Introspection

What is pain?

Here is a comforting analysis. Whatever brings pain to your life is a great opportunity for advancement. Pain implies the absence of something you want, or the presence of something you do not want. But you can change your wants and desires, or even be free from them. The source of pain is not their absence or presence, but our attachment to them. One by one, we can remove our attachments, thereby increasing the level of our freedom. Pain is thus an instrument for freedom.

What is essence?

I try to answer this question by means of induction, by disproving alternate explanations turn by turn. What is essential must be true yesterday and true tomorrow. We can hence ignore all the dynamics about our lives and focus only on one moment, now, to find the essential element that does not change with time. It is like holding a strand of dry spaghetti with a pair of forceps or scissors, and cutting both edges, each representing the past and the future. We can now focus on the now. What is it in me that is essential and unaffected by time? To my surprise the only answer I could come up with is the Potential to Be. What I become at all levels of experience -- physical, emotional, mental – is non-essential because it can change. But the Potential remains a constant, whether or not it is realized, and in whatever way it is realized.

What is truth?

Who really wants the truth? In all honesty, truth is the least romantic -- and hence the least sought after -- of all the ideals such as love, freedom, peace etc. It is less romantic because it is neutral, and promises nothing. It might even be dangerous. What if the truth is in fact painful and restrictive instead of peaceful and freeing? But precisely because it is neutral, truth trumps up everything else. Hell the truth shall set you free, whether it sends you to jail or to your own house. Why? Because it is the truth. It has that inherent power to put straight all incongruency. Perhaps the greatest achievement of man is to look straight into the eyes of the truth. The courage to do it must be truly liberating. And there is also some tenderness about truth. And this is the fact that, however uncomfortable the truth might be, it can never be less rewarding than a lie.

Question Or Answer?

Life is one big question mark. Not a full stop. That is what makes it exciting! Humans love uncertainty. We hate cut-and-dried affairs that are concluded from the beginning. We love the question rather than the answer. The multitude of possibilities questions represent enthrall us more than the dreary facts answers contain. We love new people, new places, unexpected events, though with uncertainty and originality a lot of risk and danger is also involved. In movies we enjoy most not the ending but the dramatic point where the protagonist’s life is on a treadmill. While dating we are most promiscuous in the early stages where we have to form the bond. Even in sex, it is not the orgasmic moment that we find exhilarating but the moments building up to it. We are wired to enjoy the uncertainty, and the openness of expectations the unknown entails.