Spirituality - A conversation on "You know that you know nothing....because there is nothing to know"

Recently one of my best friends Ramanan and I got engrossed in a conversation which started with him posting the following quote :

"You know that you know nothing....because there is nothing to know"

It prompted me to respond to him and then followed a conversation which I believe some more of my friends may like to pitch in.  Opinions welcome:

• Murali Venkatraman: I am sorry but I have come to conclude that such seemingly profound statements neither clarify nor add to any existing knowledge but simply confuse and hardly contribute to the progress of mankind.
•  Jana Narayanan :   This is what is maya. have we ever tried to feel the profoundness of this truth? my dad used to say approach the question through the answer.there wont be confusion.the sages through their inner eyes have given the answer to the eternal quest for truth. we, if interested in it, should spend some time in contemplation of the answer to question route. or simply have faith in the saying and believe in it. it is an individual journey.
• Ramanan Moorthy : ‎Murali respect your point of view. However, I must ask - what is this knowledge you talk about and what is really there to gain? Forget for a moment the discussions on self and self realization. On a very basic level the 2 most basic Q's for me fundamentally are: Where from did the power to the cosmos come about to BEGIN with? And the second one being WHY are we born? And a third one if I could add, is there a connection between us and the cosmos? If I cannot answer these questions definitively, any other discussions on knowledge and so called knowledge gain is irrelevant for me. You being a scientist, this might be unsettling and I fully respect that. Now getting to Bhagavan Ramana's teaching, he says "all knowledge is inside you, and when you realize that, you will see there was nothing to know". Intuitively I do believe we have nothing to know, and that we inherently know nothing....but that is my belief....no scientific rational explanation for that.... :) Chitti...Nalpa would have so much enjoyed this :)
• Murali Venkatraman :Dear ‎Ramanan:   Right answers can be procured only if right questions are posed.
  First of all , the question "why are WE born ?" is from a human-centric mind that stems from the preconceived or assumed specialty of the human race in this universe. Of course, I do not debate the unique ability of the human mind to ask such questions and the fact that we are having this conversation is the very manifestation of that ability. What, however, I am pointing out is that, questions like "Why are elephants born or ants born ? " must be realized as no-less significant. This is because, we are just a tiny speck in a universe that spans billions of light-years. To consider ourselves to be extremely special would be either narcissism or a serious delusion or both.
  Science can tell you how multi-cellular organisms evolved from unicellulars and how unicellulars evolved from subatomic particles. While you may argue that science explains "how", and does not explain "why", I must point out that unless you have idea of "how" things have come into existence, you cannot investigate "why" they came into existence. Hence, to answer the (seemingly) bigger question "why", science keeps probing "how". When I say science, I mean the collective intellect and rational minds of human race, which with a child-like curiosity keeps exploring this universe further and deeper.
  However, as I said earlier, what is even more relevant is the possibility of the question "why we are born" being fundamentally wrong. Probability theory explains well why an incident could occur. Or rather it tells you what are the chances that an incident could occur. Now if there was a chance that the incident could happen in a finite period, it WILL occur (with that probability). There is no "greater knowledge" derived in asking the same question "why did it occur" (once it has occurred) when the theory had already taken great care to explain "why" it did already .
  By chance. Every human born here is also by the chance encounter of 1 in a billion sperms with the ovum. What chooses “that” particular sperm to fertilize the ovum ? Some conducive condition pertinent to that sperm at that instant of time. The rest are purged out. So the answer to the question “why was I born” is simply that you were the one who got lucky among the billion – by chance. The main problem with people is that they do NOT want to accept that some things can happen simply by chance.
  That is because it is a scary thought. For example, was there a finite probability that the apple that fell on Newton's head would have cracked his skull open rather than instigate questions about gravity and produce a great quanta of work on Physics ? YES ! there certainly was. But it did not. The immediate question of a “philosopher” is "why” ? Is there a “bigger” power which decided that Newton should be chosen one? No ! Because albeit finite, the probability of him dying by apple-crash-landing was extremely low. (That Newton was a devout Christian himself is besides the point).
  The reason people are scared about things happening by chance is that it introduces uncertainty in life. People love to live in a predictable world where the surprises are minimal (who wants /expects to be given a pink slip after profits of the company had tripled ? But there exists a finite probability). All this so called philosophizing, is an effort to finally find a single entity / law that people can attribute/blame every happening in the world for. One that governs it all. God. But unfortunately, the real natural world is built on the manifestations of things happening by chance and that too at various scales of lengths and time (which themselves are subsystems of the higher space-time, but that is a topic for another day).
  In a nutshell, the questions “how” and “why” are not different if put in the right context. However attributing a “reason” for a happening , which is other than physical, is only a figment of imagination. Thus it finally becomes a question of what is required – truth or comfort – what does the human mind seek ? Comfort will burn in the fire of truth. Hence, while truth may not be comforting, it is fully dependable and that’s what science tries to embrace.
  To me, the above statement “you know nothing since there is nothing to know” – reflects a defeatist’s/incurious mind. If there is nothing to know, why bother learning alphabets / communication and so many other advanced forms of knowledge ? Why work ? Why earn? But even ants work. Elephants learn. If one thinks there is nothing to know, he is in a comfortable veil of ignorance and self-deception which does NOT lead to a higher platform of “contemplation” but to the debilitating domain of inaction. He is the one who is in so called “maya”. Science on the other hand is that sincere method which attempts to understand the complexity of the universe different means so that it can establish truths or at least parts of them.
  And if you want to know the beginning of COSMOS, you should ideally read books on Astronomy and not Brahmanda PuraaNa. Or at least watch the documentary “Journey to the edge of the universe”.

குரு வந்தனம்

வேதாந்தம் கற்றுக் கொள்ளும் காலத்தில், என் நண்பர்களுடன் அளவளாவும்போது ஏற்பட்ட வாதங்களில் குருவைப் பற்றி எழுந்த வாதத்திற்கு நான் கொடுத்த கவி வடிவம்.

குரு என்பது ஒரு மனிதன் அல்ல. உண்மை தான் குரு என்பதே இதன் சாராம்சம்.

நண்பன் 1:
========

கருவறை வாழும்
கரிய தெய்வமும்
மறுவுரை பகரா !
மதியிலீர் ! ஞானக்

குருவரை சென்று
குவிகரம் செய்து
திருவுரை கேட்டே
திருந்துதல் வேண்டும்

குறுகிய மனமும்
குவலயமாகும்
இறுகிய இதயம்
இளகியே போகும்

அறியா மையது
அண்டாதொழியும்
குறையா மையது
குணமென ஆகும்

நண்பன் 2:
========

குருவெனச் சொன்னால்
குறுகிய மனித
உருவினில் உண்டென
உருவகிக்காதே !

பரந்த வானம்
விரிந்த பூமி
சுரந்த நீரும்
நகர்ந்த காற்றும்

எரிந்த தீயும்
எண்திசைக்கோளும்
செரிந்த சான்றோர்
கண்டதைப் பகரும்

கண்டது எல்லாம்
விளங்கிட நீயும்
சிந்தனை செய்தே
உய்தலும் வேண்டும்

பொறிகள் மூலம்
புரிகிறதாலே
பொறியும் குருவே !
புரிதலும் குருவே!

நூலும் குருவே !
நுண்ணியம் குருவே!
நாலும் குருவே !
உண்மைதான் குருவே !

Is happiness to be gained ? - Part 4

In part-3, we raised two questions:
(1) If my nature is happiness, why do I get unhappy?
(2) What takes me away from my nature?
We also inferred that answering (2) answers (1). Let us take the example of sun. When sun shines, I say it is bright. When a cloud shields the light from the sun, I say it is dark. But the point here to note is that brightness and darkness are my perceptions. My perceiving the darkness does NOT make the sun disappear or stop from glowing. The sun shines as ever but I do not get to see the sun in full expression. Or in other words, the full potential of the sun is not available to me, the cause of which could be the cloud.
Same argument is applied to happiness by the great masters. What is, is all happiness. But my becoming unhappy is ONLY because I fail to recognize the full expression of happiness. Since it may be a little difficult to accept this argument as is, let us dig a little deeper.
Masters have ruled that Aham aananda swaroopaha. This means, I am of the nature of happiness. I find it difficult to believe since I find that all the people in the world I see are seemingly unhappy and unsatisfied, seeking happiness in one form or the other. If an overwhelming number of people seem to be unhappy, how can I be convinced that the real nature of any person is happiness? The masters have presented a clear analysis on this.

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Desire and relentless action
In any scientific experiment there are three parts:
(1) Observation of the phenomenon
(2) Collection of data
(3) Study
A good example is the story of Newton who got inspired by a falling apple. He observed that an apple fell from the tree. It struck to his mind that everything falls if there is no support. He collected data, studied and concluded that gravity - a force - is responsible for attracting the objects towards the earth?s surface. How is this example relevant to our discussion?
Everybody in this world acts relentlessly. The Part-1 of this series starts with that observation. Action is a phenomenon. And that everybody acts is an observation. We find that everybody acts differently but acts for sure. This constitutes the collection of data. When we try to understand or study why this happens, why everybody acts incessantly, we find that everybody has a desire instigating their action. Desires themselves are mutually different and so are the actions instigated by them and the people performing them, but, that the desire is the cause for the action, is undeniable. That the desire exists and people in a thirst to quench the desire, perform an action is undeniable. A desire creates a drive to be happy. It stems from an urge to be happy. Everybody has a pressure to make themselves happy. But, as in any science it is understandable that the presence of a pressure (or a gradient in engineering terms) in a system implies a distance from the equilibrium or the natural state. For example, a temperature gradient drives the flow of heat to nullify the differences in temperatures between the hot and cold bodies to attain thermal equilibrium. Similarly a compressed spring retreats to its natural state when the pressure is released. At the time of pressure, there is a great urge in the spring to go to the natural state since it is far away from it.
The people that we see performing an action have a strong urge to dispel the desire and acquire happiness. Or in other words, they want to relieve themselves off the pressure that the desire creates in them so that they can be happy. Thus, there is a natural urge to be happy in everybody performing an action. Even a person who attempts suicide seeks happiness through death since he finds his life unhappy. Thus everybody in this world has a constant urge to seek happiness. Or in other words, since happiness is the nature that they are, they seek their natural state where they can feel home at. The unhappiness that I experience is because of the partial expression of the happiness due to a cover that masks its full expression. Every time I want to break that cover. What kind of a cover is this? It is the ignorance about my self.
Ufff! pressures, covers.. we went for quite a ride. Let us summarize:
(1) The full expression of happiness is masked an this leads to unhappiness
(2) The cover of ignorance about my real nature or full expression of happiness makes me feel pressured
Thus since I seek happiness all the time, it is my natural state. But since something is hindering me from experiencing its full expression, some sort of ignorance, I have a DESIRE to become happy. When this desire steps in my mind, I seek ways to become happy. I try to find all possible answers without addressing the question properly. I feel I can become happy by buying a house. I feel I can become happy eating good food.
But, what is next? Another desire! Thus there is a constant background music going in our life "I want.. I want"J. How many ever desires I satiate, I am still left with more to come and the basic thing that is common to all these desires is the background music "I want.. I want". This music goes on and on in my life. This background music can be compared to the traditional Indian drone (tanpura) which offers a two note scale background support for a performing artist. Whatever happens with artist or the crowd or with the music, the background is unperturbed and goes on and on unchanged J
By acting to satiate my desires I am clearly trying to remove the "wanting person" in me who is creating a pressure on me all the time. "I want" is common and "what I want" is different. Or in other words, everybody has desires for sure though in various colors and flavors. The wanting person is there in everybody and the natural urge to become happy is there in all.

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Desire is will-based and urge is not
There is a distinct difference between urge and desire. We saw in the last section that:
(1) When the nature is covered there is an urge to break the cover and come back to the nature
(2) To come back to the natural state I employ a desire
Or in other words, the urge to become happy is different from a desire. I may desire to eat a doughnut, fly a plane or watch a movie and these desires are clearly different. What runs as an undercurrent in these desires is the URGE to become happy. Thus the urge to become happy is natural whereas the desire I cultivate to appease my urge is will-based. My nature, the happiness is covered and there is a push from inside and this push is the urge. The desire that I implant as a vehicle to appease my urge, is will-based.
Hmm.. why such a rough discussion ? Why must I understand that the urge to become happy is NOT will-based but only the desire is? Let us look at the spring example. When the spring is compressed, it has an urge to retreat. Can the urge in the spring be called unnatural? No. Why? It is important to make a clear distinction here. When the spring is pushed away from its equilibrium, it has an urge to retreat. This urge it displays to retreat is natural whereas the state that the spring is in (compressed) is unnatural. The same logic is applied here. The urge I have, to get out of my natural state is natural, whereas the state that I am in (unhappiness) is unnatural.
What is natural needs to be attained and what is cultivated can be expunged. To be more precise, what is natural cannot be stopped from being attained by a will-based thought or action and that which is will-based can always be repealed (by will of course). Thus the desire can always be rationalized and cancelled whereas it is impossible to stop one from getting urged to become happy. For example, the desire to drink a potion which is poisonous could be nullified by the knowledge that it is deleterious to life whereas the urge to drink potable water when one is thirsty cannot be rationalized and cancelled.

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How to satiate the urge?
Next question is how to fulfill this urge to become happy. The urge can be satisfied only when I understand through what source I can be happy about. Getting that source of happiness, I will be able to satisfy my urge. What is that object which by the acquirement of which I become uncompromisingly happy? Chocolate? Children? house? What is it?
Recall our earlier discussions. There is NO such object which can bring me uncompromising eternal happiness which is my nature. The idea that something "other than me" will "help me take my self to my natural state" itself sounds absurd. The natural state is one which I will tend to be in irrespective of whether there is a "helper object" or not. This situation can be likened to a catalyst which helps in the attainment of chemical equilibrium faster but the absence of which will still propel the reaction to equilibrium. The irony though in that example is that, I find no such object that is a "helper" for attaining eternal happiness.
Thus I am in a conflict. My nature is happiness - as established, I do not experience it fully - as observed and I do not find any "helper" object or situation or experience which would lead me into it - as inferred. How will I be able to tackle this question? This can be tackled only by realizing that the source of happiness is NOT outside me. That which is natural to me cannot be external to me. The happiness that I seek which is also my nature, cannot be external to me.
Let us first give the benefit of doubt to those great masters who have experienced the truth about selves and had passed the knowledge down the generations. They stated that my nature is happiness and also gave me an analysis to understand that I am always on the look out for being happy. Since I am always searching for happiness and since masters ascertain that it is my nature, I am clear that, I can NEVER miss it. Since my nature is happiness which is total and full, I cannot withstand anything less than its maximum degree of expression. Or conversely, a lesser degree of happiness which we may call unhappiness, is a state I cannot be comfortable in. Or in other words, since happiness is my nature, I cannot stand unhappiness and I always tend to progress towards the fullest form of happiness. Any sense of lack becomes unacceptable to me and this creates an urge in me to revert back to my natural state. I am presently tied down by my self-judgment that I lack happiness and I need to gain it. This wrong judgment is clearly from the ignorance which has to be removed to experience the complete and uncompromised expression of total happiness.
Whenever I cultivate a desire, I allow a foreign element through my will which since not being off my nature, disturbs me. When I acquire an object in the world, I temporarily relieve my self from the music of "I want". This "wanting" tendency which is nothing but desire, is removed temporarily and I am introduced to my nature that is happiness. It can be likened to the sun coming bright after the cloud is gone. The fulfillment of the desire is the removal of the cloud. Once the cloud is removed I am exposed to the sun and this is the real nature of brightness. The object of desire after acquirement introduces me to my real nature temporarily and I am completely comfortable then. But since this object that I acquire is not an eternal source of happiness, my interest in it dies down and I seek happiness through other objects.
Thus such a seeking cannot clearly be a solution for satiating the urge that I nurture. The only solution is to realize through the knowledge expounded by the masters that I need not seek to be happy but realize that I am of the nature of happiness. So, the only way to satiate this urge completely and uncompromisingly is to seek a guru who will help me dispel the various notions that I have about happiness and reveal to me the clear truth. Knowledge alone can bring the change in my attitude.

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Conclusion
Thus my nature is happiness. It is not limited by my body, mind and senses. This happiness is experienced by me every moment. Happiness being my nature is the reason why I seek to be in that all the time. But ignorance about my nature curtails it from my being able to experience it in its fullest expression. The ignorance comes from my own judgment of my being a person with inadequacy. Knowledge dispensed through a Guru only can bring in me the change in the attitude and dispel my notions about my nature. The knowledge revealed by the masters through the scriptures clearly establishes the inability of any object other than my own self being able to make me happy eternally. Once I realize this great teaching of the masters, I will find that the problems that I see in my life are clearly and properly addressed.

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Is happiness to be gained ? - Part 3

We saw that:
(1) Happiness is my nature
(2) We recognize things by what we think they are, rather than by what they really are
(3) Failure to recognize the reality leads to a mistake
Let us ponder over the last two conclusions in the coming passages. When do we recognize things by what we think they are? This requires a slightly extended thinking.

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Known and Unknown
Let us consider an example of a rope in dim light. When I see the rope in dim light, I can mistake that for a garland or a snake or a rope, because I do not have a clear knowledge about it. Now, if it had been completely dark, the rope would have been invisible and the thought of something being there would never have entered my mind if the first place. In other words, if the object is totally not known to me I do not think about it. A totally unknown object will never become the object of inquiry. Since I do not think about it, I cannot make a mistake about it. Thus an unknown object, can never become the locus of my mistake.
Suppose there is ample light for me to understand that it is a rope, there is NO way I can mistake the rope for a garland or snake. Thus a known object cannot be the locus of my mistake. Now read the following sentence slowly
Neither something that is completely unknown, nor something that is completely known can be mistaken for some other thing that it is not
Uff..sounds a little lengthy and profound. Let us take another look at it and break down the sentence into two statements:
(1) That I know cannot be mistaken for something else.
(2) That I do not know does not become the object of enquiry.
Thus I clearly can understand that things which are both completely known and unknown cannot be the loci of my mistakes!! But in dim light, the rope is mistaken by me for a snake. I recognize that something is there and my own projection of the rope is a snake. Thus the rope is evident enough to be mistaken for! Or in other words partial knowledge about the rope makes me mistake it for a snake! More importantly, to commit a mistake there must be something. A basis is needed to commit a mistake.
Now we are in a position to answer the question that we posed namely When do we recognize things by what we think they are? We now know:
(1) There must be something for me to commit a mistake
(2) I do not know about it clearly
(3) I recognize the things by what I think they are only when there is lack of clarity in my knowledge. (4) I recognize things as they are when there is clear knowledge.
(5) I do not recognize things which are completely unknown to me.
Applying the same reasoning to happiness, unless I have had a perception of happiness in my mind,

(1) Can I think or enquire about it?
(2) Can I mistakenly superimpose it on the external sources?
If it had not been known to me but had remained totally unknown,
(1) It will NOT become a subject of my life.
(2) I will not compare. Every time I am exposed to a situation of happiness, I also follow it up with a statement: "no..it is boring, I want something else..". "I want something else" is nothing but the seeking of happiness because I get bored.
So what is the basis? Where to stop and where to start and how to appropriately address the titular question? We clearly see that we yearn for happiness in our life since it is our nature. In my worldly chores, my whole life is totally dedicated to gain happiness as I see it. Somehow, I have got the idea that my nature is happiness and I want to be in tune with my nature. The moment I enjoy a particular situation I forget the limitations in me and feel joyous. I forget the limitation of the body, mind, senses and the objects.

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Power of judgment
The recognition of things through my projections is because of the power of judgment that I am endowed with. A man can commit a mistake because of the wrong judgment. An animal on the other hand does not have the capacity to judge. It is because the man is self-conscious and an animal is not. The life of an animal is pre-programmed by the nature. The self-consciousness gives the man the ability to discriminate and choose. For e.g. the food we eat. We choose different food stuff and eat, whereas a cow eats grass without any thinking. The program of the nature in the cow is clear. If it is hungry it eats. It has the basic ability to identify some things which are not edible and it eats grass preferably. It does not choose between green grass and pale yellow grass. It eats grass indiscriminately. Thus the power to discriminate and choose is not given to an animal. A human has this power. Man is always in the grip of self-judgment. This self-judgment leads the man to take him self to be something other than what he really is. This clear understanding about my being self conscious is the prelude to succeeding passage.
I am clear that my nature is happiness to which I am occasionally exposed. Once again to re-iterate, if happiness had not been my nature, I will not be seeking to be in such a state all the time and if I had not been exposed to it, I will not be thinking about it. If it had not been experienced, I need not enquire about it (Refer to the unknown/known object argument). But the fact that I have experienced it, now leads me to the following questions:
(1) If my nature is happiness, why do I get unhappy?
(2) What takes me away from my nature?
It is understandable that answering (2) answers (1) because, when the source that takes me away from the nature is identified, I can understand the reason behind my getting unhappy. To be contd..

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Is happiness to be gained ? - Part 2

Huh..tough indeed are the questions that we asked in the first part of this series. To recapitulate, the questions we faced are:
(1) Is happiness an object on the earth? (2) Is it an experience to be gained? (3) What exactly do we mean by happiness?
We saw through some examples that there is no object called happiness on the earth. Thus the first question as to whether happiness is an object is answered but negatively. The next question in the series is to analyze whether any experience will give me happiness.
I sleep. I feel happy when I am asleep. But if I am happy when I am sleeping, why am I not sleeping all the time? I definitely do not like that. Thus in spite of my being happy while I sleep, I do not want to sleep the entire day or life. Why ? It is because I simply cannot sleep all the time since I yearn for a change. Thus sleeping which is an external experience sought after by me, cannot be the constant source of happiness that I am seeking. Happiness that comes from any external medium cannot be with me all the time. Every time I am exposed to an experience which shows me happiness, I find that after a particular length of time, I yearn for a change.
Let us take the case of a sugar crystal once again. We know that the nature of the sugar crystal is sweetness. The crystal does not have to yearn for its nature because, it is all by itself, sweet. Let us rephrase the three questions that we put above in a slightly different fashion:
Is happiness to be gained or is it my nature?
We found by a logical reasoning that if it is gained in time, it vanishes with time. The example of not being able to sleep all the time vindicates the former statement. That which is a function of place and time, is bound to change. So what do I do now? I am in a fix. I clearly recognize that:
(1) Happiness is not an object on the earth (2) Anything that I try to gain in time, is time-bound (3) Anything that is a function of place and time is bound to change
So where is happiness? What is happiness? I am still clueless as to whether it is to be gained since I just concluded that anything gained in time is not permanent. Let us muse over the other dimension of the same problem.
We find everybody is struggling to attain something. What is that something? As it is easy to see, the constant search is definitely for a better, happier existence. If you ask the people why they are unhappy, each offers a reason of his own: health, wealth, family problems etc. Now let us consider this situation: logically speaking, if each person is unhappy because of a particular problem or a reason, they must be happy once that gets resolved. Suppose there is a person complaining that his only problem is the marriage of his daughter: once she gets married, if he is asked "Hello Sir, are you happy now"?, he would reply "No Sir, these days I don't get any letters from her. So I am unhappy".
Problems like the ones mentioned afore are called topical problems. A genuine researcher in the pursuit of clear answers would address the issue more fundamentally. Instead of addressing the problems which are corollary to the main problem, a researcher tries to identify the main problem and address it.
The main and fundamental problem which relates to these topical problems is easy to recognize. Why am I unhappy? Where and when do I start getting unhappy? An even more fundamental problem if recognized, would help dispel the cloud around the afore-mentioned questions. A fundamental analysis is necessary. By fundamental analysis I mean, we must analyze without any presuppositions. We started off the discussion in Part 1 of this series with a presupposition that everybody wants to be happy. Is this axiomatic approach right? Let us once again ask some questions:
(1) Why do I want to be happy? (2) Why do I not develop love for the state of being unhappy?

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Happiness is my nature
All the questions put till now vanish without a trace when I recognize that happiness is my nature. The reason is evident from the observation that, I do not want to skip a happy moment anytime. A happy moment is what I like to be in, all the time. The very fact that I want to hold onto it, shows that it is my nature. Whenever there is unhappiness, I tend to escape. I try to find solutions to the problems that arise from the state of unhappiness. As we can easily recognize, the solutions to the problems that we face are the ways to attain happiness thus trying to get away from an unhappy situation all the time.
It is understandable that I feel at home when I am with my nature. Since I relax, revel and be completely comfortable with being happy, I infer that my nature is happiness. Wonderful, is it not?!!! When I am not with my nature, it affects me. A simple example is the telling of a lie. Anybody who tells a lie, clearly feels guilt in his mind. This sense of discomfort does not arise when you tell the truth. Thus the truth which is natural makes you feel at home, whereas the lie unsettles you An eye-bug that enters the eye makes you feel uncomfortable. Unless you get rid of it, you do not feel comfortable. Thus you have a tendency to escape a situation which does not make you feel at home. An unhappy situation does not make you feel at home and you want to escape it. Something that is not my nature, when it enters me, disturbs me.
What is natural will never disturb me. What is unnatural will always disturb me. A topical problem has a solution but just as we recognized, the topical problem itself is impermanent. Therefore, the solution to the topical problem also is impermanent. A deeper or a more fundamental problem is the reason why I hog on to happiness and escape unhappiness. This is a perennial problem that I face and a permanent solution which addresses this must be found. The solution to the problem is in the understanding that my nature is happiness.
Thus I conclude that not a person, not an object not a situation is the prime reason for my happiness. I clearly understood that the happiness has to be my nature. Now we come to the next logical question - is this happiness to be gained ? We must now make a distinction between gaining and recognizing. Gaining is action and recognizing is knowledge. I must recognize whether the happiness is external to me, within me or if it is my nature.
If happiness is my nature, why is there a problem in recognizing it? It is because I tend to associate and superimpose happiness with the objects or experiences of the universe. I do not see things as they are! At this juncture it seems like I am trying to confound you with profound sentences. Hence let us take an example: a rope in the dim light. I can mistakenly recognize it as a garland or snake or anything else. This happens in our life most of the times. Now try to read this sentence slowly:
We recognize things by what we think they are, rather than by what they really are.
A failure to recognize the reality associated with the things, leads us to a mistake. Thus the failure to see clearly the real source of happiness makes me mistakenly feel that something else is the source of happiness. The failure to see that I am the source of happiness makes me look around and claim mistakenly that the objects of world are the sources of happiness. Place, time and objects, I superimpose as the sources of happiness since I fail to recognize that I am the source of happiness.
So how do I go about recognizing that I am the source of happiness? To be contd..

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Is happiness to be gained ? - Part 1

In this world of burgers and fries, we seem to be busy in our own way all the time. To stop and muse over what we need to eat seems to be a luxury. A moment to think about the music that we love seems to be too long. We stuff ourselves with lowly food, the quality of which we do not question, because our precious time could be used for work. We do not care for the music that we listen because the music is just a companion to keep ourselves awake as we drive. A conversation with business tycoon by an employee:
E : Sir, the coffee has come T : Sorry I am busy E : Sir, the charity people are waiting outside T : Sorry I am busy E : Sir, your daughter needs to be picked up by you T : Sorry I am busy E : Sir, you need to.. T : Sorry I am busy !!!! E : (frustrated)Sir, are you sorry that you are busy ?
The continuous performance of action seems to be our goal of life. We think, unless we act a lot we cannot enjoy life. The reason we work more is because we think that, the more we work, more we can earn and more money we make, happier we can be. How pathetic it is, not to realize that this is a vicious cycle! This stems from the notion that higher the bank balance, more balanced the life will be. It seems that increasing the bank balance is the goal of life. Sometimes it also appears that supporting the family is the goal of life. By this, I think I am happy.

But when we ask the people, "hey are you happy?", nobody answers, "Yes. I am". There are people who are happy in spite of nil bank balance and many rich people have a lot of wealth, but still are unhappy. In fact, Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries, ranks highest in the happiness index ! Most of the rich people take pills for sleep. In many of the western countries, people are not as peaceful as we think they are. By this, we do not mean to belittle money, its importance or its function in our lives. If so, what is the index or scale of happiness?
I am trying to understand if there can be a system, an idea or any way of life by which I stop searching for happiness from the external sources. This is a logical question that anybody would like to ask. Also, what exactly do I want to gain in my life? I have no immediate answer for these questions. But if I am asked if I want to be happy, I do not deny. I say "yes" immediately. Even sadists and masochists try to find happiness in the acts they perform. Thus, everybody has their own problems associated with their idea of happiness. The source of happiness is different for everyone. What makes one happy need not make the other (happy). A simple example is the pleasure that a smoker derives out of cigarette and the suffocation that the non-smoker endures in his presence. The questions that we face are :
(1) Is happiness an object on the earth ? (2) Is it an experience to be gained ? (3) What exactly do we mean by happiness ?
A thorough analysis of these questions is necessary.
A sugar crystal is sweet. It is sweet independent of where it is, who tastes it and when it is consumed. Hence we conclude that ?Sweetness is the nature of sugar. It can never give up its nature. Can I find an object which has the nature, happiness ? No.
Suppose a hungry person is offered a glass of sweet milk. He drinks a couple of glasses with glee. He is offered a third glass and he takes it with a grin. Fourth glass appeases his hunger completely and when the fifth glass is emptied by him, his tummy is stuffed. "Another glass ?", he hesitates but accepts for the sake of being a good guest but one more when offered, he strongly resents and says "I cannot have any more". So, the same glass of milk which originally was the source of happiness became unacceptable later. We can similarly analyze every situation and can conclude that there is not a single object in this universe, the eternal nature of which is happiness.
So how to address this problem ? To be contd..

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