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Well-being, a Matter of Being Less
Ricardo Sasaki
That everyone should look for well-being
or happiness is a statement all agree. However, the problem
begins when we do not qualify precisely such statement. Just
to look for happiness, without caring 'where' to find it,
is to subject ourselves, through years or perhaps the whole
life, to a search where 'it is not'. A suggestive Sufi story
that comes to my mind is that of Nasruddin searching at night
for his keys. His friend arrives and eager to help spends
sometime looking for the keys under the lamp where Nasruddin
is also searching. After sometime he turns to Nasruddin and
asks: "Are you sure you lost the keys here?" Nasruddin
replies: "No, I lost them at that dark corner, but here
we have more light!"
The search for happiness must be done with
wisdom. If we aim to be happy or well but search it in impermanent
states and wrong places, the result will only be constant
frustration. Curiously, as Dhamma followers, we 'know' there
is no happiness in worldly things and states. Happiness does
not come from them. And with just a little intelligent thought
any person will see that things are impermanent, and with
their change the happiness we had previously based on them
will also vanish. Yet, it seems like we 'do not want to know',
we rather keep believing that if we just get this or that,
happiness or well-being will meet us at the corner.
Aspiring for happiness from a wise reflection
basis makes it clear that our aspiration should be directed
to what cannot be subject to the ups and downs of life. Though
the promise of happiness is present in all the major world
religions, still a mere passive and thoughtless participation
in a religious path is not enough. The majority of the religions
today are under the influence of the modern world ideology,
which goes against the religious principles. While Jesus proposed
that one should look for the treasure of God's Kingdom where
dust and rust can't reach, the modern devotee aims to find
or build a God's Kingdom, a happy and pleasant place, in this
very world in which we live, and priests and ministers often
corroborate this view.
The flock is gathered based on immediate
satisfaction promises. Devotees bring power, influence and,
of course, money. And when religion (conditioned by the spiritual
consumerism of the modern world) preaches a happiness to be
found in the world 'beyond', it is still a world whose image
perfectly fits the materialistic desires of the beings down
here. What religion we can hear preaching that happiness is
mental non-acquisition of impermanent states?
Unable to make a 'concrete' image of the
object of our spiritual search we end up with an imitation
of the true search, and thinking we are stepping up we are
truly going down, towards just another version of the attachment
to the multiplicity represented by sensorial objects. Engaged
in a religion or spiritual path, thinking it will protect
us from 'wrong desires' coming from the external world, we
made up, not without the help of our own religious representatives,
themselves as deluded as to the true purpose of the search
and the true object of it, a 'religious version' of the same
search for pleasure and gratification that we were engaged
in before being 'converted'.
As the tendencies of the modern Western
ideology penetrate more and more inside the traditional religions
(leaving aside the modern sects themselves fruits of the very
same tendencies) and its representatives incorporating those
tendencies into their discourse, the initial spiritual search
of the young people (and the old) end up neutralized and diluted
by the present religious environment, just another version
of the common mistakes of the 'non-spiritual' mind.
So, while I said in the beginning that looking
for well-being or happiness is a statement all agree, the
very same search for well-being can become a trap, even when
we have already shifted our focus from the rude view of a
happiness caused by the acquisition of material things. Our
minds can still be kept being sucked by the greed within that
demands 'anything' to crave for. Convinced that material things
and possessions are not wise to crave for? Then let us desire
well-being, inner growth, spiritual development, self-empowerment
or any new word our minds can come up with. The "craving
wheel" is turning again!
It is for this reason that well-being or
happiness for me has to do with frugal living. Mental and
material frugal living. Simplicity is one of the fundamental
aspects of genuine life. Ancient people placed a special emphasis
in this virtue. It was a means and an end in life for many
individuals. Contentment with little goes direct to the root
of the problem of suffering which affects so many lives at
the same time that questions the basis on which we structure
our own ego.
There's a kind of greed in today's world
that impels to esteem oneself and the others in terms of the
quantity of what one owns or produces. It generates a psychological
need for action and constant movement, and from that, tension
and anxiety. Simplicity on the other hand tends to place value
more in life's flow and less in having and wanting.
As a means, simplicity is able to show us
our most deep-seated attachments. As an end, it is a reintegration
in the flow of life, nature's essence, which is oblivious
to "mine" and "yours". The practice of
simplicity is an attitude of handing back to the world everything
that we had taken mistakenly thinking it was ours.
Investigate your life and see what is really
necessary! To live simply is to be content with what is really
important and essential. And this is really not much. To know
how to distinguish the necessary from the superfluous is a
big step on the way towards simplicity.
In simplicity we can even find a common
ground with all the theist religions, as we can find in the
words of Frithjof Schuon when he says that through, "...la
vertu de simplicité l'homme est libéré
de toute crispation inconsciente à base d'amour propre;
il a, vis-à-vis des êtres et des choses, une
attitude parfaitement originale et spontanée, c'est-à-dire
dépourvue de tout artifice; il est libre de toute prétention,
ostentation ou dissimulation; en un mot, il est sans orgueil;
cette simplicité ne sera toutefois pas une humilité
affetée, mais une absence de préjugés
innés, donc un effacement naturel du 'moi'- du 'coeur
durci' des Ecritures, - effacement naïf par lequel l'homme
s'apparentera symboliquement à l'enfance. Toute méthode
spirituelle exige avant tout une attitude de pauvreté,
d'humilité, de simplicité ou d'effacement, attitude
qui est comme une anticipation de l'Extinction en Dieu".
The Buddha, twenty six centuries ago, used
to say there were four requisites for a happy life: a shelter,
a few clothes, a frugal meal and medicine when necessary.
Achaan Buddhadasa, a contemporary Buddhist monk, said there
was a fifth: while the first four requisites are for our corporal
existence, our mental life needs a philosophy of life, a spirituality,
a knowledge of the way things are, a knowledge of nature's
laws and the corresponding duties of knowing those laws. In
synthesis, a path. Buddhism calls it Dhamma.
We only really need those five requisites.
Let us remember that. Achaan Buddhadasa also used to suggest
something like this as a constant mantra: "Nothing to
have, nowhere to go, no one to be". How important it
is to remind ourselves that we do not need to have, to go
or to be anything to be truly happy right now!
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