to be.
You have made life into barter. To understand how to be and how to live, you have to be alive and not dead in hope. Hope will make you mourn and suffer. But you are alive—a conscious and creative creature. It is your uncreativeness which causes boredom. No matter what your mind thinks about hope, you have to reboot your system, be in sync with existence. Existence has prepared you for the ultimate flowering. Your mind has created sad and serious societies but animals are born to be happy in nature. Man also has to learn how to be happy, how to celebrate his life consciously.
We say life is a celebration where god is pouring down on us and we are bathing in it. Is this just a thought or is there any reality in it? God lives in creativity and celebration. God does not live in wounds and suffering. In other words, this existence does not understand any other language. When you are being creative, God enters and you let Him create. In that state, you become one with him and your mind fades away.
The mind thinks about life but does not live it. It cannot experience life. So don’t think about life, just live it. Your unconsciousness is your imprisonment. Your dreams have enslaved your mind. Be aware and be sensitive about life because in slumber, you feel isolated and scared and bored and you want things and relationships that you hope will make you happy. But your slumber can never make you free of boredom. If you are aware, you are complete and the mind does not remain. And when the mind disappears, your boredom, insensitivity and suffering disappear.
The mind creates dust by thinking. Even thinking about God is useless. If this existence has endowed you with an opportunity to be God, then why waste that in thinking about God? When Buddha says something, he says it after experiencing it. He knows that what is being said by him will not become your truth. Because for it to be your truth, you have to experience the truth by attaining it all by yourself. Truth is an existential experience and not a thought or a hope. You may know about the truth but to be the truth, you have to experience it. Experiencing life in all its being will make your hopes evaporate. You will attain your real self and become that which existence has created you for. So, why wait? Let the flower in you bloom!
The author is a spiritual teacher and an independent advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com.