Man is miserable. Man is burdened with myriad problems of life. Life brings too many miseries. But man wants to be happy. Man thinks of happiness and says that he is happy but deep down he knows that he is not happy. Man wants to be successful. Society has defined values of success. Man wants to be successful in society at any cost, let that cost be his soul. Being successful means people should recognise that you are successful.
People want to be religious to be successful though their parameters of success are exactly contrary to the values propagated by religious Master or their Gods. Jesus getting crucified at the age of 33 is an event that cannot be considered successful according to society, and the event was not known but to a few people. But society accepts Jesus as the son of God. Gautam was a prince who could have become a great emperor with all his brightness and understanding, but he became Buddha, the awakened. By no parlance, anyone in the society eschewing the kingdom for ascetic life would be called successful but would be called an innocent idiot. Buddhu word of Hindi denoting an innocent idiot comes from its original root word Buddha, the awakened.
What is being successful and what is success-orientation for the world? If we use the parlance of a success-oriented world, Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Nanak, Kabir all would be rated unsuccessful. But man is not able to understand the paradox.
When Jesus was being crucified he was not unhappy. He was in total bliss. He had said, ‘forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing’. Contrarily man is in a deep state of unawareness. He is not aware of his being. And whatever man does only unawareness is manifested. Even by being successful one becomes highly unsuccessful. When Alexander the Great was returning on his way back from India he met a saint. Alexander told him that he was the Great Alexander who possessed all great wealth of the world after conquering the world. Saint asked him, what was the value of all his wealth, if the Great Alexander got stranded in a desert for days without a drop of water, how much value would he give to him in exchange for a glass of water. Alexander said that he would give half his wealth. Saint said that if he won’t exchange the glass of water for that much wealth. Alexander thought and said he would give all his wealth for the glass of water. Saint told him that what we call our great wealth is just not even worth the value of a glass of water.
Is recognition given to you by people in your success or the amount of money you have collected is your success? Basically, it is the neurosis that society gives to you. Man is miserable because he does not have money that he can call enough. A poor man is miserable because he does not have anything. Success is something psychological. In fact, happiness is that we keep running after the psychological fulfilment of having enough money. And we feel happy that we are cleverer. But nature is innocent. Jesus, Buddha and Mahavira call cleverness, cunningness a vice and violence. Society considers it a virtue. Society is bred with competition and cunningness. Society understands the words of Machiavelli who says that the leader should look virtuous and should talk about virtuousness, but he should not be virtuous himself, he should be able to do wrong. Society seems to be following Machiavelli’s cleverness. Society seems to be following Adolf Hitler’s understanding who adopted Nietzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’ (superman) as a psychological guide for Nazis soldiers for the rise of fascism in Germany and exterminating millions of Jews.
When man learnt to barter which is known as economics in today’s parlance. We bartered in the values of things according to their demand and supplies. Later for denoting values of particular objects we coined money. Values of objects were determined by the units of money as per their needs at that time. Then, money ruled the world of humans. Today collection of a very large amount of money has become the biggest paranoia of mankind. A man collects money not as much as he requires but as much that he can call enough. The human race is competing in an endless race for money. Millionaires, billionaires, trillionaires are miserable ones. Money may buy objects in future instantly. Man has built an economy of bartering according to needs that drive demands based on which supplies are mobilised. Value is ascertained on the balance of demand and supply. Something aplenty may not have as much value as rare things. Like these pandemic times, suddenly when oxygen was in great demands, a rise in demand got the value of oxygen to shoot up.
The mind creates misery. The mind needs the future to leapfrog into. Everything precious and valuable is here and now. In here and now the mind is not. Mind is divisible. It divides us into thoughts. It makes us think we are the body. But you are one. You are that divisibly indivisible who cannot be divided. But the mind divides when you move like a pendulum from one thought to the other. To live happily, man keeps throwing all that is valuable into the subconscious. Man can live happily now. But he lives in thoughts and thoughts do not deliver fulfilment of thoughts in future as fulfilment happens in here and now. It happens in the now-ness of being. But the mind remains somewhere else. So it throws its now-ness where fulfilment was possible in some dark corner. He keeps on leading all his life by accumulating thoughts of the future and money. In the end, death takes aware his future and money both.
It is said that thinking is a great gift to man. But look at the trees, birds, flowers if they are endowed with the gift of thinking then the world would become a very sad place as humans have made it. Flowers are ecstatic in the flower-ness of being. Flowers do not think when to blossom. They simply blossom in their flower-ness of being inviting all by fragrances. What if a flower also starts thinking of its future like a man it will not blossom, it will think why blossom now? What if a tree also gets some cleverness and begins to ask the purpose of his life? They won’t, they are already in bliss. But a man who thinks cuts jungles of trees to make papers and furniture. Birds and animals don’t think but man would kill them to preserve them for future supplies of few years and proudly call them with beautiful names such as animal agriculture.
This whole universe is not cunning, not clever. Man’s misery is hidden in his cleverness. He wants to do things cleverly. If a man remains one with nature and as innocent as nature, there is no cause of being miserable. Therefore, Jesus’s body is crucified but not his happiness or bliss. Being innocent is absolute bliss. You have a choice: to be miserable or to be happy.
You can eschew cleverness. You have been in the negation of yourself. You have to accept yourself. Begin to love yourself, stop thinking in terms of success. Real success is in being happy and blissful. Therefore, Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira are considered successful. Dig down all that you have thrown into the dark corners and throw all that out of you. You will be ecstatic. Blissfulness is your nature.
The author is a spiritual teacher, and advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com
