Wednesday 15 June 2011

Do You Mind?


It has been a while since I wrote anything. I sat before my notebook time and time again, and nothing came out.  There was a part of me that didn’t know “Me” and my mind anymore and there’s also a significant part of me that didn’t trust the way I have “thought” for so long.

It started with a simple question. Is my life anywhere near to the way I perceived it to be and wanted it to be 10 years or 20 years ago? For me, the answer is a flat ‘No’. In fact, it is the complete antithesis of what I had envisioned for myself.


For reasons that are beyond me now, I, like a lot of people thought that we own our mind. Do we really?  Or does our mind in fact own us and our body and faculties are merely instruments to execute the mind’s instructions.   I wouldn’t get into a taxi if I thought the driver was rash and heedless. No, I wouldn’t place my life in the hands of an irresponsible driver.


And yet, have I not placed my entire life into the hands of a very wild and uncontrolled mind. I don’t know about you, but my mind is full of defects.  That doesn’t mean I have a slow mind and that I am stupid. That would have been alright. A slow mind is slower to trip over the body over the precipice of self- delusion.  It’s worse if you have a rather quick mind that you do not have a handle on. 


You see, we have every skill, knowledge and instrument in the word to measure a person’s physical health but we do not have the slightest inkling as to how to size up the state of our mind’s health, especially when it is slightly defective. I emphasize slightly because in a lot of cases, these slight defects do not necessarily end up with us carving swastikas on our forehead. You learn to socialize these defects and if you package it nicely enough, society accepts it as a “character” or “quirk”. Anyway, that point is moot because there is no yardstick as to what a healthy mind is. There is no scale for Joy.


In my case, the slight defect was insecurity, the feeling that I am just not good enough. A lot of people have it. Some yield and suffer it silently.  Some, like me, express the “conquest” of it by over compensating. Strange because it was only a tiny feeling we developed unconsciously when we were little children that became mighty enough to steer an entire lifetime of decision. Major decisions. ( It’s a bit like a ship’s insignificant rudder that one doesn’t see because it is beneath the water, that steers an entire ship 10,000 times the rudder's size). That tiny seedling sprouted an entire arsenal of defense mechanisms namely Anger (isn’t Attack one of the more subtle and effective forms of Defense?), and also Denial of facts disguised as Will Power, which is so celebrated in the corporate world, and Ego-Centricity which of course goes very nicely with self-centricity or Selfishness. 


So, do I blame a less than perfect childhood, a condition that I probably share with over 6 Billion people around the world? I would love to stick the blame to some unfortunate childhood incident. But the truth is, no one has a perfect life.  Not when they are young and even less when they become adults.  Incidentally, isn’t it strange how our ability to effectively control our lives is inversely proportionate to the number of instruments we work so hard to acquire in order to control our lives, e.g. wealth, decision making ability, knowledge etc. When we were kids, most days ended up being happy ones. These days, we settle for a neutral day. Aren’t we supposed to be able to control our lives a bit more now? Anyway I digress. 


Like I said, no one has a perfect childhood but it was always up to us, whether we let a sad situation go or hang on to it like a carcass until its rot, rots us. Right from the time I refused to let go of the pain, every decision and every move, conscious and unconscious I made was to avert that pain and the threat of more pain like that.  I twisted, forged, cut, shaped, pummeled, squashed and walloped every aspect of my life into a shape that didn’t make me feel insecure.  So desperate to avoid pain, so desperate to be loved, that i put myself and others into such agony. Looking at it again now, that remains the single most abusive thing I have done to myself and those around me for all these years. Along the way I was loved not for those qualities i forced myself unto. I was loved for the very qualities that made me feel exposed, my softness, my vulnerability.

I was the Man In The Iron Mask, too ashamed of his own face and yet crying out silently to be loved for who he really is, ironically a reality i did not want to accept. It was sick.



What a shame. Come to think of it, I could have averted all that pain by just letting go of pain, way back then.


In the Lamrim, it states very clearly that the first quality a student of a Guru must have is an open mind.  We must be open to the possibility that we have been thinking wrongly. Open to the suggestion that we have got everything inside-out and upside-down.  Open to change and transformation. Open to idea that we got the concept of Happiness wrong.


If I had realized this 1 year ago and made the necessary adjustments, I can quite safely bet that I would have been a lot happier now. After all the battle victories, the spoils of war, the celebrations and parties, the accolades, I have concluded in no uncertain terms that there are only 2 things in the entire world that could have provided me with sustained long term happiness. I had the both in hand. Had. I just didn’t know then, that they were all I needed to be insanely happy and contented.


How can I trust myself after that?