The world is full of paradoxes. To understand them we have to learn the art of understanding life. Man wants to understand everything through logic, but logic is not understanding; it is the deception that something can be understood.
Man has created a world around him and attached himself to it. He is like a spider which has spun a web and gotten caught in it. In fact, spiders are not so naïve, but man is. Man has spun this world around him over a thousand years of progress and become enamoured with it. It is like a cage he has created for safety and doesn’t have the courage to step out of it. It is like man digging his own grave.
A few have gotten out of the cage. Like Buddha when he looked at the futility of a caged life. Man always wants to anchor his boat at the harbour to keep it safe, but boats aren’t made to be tied to the harbour.
Why is man incarnated? What does this entire existence want him to be? Man has to understand. Man is full of existence. He lives in it. No matter how he is embodied, he continues to be pure existence. He continues to live, which is what the Hindus call ‘sashvat jeevan’ (eternal life). But his mind thinks otherwise and that is when the world is created. There are as many worlds created as many men there are on earth.
The mind has created a very complex world around man. For thousands of years man has created such complexities which seem to have lent joy and colour to life but they have also brought him sorrow, misery and suffering. The body wants food, water, and shelter. Man is able to fulfil them easily. But in a complex world, needs become more complex – societal, psychological, emotional, and spiritual. Man seems to be running to fulfil his needs all his life but they are never fulfilled.
Man wants to fill himself up with money, buy things to prove himself. But he remains unfulfilled always. The actual need of man is his existential need. Man comes filled with it. But when he lives in his mind, he finds himself emptied and tries to fill himself with worldly things.
Things are utilitarian and it is useless to possess them beyond a point. Living a life full of madness to earn money so that others might call you a rich man is a life lived in vain. Deep down you will always know your poverty for money led you to be rich. You wish to live in the fullness of the things that you have filled your house with. But in fact one lives in the emptiness of the house. Young people these days are embracing minimalism as the art of life and that is a good way for being in existence, away from the madness.
Whatever is needed by existence is the real need. Whatever that man has invented is merely for purposes of utility. Thanks to science, we have invented electricity, fast travel, light at night, and more information in megabytes. Suppose there is a calamity now and this fast travel, electricity and information and your condominiums and banks are lost. Will you live? Yes. Your body lives on food and water; they are priceless. Every person can find shelter; earth is a huge space. What else will you need then? Money and things have values ascribed to them by man but in a difficult situation, will such value remain?
The mind and the body are one. You exist in this body-mind as one. When you fear, you run, which is in fact your mind fears and your body runs. But both activities become one activity for the body-mind. Psychologists say that most diseases are psychological. When your mind begins thinking your body begins acquiring it.
Both physics and religion agree that this world is made of time and space and the world is expanding, and that is how this world has come into being. We as the body-mind exist in space and time is the comprehension of the human mind. One type of time is that which is experienced psychologically, and the second type is calendar time, which humans use to calculate days, nights, months and years.
You exist and there is nothing to be done. When you become one with your existence and are fully conscious, your psychological and bodily needs become less prominent. Your whole body-mind and consciousness become a part of existence.
Buddha became one with existence for six years. Silently. His needs died out. Human needs are relative. Life is relative. You are neither body nor mind. But man is living under the false ‘ego’ created by his mind, which has created needs which will continue to make him miserable.
Sitting silently in existence, being one with it, that is the art of life. It happens when you understand the futility of your needs. But all your life you keep on trying to fulfil the hopes that have created this world. The wish that you want to acquire this world. But in the end, nothing comes into your hands. So, sit silently, beyond body, beyond mind, beyond breath, beyond everything around you. Sit silently to know that you are not only part of existence but you are the existence itself.
The author is a spiritual teacher and advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com