This was a favourite topic of the early blog. Can you gain enlightenment through work, relationships and life in general.
Definitively I can answer no.
The reason is that the motivation for "worldly" existence is literally the opposite of the "spiritual" path.
The worldly path seeks to divide things into preferred outcome and unfavourable outcome. And we work for the preferred outcome. Often this seems easy and harmless, but the devil is working already. Once we reject one outcome in favour of another we are training ourselves to bind to the world and struggle for only certain eventualities.
Not outcome will ever be perfect or final and it will lead to more decisions and preferred outcomes and soon we will be stuck in the world in an endless struggle for this but not that.
We will have been teased away from the spiritual path and the goal of being centred and unmoved by worldly phenomena and events.
This sounds cold, unemotional and deathlike. Surely a living being embraces the struggle of life and suffers and rejoices at its fortunes in equal measure.
But this is not the correct view. The struggle comes from being *bound* to certain outcomes.
If we look closely in fact any outcome will do. We only prefer a certain outcome because we chose to see it in a particular way.
We might think that death is the absolutely bad outcome and obviously all creatures struggle to avoid death. But death will come to us all. One day no matter how we struggle or not, death will come.
Someone once told me they had a near death experience canoeing where they got a shoelace caught on the canoe and couldn't right it, or swim clear of it. They were stuck underwater. At first they struggled, but eventually they realised the game was up and they stopped. In that moment they were overwhelmed by a feeling of complete peace and tranquillity. Time seemed to stop. But then all of a suddenly the instructor righted the boat and they could breath again. When you realise now is the time not to struggle, then you have peace even when facing what you consider the absolutely worst outcome. Even in the absolutely worst outcome, if you look at it correctly is profound peace. The phenomena are always just illusions that our minds stick together in a certain way, but which is never the only way or the complete way.
So it is not that those on the spiritual path just give up and don't struggle. But the point is the vector of their life is the opposite of the worldly. The worldly is bound to certain outcomes. Only the chosen outcome will do, and they transition forever from one chosen outcome to the next.
Capitalism exploits this to the maximum. Currently there is a growing number of housing adverts that use all manner of techniques to make the viewer feel that they are in the wrong house, or they haven't found the right house, or that they are missing out on a new life of happiness because they have not moved. All complete nonsense that doesn't even need thinking about. It is simply estate agents trying to get people to give them their money. Whatever house you move into, you will see another advert and realise you need to move again, The only way to stop is just to stay where you are and make that work. And that is the general truth of the spiritual person. Find the peace in the place you already are. There is no need to do anything, change anything, it is simply a matter or rearranging your thoughts until what you already have works. In this sense Capitalism is nothing but the work of the devil.
But this can give the image of the hermit sitting under a tree and just wasting away. How will find food, and how will they live.
There are things even the spiritual person needs to do. If they are canoeing and it capsizes they obviously need to right the canoe. It is true that they could find peace in the overturned canoe and just drown. But it is also true that they could right the canoe and find peace in the alive too. Perhaps they could flick a coin to find out which to chose. Anyone thinking like this is already so unbound to the world that there is little risk of being bound if they grasp for life. Such an act to save oneself from drowning is not then an act of suffering, but just an act of kindness to allow a body to live. But if indeed their shoelace is caught and it turns out they cannot save their body from drowning this apparent disaster is not really a disaster. It is just the end of the road that was coming some day.
So we must make this choice: are we going to struggle to make the world go this way or that way to satisfy our desires and so bind ourselves into a endless struggle--and literally endless as every second there is something wrong or not quite right. We can put a brave face on and just ignore the sufferings, becoming so tough and insensitive that apparently nothing touches us. This is a useful skill, but it doesn't actually solve the sufferings. We still would prefer things to go this way rather than that. If we day dream for a second about how we wish things could be, we will find what our actual desires are and the imperfects and disappointments that keep us from those wishes. But its not just us: this type of happiness is impossible. There is always something there to break it, we just overlook it as we grasp for happiness. Obviously the opposite is true: there is always something good out there even when we grasp for unhappiness. But it is all suffering this grasping.
The spiritual path is the opposite. We look to undo the thoughts and mindsets that make suffering in the world. We are still seeking that peace and happiness but no longer by diverting the world into this way or that way. Each way has its strong and weak points. The purpose for us is to have mastery over our mind so that we can see those strong points. Nothing is ever just one sided, there are always so many ways to see it. And with our deluded minds literally making up fantasies about the world, it can be very hard most of the time to get away from what we want to see, and instead see things in a different way. This is what they call karma: the force that drives us to see things in a certain way and so act in a certain way. With spiritual commitment the change does not come from acting out our views and desires, but rather changing ourselves to fit the situation. Finding happiness is what is there, rather than pushing for it to be different in some future.
In reality we are embedded in an extremely rich and fruitful world. There is deep beauty and satisfying wholesomeness everywhere. But under the force of our mental preconceptions and desires to see things this way or that we don't see that and see what we want to see instead. This is great when our mind is forcing the world into a positive fantasy like when we fall in love, but it is equally horrible when that same mind forces us to see things with hate. In both cases it is us who decides these outcomes and makes them happen, but with worldly attitude we go our fighting and get bound to a world that can never really satisfy us. With spiritual mind we give up trying to change the world and instead seek to see it correctly with peace and happiness and appreciation for what it is before we try and change it.
Again this does not turn us into passive meditating hippies. It turns us into beings deeply sensitive to what is going on and what is there. Satisfied with what is going on and what is there. Not bound within superficial mental formations about what we think is there, but seeing through the cracks and open to the newness of our existence and the world. It should feel like a cool shower for our soul. When we act with this clarity it cannot be wrong. We already have what we spiritually need, everything else is just a bonus.
So no you can't be worldly and spiritual. You either seek material satisfaction and hoard up a particular way of life, or you turn the complete opposite way and reject the whole worldly thing to seek peace and acceptance of the world as it is. Preferring to change oneself in place of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment