Yourself

The complexity of the human mind is unfathomable, and its not a new thing. While I differed with Austere, and said that its possible for one to know their self completely, I also realise that in this age, we perhaps don’t have the skills to do so. More importantly, we may not be inclined to. There are too many distractions that draw us away, in our routine life. Like I keep saying, we have forgotten the differentiation between wants and needs, and so, are too caught up in existence to live.

From the couple of books on the Buddha I’ve read, I’ll agree to the premise that the first step in knowing the self is to be aware that its not a constant, and changes according to many things we experience – the stimuli around us, the way we react to them, what they leave behind with us, and so on, all part of the 12 point chain that the Buddha had defined.

There’s a wonderful story in the book “An End to Suffering” by Pankaj Mishra, taken from the Chandogya Upanishad. Its a dialogue between a father and a son, an abstract speculation, on the self. The father tells the son to fetch him the fruit of a banyan tree, to break it, and tell him what he saw. The son says seeds, and the father asks him to break the seed, and tell him what he saw. The son says ‘Nothing’, and then the father says that in the ‘nothing’ he saw, was the essence of the Banyan tree. And in that essence, is the key to the self.

With the technological advancements we have now, it is possible to go beyond the seed, and see what lies at sub cellular levels. The irony of it is that it still doesn’t take us any closer to the self. Its a snapshot of the lives we lead, proceeding with our existence at breakneck speed, trying to make our living faster but easier, but leaving some gnawing questions unanswered.

until next time, be aware