I have been practicing meditation for years now. A simple daily 30-40 minutes routine end-capped by breathing exercises. There have been many gifts that this practice has given me. The chief among them is the realization that the default state of human consciousness is happiness.
So where does unhappiness come from?
J.. Krishnamurti, the philosopher, has approached the human enigma of the pursuit of happiness from many angles. To my mind the deepest and most fundamental of which is captured in this paragraph from one of his lectures:
Happiness is not the product of time
In fact one of the strands of thought that the highest reaches of physics is now exploring is that time itself is a chimera that is only a manifestation of the mind and not a physical reality. Julian Barbour in his provocative book "The End of Time", Barbour lays out the basic evidence for a timeless universe and shows how at the same time we experience in the world in a intensely temporal way. It also points the way towards the bridging of the greatest chasm in modern science - the gap between classical and quantum physics- leading to the holy grail of The Grand Unification Theory.
For those of us who dismiss high faulting philosophy, physics and/or teachings and would like to see direct and more tangible evidence that "forgetting" is anything more than one of the numerous in-capacities that advancing age subjects us to, may I point to an abstract of an article from a recent issue of Scientific American titled "Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind". So there you have it, any which way you like it. Or you can just forget it and turn the page.
So where does unhappiness come from?
J.. Krishnamurti, the philosopher, has approached the human enigma of the pursuit of happiness from many angles. To my mind the deepest and most fundamental of which is captured in this paragraph from one of his lectures:
Happiness is not the product of time
The thought process brings about psychological progress in time, but is it real, as real as chronological time? And, can we use that time which is of the mind as a means of understanding the eternal, the timeless? Because, as I said, happiness is not of yesterday, happiness is not the product of time, happiness is always in the present, a timeless state. I do not know if you have noticed that, when you have ecstasy, a creative joy, a series of bright clouds surrounded by dark clouds, in that moment there is no time: there is only the immediate present. But the mind, coming in after the experiencing in the present, remembers and wishes to continue it, gathering more and more of itself, thereby creating time. So, time is created by 'the more', time is acquisition. And, time is also detachment, which is still an acquisition of the mind; therefore, merely disciplining the mind in time, conditioning thought within the framework of time, which is memory, surely does not reveal that which is timeless.
Collected Works, Vol. V,139,
The operative thought is that happiness is timeless and conditioning thought within the framework of time, which is memory, does not reveal that which is timeless.
In other words forgetting is the key to happiness. Countless pop psychologists have told us that it is important to live in the moment. And like with many a worn-out cliche, beneath this commonplace assertion lies an abiding truth about the human condition..
Living in the moment is to let go of the past. This letting go. it has been my experience, cannot be a consciously willed act. It is a scrubbing that is accomplished by the deeper reaches of human consciousness. Dreaming, I believe, is a manifestation of this scrubbing but it is slow, done in small doses, painful, unproductive and not under our control. Meditation is quicker, far less painful (in fact after a point quite joyful) and under our control. However the most striking manifestation of this scrubbing is in the highest of human activity - the act of creativity and creation. Most artists, sportspeople, writers, scientists, thinkers and even managers will tell you that their highest achievements happen when they enter the "zone". This "zone" is the same "zone of acute consciousness" that results from deep meditation but the crucial difference is that it is entered through the act of doing as opposed to the act of withdrawing. In other words in losing oneself (all one's memories, disappointments and joys) in the here and now of an act. It is the "blink" that Malcolm Gladwell writes about. It is the central core teaching of devotion to selfless "karma" or duty that is the central teaching of the Bhagwad Gita:
In fact one of the strands of thought that the highest reaches of physics is now exploring is that time itself is a chimera that is only a manifestation of the mind and not a physical reality. Julian Barbour in his provocative book "The End of Time", Barbour lays out the basic evidence for a timeless universe and shows how at the same time we experience in the world in a intensely temporal way. It also points the way towards the bridging of the greatest chasm in modern science - the gap between classical and quantum physics- leading to the holy grail of The Grand Unification Theory.
For those of us who dismiss high faulting philosophy, physics and/or teachings and would like to see direct and more tangible evidence that "forgetting" is anything more than one of the numerous in-capacities that advancing age subjects us to, may I point to an abstract of an article from a recent issue of Scientific American titled "Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind". So there you have it, any which way you like it. Or you can just forget it and turn the page.
1 comment:
To forget unhappy events and cherish happy ones is the solution to perpetual happiness and optimism. This is also a reflection of the human mind - whether it is positive or negative. Optimistic or pessimistic.
Forgive and forget is a great approach to live, all real and perceived wrongs will go away and leave one fully at peace and tranquility. The blessed ones are born with this ability, the less blessed ones can make the effort to develop this approach to life.
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