My dear friends, With my clear mind and belief, I can now say that our senses are the causes for all the sufferance we have on earth. All senses bring us desires and we totally get consumed by them rather we dissolve in them. We invariably construe and build our beliefs on what we see, hear, taste, feel, and smell. Let us look into them one by one what I meant - the senses as the causes for all pains in our lives. We will start with the sense SEEING and cover the other four (and sixth one at the end of everything) one by one during the week. When we see beautiful things, we get carried away by it. We want it, we desire for it...and we struggle to obtained it. It may make us struggle for a life time, but we do it because we want it. We do not realise that they are all material things and are linked to sufferance... even owning a building. After a lot of struggle, we then have the thing or things that we so very much desired for...may be a car or a Seysay (golden thread woven) gho (Bhutanese male dress) or a Hermes Jeans. Letst take a few examples, among many: - We buy a car with a loan (happy for a moment) and struggle to pay back the loan and we begin to work harder or we are deprived from other thing because we bought the car instead of fulfilling other important requirements of the family. We need to look after the maintenance of the car and we lose our precious time there. When the car begins to grow old, we need to earn more because of the maintenance cost. Our minds begin to rest often with the car... our energy is drawn to it... our time that we had for family and friends is lost...its new presence may have made for a few days the pride of the family (what did it give but except the feeling but nothing visible in that)... it is forgotten a little later in time...it did not add to growth of the family nor did it add to the name and fame of the owner... it did not bring excellence or peace to the mind rather it ate away everything. When it starts to grow older it begins to be a burden. - Building towering houses for whom? The second generations will find it hard to sustain, because the cost would have gone a thousand fold higher and a 100 year old building starts to become a burden for the first generation itself...and a total liability for the second generation....if build with loan ... the same principle applies, we rather pass the burden on to next generation. These building will not exist for the third generation... they will be poor than the owners today...so for whom are we constructing building... if it is for the self then the question is, are such constructions required? and if it is for our generations, then it is big burdens that we creating and forcing on to them. Who is them? it is probably our own SELF reborn in third generation..and we begin to curse our Karma again. (We will discuss the SELF and rebirth after completing the five or six human senses). - Clothes... lets look into our cupboards..and ask ourselves if we require all the dresses contained in it. Next, lets ask for ourselves what is the use of dresses? What will they give us ... comfort, name, fame or any other requisite for life? If we buy more of factory made clothes, the factories will continue to produce more and waste. They (the factories, industries and corporations) have to depend on natural resources that are depleting fast (non-renewable and even renewable because we have changed the concept of sustainability). Resources for building, cars, clothes, modern gazettes (to name a few) can not be harvested from nothing... it has to come from the soil, the earth. Now, we even begin to kill the soil with chemical for the greed for more and more. Our eyes see it nice and good and we like it... we either borrow... or save to buy them... the dresses do not change the colour of the owner, neither does it bring fame or name, nor does it change the intelligence..nor the inner quality of oneself.. so??? ....but all these three simple examples of many definitely brings separation from one another... between haves and havenots....the gap of misunderstanding increases. The desire of those who have will change to something different and of those who do not have will begin to struggle the path lead by those ahead. The cycle of sufferance is created by us... our eyes... in this series of senses. We can all verify the needs. We are in two parts - One is the SELF (the most important part of our existence which we forget all the time) and the other is the BODY. The latter is the instrument of the former. We do not, as I wrote in my last posting, nourish our-SELVES. We are busy nourishing our BODIES with food, clothes, and shelter beyond BODIES requirement. If we asked the SELF it can help us understand our NEEDS from GREED. If we are going shopping, ask ourselves when we see something appealing to the eye...do I need it? If the answer is yes, the next question to be posed is for what? and our SELVES helps us provide the answer. This is contemplation. We need to verify every thought that passes our minds constantly and every second... this would help us not only to be mindful human beings but it will help us nourish OURSELVES -the most important thing in our lives. Tashi Delek and see in Happiness, Health, Joy, Compassion and Kindness in the next posting. Pelzang Saamdu
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 04:47:45 +0000