Friday, June 30, 2006
Understanding Misery
Every one has their own understanding of misery and thresholds for experiencing it. What can be misery for one may be just an insignificant event for another.
A major difficulty arises at this point. When our understanding and thresholds vary so widely how do we come to a common understanding of misery?
A simple way, I suppose, is to move from a point of common understanding, a point of which we all have the same knowledge and experience of.
That a new born is a bundle of joy is a universal experience. How do we infer this truth? By the same method that we infer that fire has heat as its characteristic - stand close to fire and you’ll experience heat. In the proximity of a baby everyone experiences joy.
Pause reading any further and recall the experience. Feel it.
What is Misery?
To understand misery we need to modify our traditional understanding that more often relies on the polarity - good/bad, right/wrong, rather than the Absolute. We need to step onto a platform of higher understanding where things happen differently.
The opposite of joy is not misery but it is the absence of joy that is misery. Osho explains like only he can, ‘Darkness has no independent existence; it is just absence of light ……….. There is nothing you can do directly to darkness [because it has no real existence]. There is nothing you can do to darkness ……. Don’t ask how to dispel darkness; instead ask why it is there in the first place.’
Just like darkness is a condition of absence of light, misery is a condition of absence of joy.
If we are presently not in the baby-like state which we were born into, we are miserable. The end-product we seek for our being in the non-miserable state is to regain our child-like purity, child-like masti.
Just as a reminder to yourself what it means to be child-like try laughing like a child, with gay abandon, a laughter without any reason, laughter for its own sake. Let the laughter not be restrained due to the barrier – Kya kahenge log ?
With laughter you’ll experience a sudden opening of the heart, a feeling you may not have had for a long time.
While this may have been a fleeting glimpse of the end-state we will subsequently come to methods to make the feel persist for longer durations, and with your co-operation, maybe make it last forever.
What are the benefits of being joyous/ non-miserable?
If the son is happy, the Mother will be happy.
If the Father is happy, the family will be happy.
If the wife is happy, the husband will be happy.
If you are forever happy, the world around you will be happy.
And it will all come back to you multiplied many times over.
Laugh as often as you can till the next posting on this site on 03 Jul 2006.
Don’t miss the tree for the wood, as they say. Don’t hang onto the laughter but get a hold on the feel, the heart opening every time you laugh.
Joy to all of you.
A major difficulty arises at this point. When our understanding and thresholds vary so widely how do we come to a common understanding of misery?
A simple way, I suppose, is to move from a point of common understanding, a point of which we all have the same knowledge and experience of.
That a new born is a bundle of joy is a universal experience. How do we infer this truth? By the same method that we infer that fire has heat as its characteristic - stand close to fire and you’ll experience heat. In the proximity of a baby everyone experiences joy.
Pause reading any further and recall the experience. Feel it.
What is Misery?
To understand misery we need to modify our traditional understanding that more often relies on the polarity - good/bad, right/wrong, rather than the Absolute. We need to step onto a platform of higher understanding where things happen differently.
The opposite of joy is not misery but it is the absence of joy that is misery. Osho explains like only he can, ‘Darkness has no independent existence; it is just absence of light ……….. There is nothing you can do directly to darkness [because it has no real existence]. There is nothing you can do to darkness ……. Don’t ask how to dispel darkness; instead ask why it is there in the first place.’
Just like darkness is a condition of absence of light, misery is a condition of absence of joy.
If we are presently not in the baby-like state which we were born into, we are miserable. The end-product we seek for our being in the non-miserable state is to regain our child-like purity, child-like masti.
Just as a reminder to yourself what it means to be child-like try laughing like a child, with gay abandon, a laughter without any reason, laughter for its own sake. Let the laughter not be restrained due to the barrier – Kya kahenge log ?
With laughter you’ll experience a sudden opening of the heart, a feeling you may not have had for a long time.
While this may have been a fleeting glimpse of the end-state we will subsequently come to methods to make the feel persist for longer durations, and with your co-operation, maybe make it last forever.
What are the benefits of being joyous/ non-miserable?
If the son is happy, the Mother will be happy.
If the Father is happy, the family will be happy.
If the wife is happy, the husband will be happy.
If you are forever happy, the world around you will be happy.
And it will all come back to you multiplied many times over.
Laugh as often as you can till the next posting on this site on 03 Jul 2006.
Don’t miss the tree for the wood, as they say. Don’t hang onto the laughter but get a hold on the feel, the heart opening every time you laugh.
Joy to all of you.
# posted by Abhay Gupta @ 12:57 AM 
