The Pursuit of Happiness

To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

-          Hsing Hsing Ming

We all want to be happy but many of us don’t know what happiness is.  We think that it depends upon the people, the objects or the circumstances of our lives.  We are always striving to makes things work so that we can be happy.  The right job or relationship, wealth, free time, social status, etc. are all essential ingredients for happiness, right?  But most of the time we find that something is amiss in this recipe and our beautiful soufflé fails.  Sometimes everything we desire falls into place either through hard work or luck and we still feel some brooding sense of discontent.  We end up wondering what it takes to make us happy. 

I remember once when my mother bought a new bicycle for me.  I had begged for it for months.  My old bike was worn out, the paint was chipped and scratched.  The frame was dented and I was just tired of it.  The new bike was so cool.  It had small wheels, big handle bars and a banana seat perfect for doing “wheelies.”  When I rode it to school the first day everyone commented on what a cool bike I had.  I pretended to be modest but I was proud and happy.  After a couple of weeks the charm started to wear off.  No one paid attention anymore and it was just another bike.  It started to show some wear and tear and I forgot about how wonderful it had originally seemed.  In fact I stopped taking good care of it.  One day I rode it to the store where we used to buy our candy and sodas, left it unsecured while I went to get my goodies and came back out to find that it had been stolen.  Even though I had grown used to it, I was now devastated.  My cool bike was gone and I knew that we couldn’t afford to replace it. 

Some important lessons were imbedded in this experience.  First of all, appreciate what you have and take care of it.  Second, things are temporary in our lives and can be lost at any time.  Third, as Mom explained, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”  On a deeper level there were lessons that would take time to reveal themselves after more similar incidents.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be too concerned with whether people are impressed by my possessions.  Most deeply: happiness, pride, joy even love which is based upon some temporary condition in life is as unstable as the circumstances which support it.  All of these are aspects of what the Buddha referred to as “impermanence.” 

When we depend on some condition for happiness we set ourselves up for misery.  After a few weeks or days even, that perfect job begins to show its flaws.  There’s a coworker I can’t stand, a particular task that becomes onerous, a new supervisor takes over and changes everything.  Pretty soon I’m hanging out with friends complaining about our jobs.  Fortunately misery loves company.  The same happens with romance.  We meet someone and they make us ecstatic for awhile.  Pretty soon we begin to see their faults and their less attractive qualities.  After awhile we start to annoy each other, quarrel and make each other and ourselves unhappy.  Then we hang out with our friends and complain about our “other.”  We can’t find happiness but we can find solace for our misery pretty easily. 

There is another kind of happiness that we can discover within ourselves.  It is the happiness inherent within our essential nature as bliss-consciousness.  We don’t have to pursue this happiness.  We just have to let it arise as we let go of grasping after this or that condition.  Whether it is wealth and possessions, romantic relationships, career success, social status, family unity, even being of service to others; these are all very nice but unnecessary adjuncts to true happiness.  True happiness is unconditional, happiness for no reason.  We can discover this happiness through the practice of meditation.

Spiritual Devotion

Still your mind in me, still your intellect in me, and without a doubt

you will be united with me forever.  – Krishna, Bhagavad Gita

Devotion is central to the true spiritual path.  We resist it because it is anathema to the ego.  In the Yoga tradition devotional love is known as bhakti.  The path of Bhakti yoga utilizes the power of attachment itself, through sublimation, to awaken us to transcendent Love.  We redirect our deepest affection so that we become attached to the source of our beings rather than the ephemera of sensory display.  Nonattachment tells us to let go of transitory things, bhakti tells us to cling to God. 

Many intelligent people have trouble with the bhakti proposition.  After all who knows who or what “God” is?  How can I be devoted to something unseen, indefinable and ultimately unknowable?  Our rational minds are always calculating the risk.  I have known a few people who were afraid of devotional chanting because they might “lose themselves.”  The real risk is that we might find our true Self.  We might just wake up from our rational dream of separation and alienation and discover that all is Love.  We all know deep down who and what God is because She is at the basis of who we are as conscious beings.  God is as we are, to paraphrase Meister Eckhardt. 

Bhakti cannot be taught or learned in a yoga class.  We might catch it like a wave of bliss flowing through an awakened teacher though.  Love has to awaken within us.  Just as we have all had the experience of “falling in love” with someone, at some point we may “rise in love” with God.  Because this love is central to our nature it is bound to awaken at some point.  It is bound to awaken at the point that we are willing to let it.  When we surrender our intellectual defenses, our emotional reflexes and our stubborn pride we become open to realization.  When we let go of attachment to sensory objects and our conditioned minds we might discover bhakti. 

Ordinarily, love is directed towards an object.  We might love our lover, our children, family, friends, etc.  We might love our car, our clothes, home or bank account.  We are all somewhat narcissistic as well, we love ourselves.  This kind of dualistic love however is deluded, no matter how seemingly satisfying and socially supported.  Everything that we might love in this world is transitory, even ourselves.  This doesn’t mean we should be cold and uncaring with one another.  The realization of impermanence can actually lead us to appreciate the people and the things in our life more.  We can’t take anyone or anything in this life for granted.  Let go of what is unnecessary, unhealthy, unrealistic and self-destructive.  Spiritual love, i.e. bhakti, takes us beyond illusion, confusion and fear. 

Because we are subject to the limitations of our minds most of us need a symbolic prop onto which we focus our mind.  We need an object of meditation.  This is where an image of God comes in.  In yoga terminology we call this one’s ishta devata; one’s personal visualization of the Divine.  No matter how attached we become to our personal sense of Divinity, it is our inner power of bhakti which is important.  It is spiritual devotion that can lead us out of the trap of samasara.  As Swami Satyananda teaches, “It can be devotion to truth, God, the Supreme, Brahman, the Absolute Reality or any other name that you want to call the ineffable. It can be devotion to Christ, Buddha. Mohammed, Krishna, Rama, Hanuman, Mahavira, Shakti, Shiva, Vishnu, Kali, Durga, Ahura Mazda or even Zeus if you wish. You can express devotion to any form which you regard as divinity incarnate. It can be a great saint, whether dead or alive. It can be your Guru. The specific form is unimportant.  It is the devotion that you personally feel that is essential. Without this devotion, whether great or small, it is impossible to practice Bhakti yoga.” (Yoga Magazine, July 1992)  It should be apparent that Bhakti Yoga is not a narrow religious orientation but an inclusive spiritual methodology.

We can understand the Bhakti path developmentally as a movement from ego-centric “love” to ego-less devotion.  On the ego level we love a person, thing or God because they give us something, perhaps pleasure, satisfaction or a sense of security.  How often do we pray out of a sense of need or desperation?  Perhaps we turn to God in order to achieve wealth and success.  Perhaps we love and serve another in order to feel like we are needed.  As we attempt to be spiritual we come up with a lot of self-deceptive ways of feeding our egos. 

Ego-centric love is not bad or wrong.  It is natural to our level of spiritual development.  It is best to be honest and nonjudgmental with ourselves.  As we develop through spiritual practice, meditation, devotional singing, self-less service, self-inquiry, etc. our capacity to love beyond our limited self-interest begins to grow.  Perhaps we learn to love God in everyone.  The true devotee is immune to desire or fear, praise or blame, pleasure or pain according to the Bhagavad Gita.  When we reach maturity as bhaktas we love without expectations.  We are established in inner peace and bliss.  Bhakti is its own reward.

The Bhakti tradition speaks of a state of consciousness known as “madhura” in which one experiences love for the divine everything.  In this state one sees God everywhere and in all things.  At the same time there is no attachment to anything or anybody.  It is love without an object or nondual love.  It is the recognition of one’s Divine Self in and beyond all forms.  It is an intensely blissful experience of enlightened awareness.  In this state there is no room for hatred or fear, no need for manipulation or control.  It is open egoless love.  In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna who is the embodiment of Love, tells us, “those who worship me with love live in me, and I come to life within them.”  As Swami Satyananda Saraswati puts it, “Bhakti is like making love to everything continuously, from humans to birds, flowers everything; you have no choice, for you realise their real nature and the nature of yourself and with this '"impossible" relationship, how is it possible not to feel love for everything?”  (ibid.)

Faith and Belief

As one thinks within his heart, so he is. – Proverbs 23:7

`Ja hoye jay’ (`Whatever comes to pass is all right.’)  - Sri Anandamayi Ma

Comedian W. C. Fields once stated, “A man has to believe it something and I believe I’ll have another drink.”  Poor W. C. suffered from what many of us today believe is a disease popularly referred to as alcoholism.  This term was coined by a Swedish physician in 1849 and “the disease theory of alcoholism” was further developed by American physician E. Morton Jellinek who went on to outline the progressive stages of this disease.  Because his research has become so influential, alcoholism is also referred to as “Jellinek’s disease.”  Despite Jellinek’s research many people continue to deny that alcoholism, or addiction in general, can be described as a disease.  Interestingly, an important aspect of recovery involves faith in a “higher power.”  So we have the case of a questionable illness which can be managed (it is considered “incurable”) by a belief in what many consider to be an even more questionable concept. 

If we consider the world we live in in terms of our perception of it (and there is really no other world we live in) then we realize that it is all based on our beliefs.  As Jesus (purportedly) taught, "There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.” (Mark 7:15 – 16)  It is our thoughts, our beliefs and our desires which constitute the world of our experience.  These constitute our “vibrational level.”  If we consider an alcoholic as having a disease we might tend to feel more compassionate, after all we all know what it is like to be sick.  If we consider her to be in control of her behavior then we might consider her to be a “scumbag” and feel bitter and resentful.  Moreover, the way the person suffering from the disease views him or herself affects his or her ability to get help and to recover.

A few centuries before Christ, Buddha (purportedly) made the pronouncement, “The mind is everything.  What you think you become.”  Of course, Buddha didn’t arrive out of nowhere, he was the product of millennia of Vedic tradition.  The gist of these ancient “secrets” as reflected in the teachings of Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha, is that our inner world-view directly affects who we are and the world we live in.  In spiritual terms, our egos are basically a collection of conscious and unconscious beliefs.  We are our belief-systems.  Our world is the display of these beliefs.  This is also what the twentieth century movement of cognitive therapy teaches.  Fortunately this is not the entire story.  If it were we wouldn’t have much of a chance of awakening.

We do have access to a higher power.  We open it through faith and surrender.  Whether the ego is invested in how wonderful or how f’ed up we think we are faith opens us to the field of infinite potential, the abode of miracles.  It opens us to our true potential.  In this sense we can draw a distinction between belief and faith.  Belief in this sense is a closed intellectual interpretation.  When we “believe” we think we know what is, how it is and who we are.  Faith is the openness of the heart which is willing to see beyond limited interpretations, harsh judgments and intellectual pride.  We can’t really define who or what God, Self, Higher Power or even Reality is, only be aware that It is present and operating in our lives.  Paradoxically enough it might be working in our lives as our own power of belief.

Way back there in 1970s I became familiar with the work of John C. Lilly, a physician and psychoanalyst who went on to push the envelope and explore consciousness in new ways which included psychedelic drugs, flotation tanks, and human-dolphin communication.  He developed the concept of the “human bio-computer” to describe our mind/brains.  Through his research as a “psychonaut,” another term he invented, he attempted to explore the limits of human consciousness.  He came up with a formula for understanding the potential of consciousness, "In the province of the mind,” he writes, “what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits."  (1972, The Center of the Cyclone)

We might try to more succinctly state this as “all beliefs are relative,” but it leaves out too much.  Our beliefs are the formulae through which we make sense of ourselves and our world.  We actually begin doing this at a very early age.  According to Thomas Bowlby, the founding pioneer of Attachment theory, each of us begins to develop an inner working model (IWM) of self and others in infancy based on our relationships with our primary caregivers.  The roots of our inner models are visceral, based in primary survival emotions and pre-verbal.  On this most basic level our beliefs are what enable us to survive.  Research has shown that our early attachment styles can dramatically influence the course of our lives.  Rather than astrology we might want to consider our early attachment patterns as predictors of our futures. 

Belief is closely associated with attachment, both in the sense of modern theory and the yogic concept.  We are first and foremost identified with our primary belief systems, our IWMs.  It really doesn’t have anything to do with objects, instead with our internal representation of them.  The self of self-psychology is really an internal representation as well.  It is us looking at ourselves in the symbolic mirror of the mind.  Because we are biologically and culturally predicated towards seeing and accepting the world through the medium of our symbolic representations it is scary to let go of those personal psychic artifacts that may be holding us hostage. 

Faith means letting go, opening up to the inner expanse of being which is undefined and indefinable.  We might do this in a number of ways but meditation is a discipline which allows us to do this more often and more consistently.  When we open to the true expansiveness of our being we experience a bliss which is beyond any “high.”  Faith means opening to infinite potential, possibility and intelligence.  For the ego this might seem overwhelming, even terrifying.  However when we are willing to surrender ego we discover our authentic being.  A belief is something we cling to, faith means letting go.

Abhyasa and Vairagya: Consistency and Nonattachment

Success in meditation comes through consistent practice and nonattachment. 

– Patanjali

Often attendees at a meditation workshop will ask me, “How can I make my mind be still?”  This usually happens after I have spent some time introducing and training them in an approach to practice.  It seems we all want a magic pill.  We want quick and easy results.  Sometimes we do have sudden breakthroughs, moments of grace when the mind becomes still and we marvel at the joy and beauty of pure being.  Then we “come down” and it’s back to the grindstone.  Many times I have had people report feelings of extraordinary peace, tingles of energy moving through them, or some such.  Then I don’t see them again. 

It’s not so much that I wish to keep them as students but I suspect that they go back to their regular patterns of stress accumulation.  The truth is that we’ve got to keep at it, be committed to spiritual practice for it to “work.”  Remember the old self-growth cliché?  “It only works when you do.”  As Swami Satyananda once put it, “I can teach you a method in a few minutes but it might take years for you to realize the results.”  Dammit, we might need to develop qualities which are increasingly vanishing in our society, like patience and perseverance.  It might be fun to fly to the top of a mountain and enjoy the view but is something different to experience the journey step by step.  The only we can sustain progress in terms of psycho-spiritual development is step by step. 

Patience is profoundly important.  Our minds have a tendency to keep rushing forward into an imagined future, sometimes with hope and sometimes with fear.  Hope and fear are like addictive drugs that we were born exposed to.  Patience means attending to what’s happening right now.  The crazy thing is that we are imagining some other state, some other time when we will experience reality when it is unfolding right before us.  Abhyasa means attending to practice in the moment, recognizing and releasing the thoughts that get in the way and opening to pure being.  Through consistent practice we continually ground ourselves in true reality.  It is the reality of the Self.

Abhyasa doesn’t mean attending an occasional class or workshop.  It doesn’t mean practicing for a few minutes each day, although this is a good place to start.  It means turning our daily lives into a constant practice of mindfulness.  This is the only way that we a chance of overcoming the powerful habitual patterns of our minds.  We all know about addiction and addicts who have become victims to substances or behaviors that take over their lives.  On a deeper level we are all addicted to samsara.  Recognizing this helps us open to compassion.  Conventional reality is also a bad habit, something we, as spiritual practitioners need to overcome.  Our conventional reality is often one of stress, alienation and spiritual blindness.  Effort is even more essential when we are embraced by and embracing the status quo.

Vairagya, or nonattachment is the counterpart to practice.  It means letting go of our habitual mental and physical objects of security and pleasure, separating ourselves from our habitual patterns of desire and aversion.  During meditation practice we encounter the desire mind operating all the time.  We might think of something we’d like to eat, purchase, or someplace we’d like to visit, someone we miss or would like to have sex with.  We might also be occupied with thoughts of worry and anxiety, thinking of all the things we don’t want or are afraid to lose.  As long as we are in the mode of attachment other people are also objects, things which we seek to satisfy our own needs and desires.  It is only when we are nonattached that we truly relate to each other as conscious beings. 

In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna teaches:  “When a man thinks of the objects, attachment to them arises; from attachment desire is born; from desire anger arises.  From anger comes delusion; from delusion the loss of memory; from loss of memory the destruction of discrimination; from the destruction of discrimination he perishes.  But the self-controlled man, moving amongst objects with the senses under restraint, and free from attraction and repulsion, attains to peace.” (2:62-64)

The insanity of attachment-desire can be readily seen in our world.  A recent article tells of an incident in which a young man was murdered for his iphone.  This is not an isolated occurrence, it is part of an international phenomenon known as “apple picking.”  Whenever new products come out there is a rise in these types of crimes as people all over the world are willing to do whatever they can to acquire them. 

I am pretty sure that none of my readers would kill for an iphone 5, still it might be good to for us to observe our attachment thoughts.  Our consumer oriented media create cravings for new products.  If we can detach ourselves from our impulses briefly we can question whether we really need or even want the product.  Why?  Do we really believe it will make us better, happier, more complete as a human being?  These “products” serve to distract us from looking inward, developing ourselves or making actual intimate contact with each other.  We don’t really need a special app to help us meditate or connect with each other, disconnecting from our devices works better.

Nonattachment doesn’t mean that we can’t own, use or even appreciate anything.  It is more about our minds and our emotional investment in things, in our pride, greed, and desires.  When we use other people to serve our needs and desires without respecting them as fellow conscious beings we objectify them.  As we progress along our path we come to realize that we are attached to forms and all forms are transitory.  We realize as well that we are attached to our world view, our interpretation of the way things are.  When things don’t turn out the way we want or expect them to we are prone to anger or depression.  Nonattachment means realizing that the world is “a passing show.”  The only permanent reality is the eternal witness within us. 

Faith and Surrender

Meditation seems so difficult for many of us.  Am I doing it right?  Why can’t I make my mind quiet?  Where is the bliss?  Meditation techniques are numerous and no one technique will work for everybody, (never mind all the hype over electronic audio assisted technology guaranteed to make you “meditate like a Zen master” instantly).  It is really about developing your own awareness, your own most intimate presence and awakening to that. 

We usually think of faith as something we put into something beyond ourselves.  In meditation we are learning to put our faith in who we are on our most fundamental level.  “You are It!” the Upanishad tells us.  The sacred essence of being is within you, right now and always.  It always has been as well.  As Krishna explains, “There is nothing separate from me.  The universe is suspended from me like jewels upon a string.”  When we are able to let go of all of the BS (belief systems) that tell us who and what we are we awaken to our authentic being.  It is all God.

The ego is primarily our sense of separateness from the all.  It is our identification with our BS on a personal level.  Ego is the fall guy in most spiritual teachings.  In the Yoga Sutras ego-identification is one of the five primary afflictions that cause us to reenter the revolving door of misery.  When we cling to our physical vehicle and to our personal narrative, we become caught up in an illusion.  When we surrender the ego in faith to our true being, we are liberated.  It is very simple really and yet, seemingly impossible for most of us. 

On the other hand, our ego is also an aspect of God.  We don’t have to strive to be individuals we simply are.  Our individuality is God-given.  God has created us as individual beings as a means of knowing and expressing Herself more completely.  As ego-beings we are like cells in God’s body; both individual and inseparably connected.   There is no reason to be afraid of going beyond limited ego-awareness.  There is no reason to despise it. 

Faith simply means trusting that there is something, perhaps someone, who is wiser, more powerful and loving than we think that we are.  It means allowing that our own intelligence, strength, sensitivity and vivaciousness grow out of something deeper, something universal.  Surrender is simply inevitable with this recognition.  “Resistance is futile.”  At the same time our resistance itself is an aspect of the Divine.  Whatever you are doing, thinking, feeling, experiencing is none other than It, none other than “I.”  In the universal scheme of awakening there is no way we can fail; “no soul left behind.” 

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have to contribute some effort.  Surrender requires an active commitment.  It isn’t just giving up.  If only it were that easy.  Giving up is a momentary capitulation to circumstances, surrender is a commitment to Spirit.  Surrender entails accepting given circumstances and seeing beyond them.  It is the opposite of giving up.  It is trusting, knowing, believing and accepting the fundamental beneficence of life. 

In the Yoga Sutras surrender is called isvara pranidhana.  It’s a mouthful, I agree.  Isvara, or Ishwara, means the higher consciousness which we have access to when we quiet our mental chatter and attune to it.  Pranidhana means dedication and devotion.  It takes conscious effort to attune to and to stay connected with higher consciousness.  We can surrender to fear, to anger, to loneliness, or unworthiness without effort.  Surrender to God requires focus, awareness, commitment and dedication.  Never, never give up because once you are connected you taste freedom. 

Faith, or shradha, is a profound power within us.  It can propel us into new dimensions of consciousness or it can keep us stuck.  There is a story of a woman who heard that her faith could move mountains.  She sat in meditation for an extended time trying to remove the mountain in front of her.  When she opened her eyes it was still there.  “I knew it wouldn’t work,” she said.  Our problem is that all of our faith, all of our belief is invested in things-as-they-are.  This is what we are accustomed to as “reality.”  Our reality is the display of our beliefs.  We are locked into a shared reality, a collective hallucination that keeps us from realizing our inner power of faith.  We have been lead to believe that our outer circumstances are ultimately real.  In truth they are created from within us through our limited beliefs.

Emptiness

Emptiness, or shunyata, basically refers to that inner space of awareness between stimulus and response.  It is a wonderful but sometimes scary space.  It is the space of uncertainty in which we might feel unsure of ourselves.  When we really move into that space all of our self and world definitions are up for grabs.  All of the sudden we don’t have any answers.  We don’t have any baggage.  Everything and nothing is possible.  It is a perspective which is “out of the box,” it is a step into extraordinary mind, beyond ego.

Stimulus refers to anything that might trigger a response in us.  Our response is based on our interpretation, our conditioning and ignorance.  It arises out of the dual forces of desire and aversion, love and hate.  It is centered in ego, a limited perspective in which we are separate from the all.  In life we often seem to have little or no control over what happens in the world, however within our freedom of response we assume power.  Paradoxically, when we let go of our need to control situations we discover an inner process of transformation.  When we make an inward shift in consciousness our world shifts in accord.  When we step out of our limited ego-identities, we enter a new world.

Shunyata is not a negative state.  Often we fear the feeling of emptiness, loss, or confusion.  It is actually the gateway to enlightenment.  Emptiness refers to the state of mind in which we are free of any preconceived notions and are hence able to see clearly.  As the Buddha taught, ”When appearances and names are put away and all discrimination ceases, that which remains is the true and essential nature of things and, as nothing can be predicated as to the nature of essence, it is called the “Suchness” of Reality.”  We tend to cling tenaciously to our words and concepts.  They give us an illusion of stability and certainty.  In truth, they are just symbolic constructs which describe reality to some limited extent.  To enter Shunyata means to be open to the mystery of being, always and ultimately indefinable.  As the French say, it has a certain “Je n’ sais quoi.” 

Meditation is the art of entering into shunyata.  It allows us to disconnect from the thought constructs of our minds and to rest in our original being.  At first we may find ourselves wrestling with the restless energy of our “monkey-mind.”  It doesn’t work very well to try to subdue this monkey.  In fact, if you wrestle with it, it will kick your ass.  Instead it is better to just leave it be and to observe, to watch, listen and realize the underlying stillness which is deeper within.  Our deeper being is always present beneath the surface of things like the canvas under the painting, or the screen on which the video is displayed.  For us the inner surface, the inner screen is pure emptiness, the boundless expanse of consciousness. 

Emptiness in this sense is not “nothingness.”  This is not like nihilism which states that nothing is real.  Instead it is the creative source of everything.  It is like the zero-point field (ZPF) in physics; an all pervasive field of potential underlying and supporting the physical universe.  As Michael Talbot explains, “According to our current understanding of physics, every region of space is awash with different kinds of fields composed of waves of varying lengths. Each wave always has at least some energy. When physicists calculate the minimum amount of energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy than the total energy of all the matter in the known universe!”  (The Holographic Universe, 1991)

Our entire universe, as vast as it is, is like a bubble floating in an immense sea of energy.  Similarly, our personal “universes” of experience are tiny bubbles floating in an immense inner ocean of consciousness-energy.  When we are able let go of the temporary forms associated with the mind and senses we enter into this inner reservoir of creative potential.  Our various bodies, minds and consciousness all originate in and ultimately belong to this singular underlying field of consciousness-energy.  It is our true Self. 

Samsara

Suffering is definitely relative.  For some people life is a daily struggle to survive, for others it may be the failure to find the ideal relationship, job or latté.  I’m not making fun here really.  No matter how well off we are we suffer.  It’s a good idea sometimes to look around and realize how well off we are in comparison.  Even better, of course, to devote some of our resources to helping those who are less fortunate.  The truth, however, is that suffering is universal. 

When things are going well we feel content and happy.  Unfortunately life, existence, nature, or whatever we call it, involves change.  The ancient Greek philosopher Hereclitus observed that, “the only constant is change.”  When we depend upon outward circumstances for our sense of well-being we are always vulnerable to devastation.  Another word for this dependence is attachment.  Attachment is at the heart of suffering.  Deeper still, however, is ignorance.  Ignorance in this sense doesn’t mean lack of education; it means that we have forgotten who we truly are.  We don’t know ourselves. 

Samsara means the continuous cycle of birth, decay, death and rebirth.  It is a cycle that happens every lifetime, but it also happens each day and every moment.  When we were born we entered into this life experience, into this particular physical, familial, socio-economic, cultural and historical context.  Although we are unaware of it, it has all been preconditioned by our past karmas.  On a soul level we have chosen this life experience in order to develop spiritually.  Imagine writing a screenplay full of drama, comedy, action, etc. then submitting it and forgetting about it.  Suddenly you are at the theatre and watching the movie.  You laugh, cry, cringe and groan with each scene completely forgetting that you are the author.  Because it has been so well produced, you become so involved with the main character that you even forget you are actually in the audience. 

The true purpose of human life is to awaken to our true nature.  As Thich Nhat Hahn says, “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”  The ego-self belongs to the drama.  It is the character we have identified with.  The ego-self is involved with duality.  It loves this and hates that.  Our lives are the tragic-comic dramas of our egos.  We have friends and enemies.  We fall in and out of love with others, experience success and failure, health and sickness, joy and sorrow.  We fail realize that everyone and everything is our Self in disguise.  As we awaken our lives change from drama to love story.  Ego tells us that there is a particular person with whom we will find true love.  Spirit reveals to us that we are love itself. 

There is a wonderful verse from the Bhagavad Gita which gives us a glimpse of what this universal Self-love might be like.  “Enlightened ones,” says Krishna, “look with an equal eye upon one who is intelligent and humble, an uneducated janitor, a cow, elephant or dog.”  A friend once commented that it seems like the enlightened person is indistinguishable from an idiot.  This is the perspective of the intellectual ego.  We have to go beyond the rational intellect in order to know a deeper reality.  Our True Self is beyond mind and intellect.  As we awaken in consciousness we begin to recognize ourselves in all beings.  This is the birth of compassion, the birth of love.

It is also the gateway to freedom, moksha.  Moksha, or nirvana, is the release from samsara.  It is the recognition of the eternal being behind the appearances of life.  When we are aware of our eternal beingness; when we are at rest in Atman, i.e. Self, we have a higher perspective.  We can recognize that this life, this incarnation is temporary while we are eternal.  It doesn’t really matter what kind of past you or I might have had.  Once we awaken to our authentic being we are liberated from that narrative, from that dream.  Attachment will try to take us back there again, so we have to be on guard.

I have found a simple way of understanding non-attachment and liberation in a quote from Victor Frankl, MD, who said, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."  Consciousness, compassion, non-attachment and liberation might here be considered as roughly synonymous.  Consciousness develops as we are able to enter that space between stimulus and response; when we practice inner non-attachment.  Compassion and liberation, or moksha, arise naturally when we are able to this.