Ephemeral happiness in the pursuit of external things
I was convinced that my happiness was in traveling the world. My first travel to the mountains of the Himalayas blew my mind. The views, refreshing cool air, pristine river, mesmerizing birds, and the list can go on. I stayed there for a few months and then started planning for the next destination. While staying there, I was already thinking about the potential places to visit, delicacies to try, different people to meet, and parties to attend. These thoughts were getting overwhelming. Amid the setting sun behind the gradually darkening silhouette of the grand mountains, I continuously thought of how happy I would get when I reached the new place.
The freedom to be anywhere you wish to, the freedom to eat delicacies of your choice, the freedom to drink exquisite beverages from all over the world, the freedom to be intimate with anyone you like, the freedom to dress the way you prefer without the fear of judgment, and…
There can be no end to this list. The pursuit of external things was extremely significant to me because that’s how I felt free. I was momentarily getting happy with the fulfillment of one desire till the next one raised its head and the loop continued. On the surface, I looked happy but underneath I was unsatisfied. After going through complete silence and separation from the outside world, I understood that real freedom is freedom from desires and expectations from within. I understood that permanent happiness can’t be found in the impermanent outside world.
Driving force behind cravings and aversions
The force that drives you to work on a project of your passion is the same force that drags you toward pornography and drugs. The lust for experiencing bodily and mental pleasures in life has convinced us to believe that to be the purpose. The strong feelings of orgasmic pleasure, euphoric sensations of the drug/ alcohol dose, tickling from within upon getting appreciated for your work, good feeling when your post gets likes and shares, and even the enjoyment of a good poop is what we are living and craving for. Sooner or later, we get bound to the cravings and become addicted to either an acceptable or a socially unacceptable format.
The stronger form of desire is aversion to unpleasant feelings. This holds more potential to cause suffering than cravings. Avoiding meetings with your boss, aversion to traffic noise, dislike of encounters with your in-laws, fearing pain from an injury, unwillingness to pay taxes, and the discomfort of sharing seats on public transport are the occasions where the same desire force that is pushing you away from experiencing these outcomes. The bodily and mental unpleasantness like heat, pain, compression, pressure, lack of mobility, stress, etc. is what you want to evade. Withdrawal from unpleasantness becomes more urgent and necessary than pursuing pleasantness.
Why should desire be shamed and reprimanded? In ancient times, religions adopted these tactics to protect the masses from suffering. But to appeal to the present masses, these old tactics are not useful anymore. It must be understood that the pursuit of desire is the root cause of suffering. Understanding self control is essential to alleviate yourself from suffering. Had it led to perpetual happiness, there is no reason for you not to chase after the desires. Inherently under the influence of this force, you develop strong expectations for external outcomes. But as the external events and their outcomes are beyond your control, suffering is unavoidable. Moreover, the expectations also keep expanding making it even more unmanageable to cope with external conditions.
The state of unawareness
The important point is that you do it without consciousness. When you are in expectation mode, your entire awareness is trapped in the craving for pleasantness or aversion to unpleasantness. When you are in the experiencing mode, your entire awareness is immersed in either suffering or enjoyment. All the time you reside in either of the modes thus making your awareness impossible to get free for other discoveries. From the moment of your birth, if you are on a running train then you don’t know that you are moving. Only when you step out of it, you would realize the truth.
When you are in the doer’s consciousness, you keep falling prey to your desires. Moreover, you don’t have the knowledge or tools to handle it better. Like all the other impurities, this one is also presented to you as a gift by birth. You were never taught to deal with it but only heard your parents demonizing desire while seeing them falling prey to it themselves. If we observe the libidinousness and passion for the food of the animals around us, we can sense how desire must have been ingrained in our DNA through evolution. By nature, craving and aversion have been our default settings. To get healed, we have to rise above this and learn to control our minds.
Becoming aware through practice is the solution
Buddhism has prescribed adopting the observer’s consciousness to deal with this problem. It has to be practiced dedicatedly and in due course of time, a state will emerge where you witness everything including your body and mind as an observer. You become no longer an object who is a victim of the outside/ inside phenomena. It allows you to step out from the vehicle carried by the wave of your thoughts and observe it as an outsider. This opens the opportunity to use your faculties of discrimination or intellect to act judiciously. As long as you are carried with the wave of your thoughts, all your intellect gets engaged in fulfilling the desire and is in no position to exercise its power of discrimination.
To understand this, consider a scenario where after a long day at the office you are driving back and the temptation kicks in to release the pressure with some alcohol. When in the doer’s consciousness, you have already engaged your intellect to decide which place to go, how much time to spend, where to park, what to answer to your wife, and so on. But when you cultivate the observer’s consciousness, you will be able to observe the emergence of this thought and its causes as an outsider. Just like when you observe your pet dog who is about to steal something from the kitchen and immediately control him, you can control your desire when you witness it lifting its head.
You have to build an innate ability to segregate yourself from your desire. As long as you consider yourself your desire you are under its grasp. When you realize that it is only a part of you but not you, then you can begin the process of taming it. It can’t be achieved simply by intellectual knowledge and reading lots of books/ articles on it. The intellect has to be sharpened to enable discrimination between your true self and your desire. This requires lots of practice of Mindfulness, or Yoga, or Qi-Gong, etc. A strong will is essential to gain control over your mind because it’s natural for your mind to resist during the early years of practice. Resistance to change is its old habit.
Discipline, Empathy, and Strong will is essential to control the mind
Another important point that should be remembered is that when trying to discipline the mind, it would present its compelling arguments as its defense. Usually, it would make these acts of discipline seem to you as a restriction against your freedom or free will. It would make you seem like in a world of freedom, you are chaining it down with your orthodox thoughts. Be mindful of the arguments and take the help of experienced coaches or teachers to safeguard yourself against this strong resistance force of the mind. Discipline is the only way to change the default setting of the mind and practice is the unavoidable path unless you get some mystical help from the divine.
As you proceed in your practice you would not only be able to discriminate your desire as a discreet component apart from you but also you would be able to establish communication with it. You may see your desire as an immature younger brother/ son/ daughter who has been grappling with addiction. It has been a difficult time for it to resist temptations and has lost control over itself. You have to accept it as your part and extend all your support. You have to be empathetic and kind to it and understand the pain it has been going through.
In the initial years, it is highly likely for it to relapse. It has been under the influence of these strong addictions for so many years. Naturally, it is a difficult task to achieve. You have to work delicately with it and impart strong willpower. If you reprimand and become judgmental, it will lose hope and go back to its dark corners. You have to gradually improve your relationship with desire with the practice of mindfulness. With your enhanced discrimination when you witness the desire to get strong urges, you should establish a consoling communication with it and supportingly share a hug. Healing from within requires you to take your impurities and gradually ascend the cleansing ladder.
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