It is not at all surprising to every one of us -we meet miseries everywhere. Starting from our bodily miseries (like disease, pain & death), miseries from economic problems, relationship, natural calamities, dangers and personal delusions etc. It would not be wrong to define all these as – “misgivings of the material nature”. This is inherent to this world. Many other similar things affect our lives as a whole, affect our peace and happiness. We feel that we cannot escape these. We continuously struggle to find an easy way out – at least temporarily.
And we often fail
Consequently, we suffer from fear, we lose faith, our hearts are hardened, we gradually lose the natural tendency to care others, we deliberately close our eyes to worldly problems to comfort ourselves and think as secure. Moreover if we focus on the larger band, we witness killings, wars, and political quagmire which spoil life of uncountable masses. In the end, we feel practically helpless.
Where are we heading to? Have we ever stopped by and thought about the real cause and the results.
We cannot experience true happiness living just for ourselves. The unnatural selfishness and ignorance has kept us away from all kinds of goodness and natural state of the heart i.e. compassion, lasting happiness and joy. In other words we have lost our hearts to artificiality & self-centeredness.
Yes at this point anyone may ask – are we capable of doing something regarding these miseries. One may feel himself very small and powerless to try something? Yes this may be true to some extent, but each small attempt can have a great impact. We can switch back to the real state of our hearts when we are enlightened, when we practice compassion, when we know the truth of our very existence. Putting it another way – when we turn our hearts back to goodness, we can feel happy, satisfied & real joy, we can be of some help to our fellow society too. So how we do it? Let’s read further.
Get Rid of Attachment, Lust & Greed
Due to over ambitiousness and huge economic proposition we build up cutthroat environments; we end up in pollution, uneven economy, deforestation, wasting natural resources and unfair distribution of commodities. Gandhi has said rightly – “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”
Due to lust and greed each one of us attempts to lord over the natural assets and misuse it. Individuals in power also try to manipulate the system or government for personal benefit.
For example: research and testing of weapons, manufacturing and testing of bombs pollutes the ocean and makes it difficult for the sea animals, moreover digging of oil wells in the middle of sea generates a huge amount toxic which simply kills the sea creatures. Wastes from industries straight go into the mouth of oceans which further make difficult for the lives of fish.
Use of chemicals and animal farming is just leaving the fields unusable for further crops. So it is already a danger signal for our food and water scarcity. All we need to stop these; else the harsh reality is not too far.
Rethinking on the Concept of Enough
“Is there enough to go round? Immediately we encounter a serious difficulty: What is “enough”? Who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues “economic growth” as the highest of all values and therefore has no concept of “enough.” There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: “Halt! We have enough”? There is none.”
Quoted from E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 25.
How much is enough, it’s not a debate to participate. We all know how much is enough? We simply need some food to eat, something to wear, a house to live and of course we need money for all these. We need to earn or work and we also need some money for emergencies. But in the name of earning our necessities we are over engaging ourselves in material endeavors. We are ruthlessly exploiting the nature and the planet to its best for our over-sized dream of a lavish life. We should only accept what is necessary and avoid exaggerations.
Seeking Help
We can seek help from those who have real wisdom; we can follow teachings of saintly persons or sages. Only they can enlighten us with the real knowledge that will help us to overcome the material miseries and achieve the real purpose and happiness. They have blessed us with so many literature that are applicable to our modern society. In real, the lessons from the bonafide scriptures or Vedas provide practical answers to personal miseries, envy, disrespect and social issues such as hatred, conflict and racism.
Quoting from Isopanisad Mantra Ten:
“The wise have explained that one result is derived from the culture of knowledge and that a different result is obtained from the culture of nescience.”
So the core of our lives is gaining real knowledge from a perfect or bonafide source. So by following the teachings and instructions, we can gradually purify our consciousness and hearts. After which we cannot be easily provoked by the material nature.
From scriptures we learn that we should practice forgiveness, respectfulness, compassion for a better society. These are the qualities inherent to the heart. And by virtue of these qualities, the planet can be made a happier place to live.
See more profound insights here.
Turning our Hearts to Forgiveness, Truth & Respectfulness
Humility and happiness have a strong connection, in daily lives we go through many good and evils. We deal with many people and we face many bad experiences too. So we must understand that this is the part and parcel of our life – that someone may do some mistakes to us, we should forgive them for anything that has affected us personally. As we all know no one is perfect, if we hold onto it, then it will create bitterness and resentment in our hearts. One may feel stuck and miss the natural joy.
It won’t help us in growing the social relationship, if at all something is holding back, one simple way out is just frankly speak and discuss with the person. Else internal complaining within the heart will make us a different person altogether.
We are also not perfect, we also do many mistakes, but we are also forgiven by our friends, relatives and co workers. So this constant exchange of forgiveness helps us to progress personally. Forgiveness is a free gift! Free to give and to receive.
This act of forgiving is also a part of paying respect to others. We should respect the elderly and kids too. We should not hurt someone by our actions, mind or thoughts. We should avoid duplicity in relationships.
So, together we can make a change and fill the world with peace and harmony.
Turning our Hearts to Friendship
This is really a big world to get lost and feel lonely; this is such an unpleasant experience to the heart. We experience loneliness for many obvious reasons – we are continuously flawed by cheating. A young man cheats a young lady, the son turns away his face from his old parents, best friends’ part away easily for some minor issues, business or money even separates long standing relationships, our hearts crave for some shelter and direction, we all have to realize the original cause – all living beings have a natural tendency to love someone and be loved.
As a general practice, we always look online for a solution to these, but believe my dear friends, you will be overwhelmed by the solutions described, each one is a good writer or blogger and they describe their life and what they applied(so-called-solution) to come out of the situation. You don’t even know the truth. But that is not a perfect situation to just copy and paste in our lives. Great saintly persons have said about loneliness “We cannot live without any association, without any friendship or without any people in our lives” – This emptiness or loneliness of the heart is truly a spiritual longing for the Supreme Friend.”
Friendship Beyond our Personal Boundary
In essence, we all are relatives as we all are the children of the almighty Supreme Person. So, there is no one unknown or unrelated to us. We all are brothers and sisters of the world. And it’s up to us to take care of each other. We are all a part of one big family. We all should give respects to each other.
In an attempt to exercise this, at least to start – we can go online and find some charity or old age institutions – be friends with them, sing along them spend some time, exchange some gifts, read some stories; in short try to be good friends of them. Essentially, we should help them feel secure and comfort them with the idea that their drooping body is not a means to consider themselves as less fortunate and help them understand that death is not a cessation to their existence. They are essentially spirit souls temporarily residing in a material body by the name of “John” or “Smith” or “Roberts” or “Angelina” and so on – they must be aware of the reincarnation idea. They should be free of any doubts dwelling long on their mind and hearts.
Let their life be filled with some happiness. Have a delicious feast with them, see some videos with them, sing and dance with them to some good music. To listen to amazing music and sounds, you can check this YouTube channel. So I declare to all the intelligent young ones with all the energy lets run, repeat and relate with this less attended society of old friends.
This is not all – see more acts of benevolence.
How Meditation Will Help Us
Many have a general idea that meditation relaxes and calms the mind and brings an overall relaxation to the body and mind. That is good, but in the long run, when we realize that we are craving for some lasting happiness. We get into trouble, we are looking for true joy and blissfulness that lasts. At this point we have to understand that essentially, we are not the material body. We are spirit soul, the self or atma. This is our true identity. So there is a different kind of need for the self that is residing in this body. Why not check this enlightening quote on identity.
The secret to true happiness lies in knowing who you really are. So meditation will help us realize our true identity. So adding meditation to our lives will add a meaning and purpose to our existence in this world. It clears the mind of all misconceptions about true identity and helps us know to progress in the path of self realization.
So if the mind and heart meditate on the transcendental sound vibrations then the real self will feel peace and happiness. Gradually, by hearing and meditating on these sounds, the person or the self will feel some lasting pleasure, spiritual satisfaction and fulfillment.
These transcendental sound vibrations are also known as ‘mantras’ and sometimes this method can be referred to as mantra meditation. Elaborating more on this, the mantras are very powerful and effective in changing our consciousness and can purify our hard hearts. They do not originate here in this material world. These belong to the spiritual world and have come down via great saintly persons since thousands of years. To know more about the mantras or sounds check here.
The Last Thing
We are living in a lie consciousness – that we are the material body. We are always kept in illusion by the media, we are lured by the flashy ads that describe that they can satisfy us with material goodies. This is one of the prime reasons, we are getting engaged in so many futile endeavors in life to earn more and acquire more – and ultimately this is keeping us aloof from real happiness. Our material wants seemingly go unsatisfied. So now we must inquire what really matters in our lives and how to attain it. Yes there should be one simple wish – “To know and work on the real purpose of human form of life”
The real purpose of human life is to know our real identity and serve the Supreme Being.
All this can be made possible when our hearts will be cleansed and we realize our true essence and turn back to goodness of our hearts.