It was a pleasant evening. Good Northern
Mexican food, good company of friends involved in Pubic Health. The now defunct
El Modelo restaurant in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico provided good ambience
with some music in the background and the waiters elegantly dressed with years
of experience behind them attended to you.
There in the midst of the flavours of
tampiquenas and margaritas, I was asked the question:
How would you define Happiness!
I remember that moment very well. Two
Mexican Americans and a West African from California were peering at me,
waiting for an answer.
I thought following a moment of silence to
concentrate my mind and the answer came to me:
Happiness is the absence of desires. To be
happy, you have to decrease your desires.
They didn't respond immediately, then after
a moment, the West African psychologist responded with glee: that is a very
good definition.
That was long before I was introduced to
the Yogic Philosophy of Patanjali by a Chinese Accountant from Malaysia or had
encountered Buddhism through the book, The Jew on a Lotus by Louis Kaminitzer.
I am not interested in Hinduism or Buddhism
as religions but I am very attracted to the philosophies of Patanjali and
Buddha, both thought to be contemporaries in Northern India around 2500 years ago.
As Dalai Lama would repeatedly say, if you
want to be happy, practise Compassion, if you want to make others happy,
Practice compassion!
To do that, you have to achieve Inner Peace
of mind.
Whenever any conflict arises in your mind,
think of the structural defects of your mind, Kleishas of Patanjali’s
Philosophy, which are fires to destroy your thinking process.
Ignorance, Ego, Attachment, Fear of Change
and Aversion.
Think carefully, and you will come to the
answer and the conflict disappears.
We are all products of our cultures,
superficial and deep cultures of where we were born, where we grew up and what
we studied and the societies we live in. We cannot avoid them but as adults we
can certainly not cultivate that which stroke our egos and create inner
conflicts.
Being a Snob was considered to be once a
cultural quality but no one looks up to a snob these days, or in many
countries. Trying to impress others with material goods or possessions do not
hold water any more.
I distinctly remember overhearing two men
discussing buying and selling of a part of the national debt of a country. I
was uninterested and aghast at the amount of money they were discussing and
remember my consternation when a cunning and unsavoury woman, mother of a good
friend of mine tried to impress me with the pittance she had paid for some
device for her house. I had the audacity, being less humble those days, to tell
her: madam, you fail to impress me, as I just heard two men discussing buying
and selling national debts. Everything is relative.
Cleansing your mind of the cultural traits,
mostly superficial which are forced upon us, is a source of unhappiness for
many of us. Why mention that such and such cost so much money, if it is not to
impress others.
It is your desire for those objects that
makes you put a price on them. For a person with no desire for those objects,
the mention of a price has no meaning and at times could be nauseous.
(A molecular biologist turned Monk)
I will never forget the moment when I was
being driven through the streets of Singapore, with expensive stores lining on
both sides.
Such expensive brands, I exclaimed.
My host, a humble professor, replied: No,
they are not expensive at all, since I have no desire for them.
That was a defining moment to me. Words I
use were being thrown at me. Australia, Asia, Europe and America. The circuits
of my life, all disappeared for a moment.
Decrease your desires, you will be happy.
One thing you would realize that to do
that, many other bricks have to be laid as foundations. Inner Peace, to begin
with, and how do we achieve that?
Jim BlackBird, a patient, worker at the
clinic and a friend told me
Be a good person, then you would become a
good doctor. Not the other way around
And from the American Indians, you can
learn the fundamentals of becoming a good person.
Be grateful for things you have and not
ungrateful for things you do not have
Be humble. In our countries where there are
many symbols of wealth or ostentatiousness to exhibit on oneself, we forget
that those are just symbols and symbols are transacted and they are not
transacted equally to every one.
The humblest country I have lived in and
continue to live in is Cuba. There are no outward manifestations of personal
wealth and people like you for what you have in your heart. Try to do that in
your life and times wherever you are.
I have been blessed with friends of such
exceptional qualities, who are humble as well. Brother Joseph in Miami and
Brother Friend Joe in Bogor, Indonesia, just to mention two.
Be compassionate, towards yourself, towards
others.
In this very confused world of ours, when
national and cultural boundaries are becoming indistinct, become more tolerant,
accept others and their peculiar situations rather than being judgemental.
What can I do for you? An Indian will ask,
rather than what can you do for me?
Do not talk until you walk in his
moccasins, an Indian will say, rather than, pull yourself by your boots and
walk
Remember in this world, many people cannot
pull themselves up by their boots because their feet had been cut off by their
own societies, their own belief systems, oppression by family, government and
surprisingly globalization of the market, followed by the globalization of
suffering.
What made me write the above piece is the
dedicated friendship of my brother friend Joe from Bogor as well as listening
to Professor Barry Schwartz from Swarthmore on a video presentation, which is
attached. From TED
If you want to be happy, lower your
expectations! He says.
http://video-subtitle.tedcdn.com/talk/podcast/2005G/None/BarrySchwartz_2005G-480p-fr.mp4
this has French subtitles for those who speak French
Somehow, it rings true for me.
