An Advaita Vedanta philosophy site, focusing on Realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga, non-duality, nonduality, your original nature, dwelling as your natural state, and the teachings of Maharaj.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: In the archives ive been reading about personality types and you say that ever type has a main desire and a main fear. you also said what gives you pleasure will give you pain (which seems pretty negative to me) but if i want to be happy, how can that happen if my desires arent met and if i don't have pleasure? Libby
F.: Hello Libby. First, there is nothing that is negative or positive, either in the postings or in Reality. Keep reading, and focus on duality itself for a time. Next, the absence of happiness is always preceded by the presence of wanting.
The reason that Grandmother, mentioned in a recent post, did not complain about the heat or the cold was a result of the fact that she wanted not. And why did she not want to be cooler or warmer? Because she knew she could not control the temperature and because she accepted the uncontrollable aspects of the changes in the weather as well as all other uncontrollable aspects of the relative existence.
With no air-conditioning to use during the scorching east Texas summers, she did not manipulate the inside environment to a twenty-degree difference from the outside environment, so inside or outside, there were no fluctuations.
As a child, "floyd's" home had no air-conditioning either, so sleeping in Grandmother's house next to an open window during summer visits was comfortable. It was only after the parents installed an ac that was used for several years that the lack of an ac-controlled environment at Grandmother's suddenly seemed uncomfortable.
It was only after being acclimated to a narrow range of temperatures that sitting on the porch at Grandmother's in the heat of August was uncomfortable for those visiting her house, even as she sat a few few away in the same heat but in perfect peace.
The visitors who had been acclimated to the cooler air provided by an ac were miserable, desiring a change in temperature. Grandmother was content, desiring nothing...needing nothing...not wishing she could have the power to control the temperature or anything else.
She was living naturally and was content; after living unnaturally for a time, visitors could no longer comfortably join her in her natural mode of living. Now the point is not to turn off your air conditioning system. The invitation is to see where your system of conditioning has left you in the discomfort of duality, happy here...not happy there. Comfortable here, but not comfortable there.
Further, if you traverse the relative existence long enough, you will gather more than a few examples of instances where you attained what you wished for, only to experience at some later point untold misery as a result of having gotten what you desired.
To expand upon the pointer you referenced, the fact is that what gives you pleasure will give you pain, and whatever gives you the most pleasure will eventually give you the most pain.
If you have not lived long enough to know that first-hand, look around. Have you ever seen an alcoholic who enjoyed drinking for years but reached a point where the booze eventually resulted in more pain than pleasure? Have you not seen persons who worked diligently to get someone into a marriage, only to wonder later how they could have even been so foolish as to want what they now have?
Have you not seen persons pleasured by having been approved for a sub-prime loan, only to be miserable later when foreclosure comes? Have you not observed cases like those visitors who had been spoiled by their ac and were therefore miserable during their visits to Grandmother's?
That happened because their conditioning resulted in their "inside" no longer matching their "outside." The same happens with all persons who have been conditioned to desire and to accumulate.
In their association with body and mind only, they became trapped in duality and the misery of fluctuations. Every thought and word and deed becomes centered around avoiding pain and fulfilling desires; around wanting to possession this while wanting to be rid of that; around wanting to enjoy but also wanting to annihilate; and around desiring to accumulate and then experiencing the misery of trying to maintain their accumulations.
Grandmother was steady, never subjected to the fluctuations of the relative existence, never subjected to the slings and arrows of ever-changing fortune that accompanies desire and fear.
"But surely she could not have been happy with so bland an existence," some would conclude. To the contrary, she was Happiness...she was Love...she was Joy. But not by your man-made standards and definitions. She was all of that by definition of pure, manifested Reality.
In her case, there was no "one" there to try to deal with desires and problems and fears and joy which comes but which can also go. Some might prefer to sail the seas on a ship that is not like that, that is not steady throughout its entire journey. Yet those who believe that such steadiness is boring (and who want the excitement of riding in a ship that is being tossed about wildly on the water) are the ones who are generally seasick throughout most of their travels.
Now you might conclude from those words that you are in a state that is real while I am not. Yet here there is no one to experience all of the fluctuations and desires and fears and misery and suffering and emotional intoxication that non-Realized persons experience. Here, there is no one to experience the dualistic high's and low's of an unstable existence.
Do most prefer that type of existence? Seemingly. Have most been exposed to that type existence for so long that it now seems familiar and therefore "comfortable"? Often, yes. And such is the post-conditioning insanity and fluctuating among persons: the unnatural is mistaken for the natural; the miserable is often mistaken for the comfortable; and the ability to be at peace and ease both inside and outside is lost.
To seek happiness is in itself an admission of unhappiness, for he/she who is truly happy seeks not. Among the Realized, happiness happens...or not; happiness is...or not. Thx for writing. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
F.: Hello Libby. First, there is nothing that is negative or positive, either in the postings or in Reality. Keep reading, and focus on duality itself for a time. Next, the absence of happiness is always preceded by the presence of wanting.
The reason that Grandmother, mentioned in a recent post, did not complain about the heat or the cold was a result of the fact that she wanted not. And why did she not want to be cooler or warmer? Because she knew she could not control the temperature and because she accepted the uncontrollable aspects of the changes in the weather as well as all other uncontrollable aspects of the relative existence.
With no air-conditioning to use during the scorching east Texas summers, she did not manipulate the inside environment to a twenty-degree difference from the outside environment, so inside or outside, there were no fluctuations.
As a child, "floyd's" home had no air-conditioning either, so sleeping in Grandmother's house next to an open window during summer visits was comfortable. It was only after the parents installed an ac that was used for several years that the lack of an ac-controlled environment at Grandmother's suddenly seemed uncomfortable.
It was only after being acclimated to a narrow range of temperatures that sitting on the porch at Grandmother's in the heat of August was uncomfortable for those visiting her house, even as she sat a few few away in the same heat but in perfect peace.
The visitors who had been acclimated to the cooler air provided by an ac were miserable, desiring a change in temperature. Grandmother was content, desiring nothing...needing nothing...not wishing she could have the power to control the temperature or anything else.
She was living naturally and was content; after living unnaturally for a time, visitors could no longer comfortably join her in her natural mode of living. Now the point is not to turn off your air conditioning system. The invitation is to see where your system of conditioning has left you in the discomfort of duality, happy here...not happy there. Comfortable here, but not comfortable there.
Further, if you traverse the relative existence long enough, you will gather more than a few examples of instances where you attained what you wished for, only to experience at some later point untold misery as a result of having gotten what you desired.
To expand upon the pointer you referenced, the fact is that what gives you pleasure will give you pain, and whatever gives you the most pleasure will eventually give you the most pain.
If you have not lived long enough to know that first-hand, look around. Have you ever seen an alcoholic who enjoyed drinking for years but reached a point where the booze eventually resulted in more pain than pleasure? Have you not seen persons who worked diligently to get someone into a marriage, only to wonder later how they could have even been so foolish as to want what they now have?
Have you not seen persons pleasured by having been approved for a sub-prime loan, only to be miserable later when foreclosure comes? Have you not observed cases like those visitors who had been spoiled by their ac and were therefore miserable during their visits to Grandmother's?
That happened because their conditioning resulted in their "inside" no longer matching their "outside." The same happens with all persons who have been conditioned to desire and to accumulate.
In their association with body and mind only, they became trapped in duality and the misery of fluctuations. Every thought and word and deed becomes centered around avoiding pain and fulfilling desires; around wanting to possession this while wanting to be rid of that; around wanting to enjoy but also wanting to annihilate; and around desiring to accumulate and then experiencing the misery of trying to maintain their accumulations.
Grandmother was steady, never subjected to the fluctuations of the relative existence, never subjected to the slings and arrows of ever-changing fortune that accompanies desire and fear.
"But surely she could not have been happy with so bland an existence," some would conclude. To the contrary, she was Happiness...she was Love...she was Joy. But not by your man-made standards and definitions. She was all of that by definition of pure, manifested Reality.
In her case, there was no "one" there to try to deal with desires and problems and fears and joy which comes but which can also go. Some might prefer to sail the seas on a ship that is not like that, that is not steady throughout its entire journey. Yet those who believe that such steadiness is boring (and who want the excitement of riding in a ship that is being tossed about wildly on the water) are the ones who are generally seasick throughout most of their travels.
Now you might conclude from those words that you are in a state that is real while I am not. Yet here there is no one to experience all of the fluctuations and desires and fears and misery and suffering and emotional intoxication that non-Realized persons experience. Here, there is no one to experience the dualistic high's and low's of an unstable existence.
Do most prefer that type of existence? Seemingly. Have most been exposed to that type existence for so long that it now seems familiar and therefore "comfortable"? Often, yes. And such is the post-conditioning insanity and fluctuating among persons: the unnatural is mistaken for the natural; the miserable is often mistaken for the comfortable; and the ability to be at peace and ease both inside and outside is lost.
To seek happiness is in itself an admission of unhappiness, for he/she who is truly happy seeks not. Among the Realized, happiness happens...or not; happiness is...or not. Thx for writing. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
