Quote from: peky on December 22, 2012, 05:08:31 PM
You achieve that, then what?
I think that's an excellent question. Why should you achieve that (whatever 'that' is); why is it important to do so?
I'd answer in the simplest way. The identification we have with this mind/body makes us wish to protect it. We want to be happy, feeling pleasurable things, and avoid what is unpleasant. However, we're at odds with what we wish and what we do to achieve those wishes. We imagine (and it's really just our imagination) that some things are pleasant, based on social conditioning, education, and our own ideas about the subject, and want those things for us — we develop a craving for them. As soon as someone prevents us from attaining those things, we will feel aversion for that person: we become angry or irritated with them. Similarly, we feel attracted to someone who give us what we find pleasurable — until they are unable to give us that (or refuse to do so), and we get angry because of that.
By realizing that all these things — our identification with mind/body; the idea that this mind/body needs to experiment certain pleasures and avoid certain pains; the idea that some things will allow that mind/body to be pleased (and we crave them) and other things will make it feel pain (and we reject them) — are merely constructs of our mind, just things we believe in, then we can start working with that, and see what are the causes that truly create happiness beyond these fabricated thoughts we have.
And once we learn how to experience that, we can also tell others to do the same.
The video was actually quite nice and shows a first important step in this learning process — or perhaps I should say "unlearning process", as we have just accumulated lots of ideas over decades of life, through education, social constructs, and so forth, but, in reality, nothing of those things truly exist on their own.
Let me take a stupid example, which might be helpful. Since our tender years, we're taught that money is important because we can lead a comfortable life free of worries if we have enough money. So we're encouraged to become competitive and crave for that goal, money. However, we should have noticed that the media is full of stories about depressed millionaires, suffering from cheating partners (business or romantic ones!), crooks stealing their money, public scandals, and so forth. When we come into possession of a lot of money, we experience all those things, too, but are incredibly surprised that it also happens to
us!
But the reverse is also true: being poor and struggling for getting the next warm meal hardly makes anyone happy. So the point is not if money is "good" or "bad"; it's the whole idea of "money" that is at the problem. "Money" is an invention; a social construct; a very useful tool, yes, but it doesn't have any intrinsic reality — it's just "important" because people attach importance to it.
So before we learn the concept of "money", it doesn't create in us any craving for it. We have first to learn about money and why others imagine it to be so desirable; once we "learn" that, we crave for it like all other people. But it required learning that in the first place! So all we need to do is to "turn back time", so to speak, to "unlearn" this craving for money, and get back to the point in time where "money" was not a concept for us.
Please note that this doesn't mean that we have to somehow brainwash ourselves to "believe" that "money is the root of all evil" — first, because it isn't, it just depends on the use given to it; and secondly, because it's pointless to "believe" that, get rid of all the money, and starve to death in a gutter, completely destitute. Instead, we just ought to analyse what this concept of money actually is — merely a mental construct — and why we attach so much importance to it. Where does that importance come from?
It might take some time to realize that, in effect, it's not "money" in itself that is the problem, but how we relate to the concept of money, exaggerate its qualities, and develop a craving for it. Realizing that, we might come to a point where we see money just as a convenient tool — useful for many things, but, like all ideas and imagined things, lacking any true existence, beyond the realm of our minds.
And once we realize that, we're free from the hold that "money" has on us, and this leads to contentment: we now know how to use money without craving for it, without rejecting those that prevent us from making money, without getting attracted to those who have money, but merely looking at it as an useful tool. This is not easy to do, but certainly possible — I have had teachers who are filthy rich, and others who live under the poverty line. Both kinds are quite happy people and spread their good humour around. The filthy rich teachers are perfectly able to lose all their money and never falter in their smile; but while they have it, they put it to good use for the benefit of others, and the more money they make, the more people they can benefit. The incredibly poor teachers, if they were given huge cartfuls full of gold, would not start protecting it as if it were the most important thing they had, and suddenly be driven to all kinds of madness that we see happening to millionnaires on newspapers, blogs, and even TV. Instead, they would be happy for being able to reach out much farther to fellow beings, which is something that having lots of money would allow them to do.
So neither of the two types reject money (they just use it to benefit others), but neither craves it, either (thus they won't spend sleepless nights thinking how to make more money). Achieving this state of contentment is quite possible, but not easy!
