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The other day I was talking to a young couple. The wife complained that the husband gets angry even on trivial issues and is unable to control his anger. I asked the boy why he gets angry. He said, “I get angry because I get hurt when she says something I don’t like.” I asked him what exactly gets hurt because the word “I” stands for his whole body and the mind. For example when there is pain in the leg you say my leg is hurting or when you have pain in the finger you say my finger is hurting. He was a little perplexed. Evidently he had never confronted this question before. He, however, said that he had some beliefs, some values and if someone says something that is contrary to his beliefs he gets hurt.
The husband ought to know that when he gets angry his wife does not like him and when the wife does not like him he gets upset again. So the anger comes back to him. We all need to know that the anger is not confined to one particular person. We all get angry when our belief system is challenged. It is, therefore, of utmost importance that we should understand anger and know what exactly gets hurt. When we look at anger we should be free from any feeling of justification or guilt. We need to use our capacity for rational, objective and unbiased thinking and also our capacity for pure observation. Pure observation means to see things as they actually are. In full attention and awareness we can see thought as it arises in the mind. We can see the source of that thought.
There is a clear distinction between the tree and the word “tree”. The word is used as a means of communication. We can always see the tree without the word. Same way the word “I” stands for my physical body and everything that is contained in my brain. The brain is the storehouse of knowledge, memory and experience. Brain has the capacity to think and respond to various challenges in life. We ought to be able to make a clear distinction between the word “I” and the thing it stands for. The word “I” is only a means of communication. But this is not what is actually taking place in our mind.
In our mind there is a psychological entity called the “I”, the “me”, the “self”. Our own thinking creates this “I” and treats it as a real entity. This is done through the process of attachment and identification. Thinking is changing all the time. It is in the state of movement. For its own stability and security thinking creates in the mind a permanent entity. Thinking has devised ways to keep this entity secure, stable and permanent. Thinking establishes its continuity by identifying it with something or the other. It is identified with something greater which it feels is secure and permanent. Without the process of identification and attachment there is no entity called the “I”.
The amazing thing about the “self” is that it is made up of words, symbols, images, ideas, opinions and beliefs. But it has acquired immense significance. Our life is governed by it. We protect the “self” the same way as we protect the body. There is automatic response if there is any challenge to my “self-esteem” or to my “self-image”. Thought has created in the mind an everlasting need for psychological security. Even an utterance of a word that is contrary to what I believe to be true can hurt my feelings very badly. Attachment to ideas, things and some special people give us only a false sense of security because such security is always under threat. So we always live in perpetual fear.
In many people the significance of “Self” goes far beyond the attachment to the body or to material things. They are ready even to sacrifice their own life in order to protect the “self” not knowing that the “self” is contained in their own brain cells as a result of influence, indoctrination, and conditioning of the mind by the propaganda of the priests and politicians.
We need to very carefully look at all the implications of the man made mind. Identification with ideas, opinions and beliefs brings about division and creates conflict at all levels of human relationship. There is obvious fallacy in the whole divisive process. People are caught in self-created illusion. This illusion is the cause of human ignorance. Not being aware of the facts or ignoring the facts and clinging to ideas brings about ignorance. It is an undeniable fact that basically, fundamentally human beings are the same yet each one has a very strong feeling that he is different from others. Unfortunately even the religions encourage and strengthen this feeling. At the physical level the differences are obvious and must be appreciated. But are we different from each other psychologically?
All human beings, irrespective of color, caste, creed, sex, religion or nationality face the same life of pleasure, pain and sorrow. We are all fearful, uncertain and feel insecure. Our perceptions and responses to challenges of life and our basic urges, desires and demands are similar. We get influenced the same way. Below the layers of superficial cultural differences runs the same stream of selfishness and self-centeredness. Each person is pursuing ambition, greed and self-fulfillment. Each person is concerned with himself. Psychologically we get hurt the same way. Each one protects the image that he has created about himself. Our beliefs may be different but the reason why we believe in something or the other is the same. The reason being the need for security created by the “self” that is insecure by its very nature.
Existing human situation makes it abundantly clear that a fundamental change must take place in the human consciousness if we want to live in peace and harmony with each other. Only a profound understanding can bring about inward revolution. A person who is serious must pay attention to the way he thinks and acts. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. At present our perceptions are based on the knowledge, memory and experience that we have accumulated on the basis of false premises. A person who is serious must drop the entire load of accumulation and look anew. The very pause to look is a significant new step. Your comments are most welcome.
Contact: sardarsingh@msn.com
Sir,
Good to see your website and to read through your thoughts. It is nostalgic to read these and appear to be concurrent with our previous dialogs.
Questions and thoughts:
- Is love just another feeling, emotion or ‘entity’ like anger, hatred or greed? If yes, then it does it matter what state of mind one is in to act in one way or the other? And if not, is it then not a state of conflict?
- Is love necessary for a successful relationship? Can purity of thought and self-realization not be the only condition for success of any relationship?
- Prejudices and childhood sanskars predominantly rule every action we take. What is then a good way to bring up children? Since children do not know what they do not know, can learning through experiences be sufficient for their self-knowledge?
Warm Regards,
Sam
Hoes does a mango taste?
A legitimate question is raised: “Is love just another feeling, emotion or ‘entity’ like anger, hatred or greed? If yes, then does it matter what state of mind one is in to act in one way or the other? And if not, is it then not a state of conflict?”
I wonder how one could attempt to answer this interesting question! Surely, to answer it authentically, we need to know if there is a possibility – not in somebody else’s life, but in our own personal lives — to know it differently, to understand it beyond “feeling”, beyond “emotion”, beyond our little “self”, which generally compares, concocts, designs, projects, estimates and then announces to the world that TRUTH has been found. Only an honest, authentic answer could reveal “Love” so cherished, so adored, so misused, so ignored, so misunderstood; and, that revelation must come forth, must emerge from the one interested in looking into this beyond the concept, beyond any social acceptance of the word. Only then it is authentic, ethical, and living.
Suppose, I say: “No, love is not like that! Love is: “blah, blah, blah”, and this is the whole truth about it.” Then, it would be my take on it, it would be another proposition that I personally stand for, but its value as a truth is worthless to billion others who might have figured out “love” differently. It would be my concept of love, my belief escorted via the label “love”, but it wouldn’t be live, moving, kicking, and screaming beyond me. So, what do we do?
Surely, it is not anyone’s belief – even if it is beautiful, rich, and spectacular – that makes up truth. Also, even if the entire world tends to subscribe to it as “truth”, it may be just our collective fervent wish, our social tendency to size up things in terms of large numbers. If the majority believes in X — surely, the society tends to argue — X must be true. Either, we accept societal approach, or, we could say, even if hesitatingly, perhaps, just perhaps, that there might be another way to find out what love is all about. Could there be such a thing called love that is beyond my personal feeling, emotion, my personal take, my conditional living that I have accepted from the society?
To find that out, we need to discover it within our own selves. Someone else’s answer won’t do; I need to find out myself. I have to discover, I have to find out what love is all about for me, within me, without me, with all of us together, with each of us as separate islands without any relation, etc. If someone asks me to say a few words about the “taste of mangoes”, no matter how or what I say about it would be totally misappropriate. You want to find out how a mango does taste like, well, let’s eat mangoes, lots of it, many different types of it in many varieties, in many nuances, texture, color, smell, and touch. Only then we could each individually understand how a mango does taste like (we may not be able to verbalize it ever, but in the depth of our understanding we’d know), and that would not be a social knowledge, but a discovered understanding within.
The key to every understanding is self-discovery. You can’t discover something for me; I’ve to do it myself. I’ve to relate to it – not as an adjunct – but as a BEING in the core of it, moving with it, dancing with it, suffering with it, elating with it, without dropping anything, without including anything from outside. To know “love”, must I not be in “love” without exclusions, without inclusions, without conditions, without any external grammars, syntax and semantics? To know “love” differently beyond what my little “self” concocts, must I not discover it in that refreshing precinct where “I” am “aware” — not the society, not the authority, but yours truly — at the very core of it?
Please also read article on “What is Love.” Response to your question on Education will be posted in a few days.
But at some point, the conditioning HAS been examined and then what is left? would you say there is an appropriate “time” to put the past away and enter into this beingness?
If the “beingness” presents itself as a separate entity into which one “enters” at a specific time point, isn’t one still “conditioned”? Are there two on the table so to speak: Me, and my “beingness”? Who will inform us about “what is left after conditioning HAS been examined”? And will that third party information soothe our pains and frustrations elevating us to a plateau where we had never been before? Will that information open forth the spring of our personal joy and understanding? If someone tells me what an ice cream actually tastes like, could that information satisfy my taste for an ice cream?
The only person who could answer this question is the person raising it, and that, too, only from a basis where all her conditioning is “GONE”. Otherwise, one cannot truly “see” what is “left” so long one is “conditioned”, so long one is “unaware”, so long one is in “time” (all three are the same). But, once all conditionings are gone what “question” could still persist as a residue?