Sunday, February 28, 2010

Selfishness

When one is interested in spirituality and working to understand truth or true nature of existence, one must understand selfishness. If we do not understand it in its true sense, possibly we will remain away from truth or the real nature of existence. This is because the understanding is based on our knowledge, ideas, psychological conditionings, etc. In that sense, there is no understanding in its true sense. That is the reason truth is available only to the minds which cease to exist! The understanding is only to cease the existence of mind itself and any understanding which does this function is close to truth or reality! And most importantly, must understand that this understanding itself is due to our selfishness and is true to only for ourselves. This is because, we reach this understanding by our mind, and no two minds at this thinking level are same.

We consider the word selfishness as a bad word. Almost every one of us never likes to have the tag of ‘selfish person’ attached with us. In reality are we unselfish? What makes us to make such claim?

Any one, whose mind operates in the field of ego cannot be other than selfish, whatever be that persons activities – be it serving for oneself or serving for the deprived or serving for any community or serving for God or serving for peace or whatever it may be. It is complete selfish activity. Probably we may have to understand ‘self’ to understand this statement.

At the psychological level, the qualities with which we identify us are our ‘self’. Every one of us likes to attach as much as qualities with us or we likes to identify ourselves with as many as qualities as we can. We may like to attach the quality of education with us and try to identify ourselves as ‘educated’, whether we are educated or not in the real sense of education. When we see our neighbor is struggling, we worry for them and help them to the extent possible for us. This extent of possibility varies for each one of us. Out of this help, we derive a sense of satisfaction which is within the field of operation of our mind. Basically we help our neighbor just because we need that satisfaction, which is a pure selfish activity. We are not helping our neighbor as the neighbor really need our help, but help the neighbor for our own satisfaction of helping somebody. That is the reason for the extent of help varies with individual. With that help if we want to attach the tag unselfishness with us, then that may be the height of selfishness – our desire for ‘unselfish’ tag is built on the suffering of our neighbor.

Does it mean we should not help others if we want to be unselfish? It is not the point of above discussion. Help the needy person with the complete understanding that we are actually not helping the other person, but we are actually helping us – performing that help to satisfy ourselves, probably due to the suffering we have on seeing the suffering of others. If we are not suffering on seeing the suffering of others, we are not going to help those others. Hence the help arises from us towards stopping our suffering, not to (in real sense) stop the suffering of those others.

If this is the case, why are we ashamed of being called as selfish? It could be because we started focusing our mind only at physical level. Seldom have we asked questions beyond physical level. Even we ask questions beyond physical level, we expect to get some answers with authority, which can never happen. The possibility normally we consider for getting answers for such questions is our knowledge, which is just our ideas, beliefs, morality etc. In such case we cannot go beyond much than the physical level. Hence we are forced to stay with in the realm of physical. This could be the reason that our idea of selfishness cannot go beyond physical level. At this level, keeping some thing with us when we really see somebody is in real need for that thing is mere selfish act. Even if we are in need of some item and if we see another person is also in need of that same item, and give away that item to the other person in spite of our need for that item is unselfish. But these are at physical level. What we are discussing here is not this selfish or unselfish act. At that level, the truth is that we are all selfish and we have to be selfish until we are in the field of operation of mind. Hence we need not be ashamed of being selfish. Unless we understand this fact, we can not transcend the field of selfishness.

When one enters into this understanding, which is true at psychological level, one reaches far close in the domain of spirituality, in search of truth, in search of the real nature of existence.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Education

When we say educated people we generally refer people like us who had completed some academics and acquired some university degrees or diplomas. Are we really educated? The so called uneducated are really uneducated with respect to us who are generally considered as educated? What could be the attributes of really educated one?

One of the dictionary meanings of education is “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.” This definition may be interpreted according to the idea of the person who is looking for the definition of Education. Here we may try to interpret with respect to the ideology discussed throughout this blog.

When we consider ourselves as educated, we must be living a matured life compared to the so called uneducated. Are we really living a life which is matured than any of so called uneducated person? Probably, we may be living a life of better physical comfort due to the earning power provided by the academic learning we had. If we stripe out the physical comfort from our life, the quality of life which we are living has no difference at all with respect to the quality of life of so called uneducated. We have all the psychological sufferings of so called uneducated person and that person is having all the psychological joy of what we are having. Whatever academic qualifications we acquired are just for earning our livelihood through a profession. Due to the circumstances, the so called uneducated person was unable to learn his profession through a structured way, but such a person also learned some profession and earning the livelihood. Such a person may not be earning as much as we are earning, but that person also learned some profession and earning bread and butter from that profession like us, where we are earning our bread and butter- may be little more, from the profession we learned from schools and universities. Hence classifying a person as educated or uneducated based on academic qualification may not be the right method of classification.

Are we living a matured life due to the education we had? What is a matured life? If we stripe out the physical comfort from the field of education, a matured life may be a life with the understanding of oneself. None of us may be having any understanding of what we are. If we have the slightest understanding of ourselves, the quality of our life must be altogether different from what we are living now – the endless suffering from each and every action of us. We don’t even have the understanding of ourselves to recognize the suffering as we suffer – but much later, suffer on thinking about the suffering! With respect to our ability to understand ourselves, we are much similar to the so called uneducated person. In that case, are we really educated?

Are we any different from so called uneducated person with respect to handling the life situations? – Be it handling our fears, be it handling our desires, be it handling our anger, be it handling our lust. Of course, every one of us handles it differently on outer layer due to the difference in our basic structure. But fundamentally, there is no difference between us and the so called uneducated with respect to handling such life situations. We have fear of life, death, security – exactly same as that of so called uneducated. We get anger when our ego is hurt – we don’t understand our ego, exactly same as the so called uneducated and so on. In that case, are we really educated?

Then, how can we get educated? We can be educated only when we ask questions about each and every aspect of our life and life situations, and find answer for those questions by ourselves. Find answers by ourselves – Not the answer from our parents, teachers, scriptures, Gurus or from anybody else. If the answer is from our parents, it is the answer for the life situation of our parents – not for our life situations. If the answer is from a Guru, it is the life situation of our Guru- not our life situations. If the answer is from a scripture, it is the answer for the life situation of the author of that scripture – not our own life situations. It is we ourselves to educate our selves. The academics are just a means for facilitate this education. Even with out the academics, one can be educated. If we can find answers for our life situations by ourselves, without reference to anybody else or anything else, we will be having at least some understanding about ourselves. This understanding – even the slightest understanding can entirely change our life process. If it happens, we can claim ourselves as educated. But at that stage, we may not be having any need for such claim! – We will be really living a matured life!