In this sub series of the journey of the Pilgrim, he sits at his feet and earns his teachings from his Guru. The article in the series Talks with Guru are subjective in nature with the teacher spontaneously responding to inquiries into non-duality through a series of queries the seriously inquisitive beginner puts across.
A point to note is that the non-dual Truth is infinite and can be experienced & explained in infinite number of ways, which may look conflicting at times, but each being right from an unique perspective.
Pilgrim: Why is Life so difficult?
Guru: There are 2 aspects to this question – our perception of Life, and our qualifying the experience as Difficult. It is not Life that is hard or difficult but our assessment & finally our judgement that our experiences have been very difficult to bear. So someone who has a high degree of forbearance may not call his experience a difficult one compared to another person who has a very low tolerance of pain or pleasure for the identical experience.
One student who worked hard in school to get a scholarship, pursued college & finally landed a great job that brought him a lot of comfort & convenience will find life worth living, while his classmate, who wasted his time on frivolous activities & failed to get a college education & subsequently had to earn his living by begging will call his life to be miserable.
Again, in this example, the first person who had all the material comfort in life could find life extremely hard at the slightest mishap & could lose his balance completely at the slightest misfortune. While the second person, who has already tolerated all the humiliation in life & cut his needs down to the very basic ones, will not mind another mishap in his life & such an occurrence may not disturb him at all.
So you see, it is our experience that is pleasurable or dis-pleasurable that makes us think that life is easy or difficult. If we learn how to tolerate pain & do not depend too much on material comfort & convenience, then life’s experiences will turn out to be just fine.
Pilgrim: Why do some people make us so unhappy?
Guru: That is not a nice way to look at life. It is not that one person makes us happy or unhappy – it is the quality of our experience with that person that makes us judge our experience as either a happy one or an unhappy one. It is always our intellect that make those judgement of other’s qualities or the nature of their actions, for us.
One way to look at such situations is not to think of the Gunas at all. Not to think of any action by anyone as good or bad & not to expect something for yourself out of those interactions. It is rather hard to follow this in practice if you are living a commercial world, that is a daily existence of give-and-take,
Apart from the direct experience, our mind also tends to recreate the bad experiences over and over again in our head. This causes us to nurture terrible ideas about such person & build ill will and prejudice against them. This is very harmful.
Pilgrim: Will spirituality make me happy?
Guru: No, absolutely not. If you are “trying” to be spiritual to “gain” happiness, you will be more miserable I suppose. Spirituality is not about gaining happiness or immortality or some psychic powers.
Spirituality is simply being aware that what you call as “I” is temporary, that it has come spontaneously and it will go spontaneously and that what you call as “experience” is merely a perception of your senses – sort of electrical signals produced by chemicals in your body, so not to ponder over that at all.
Happiness also comes from your sense organs, so you may not want to deny that either. However such happiness does not last long & if you get used to such experiences your mind will play tricks on you, in such a way that you will feel miserable when you do not have similar experiences.
So in a way it is very easy to be happy, without having to be spiritual. Keep your senses & your emotions in control. Ignorance is bliss – truly. This “ignorance” is not a “lack of knowledge” but this is “cultivated ignorance” – knowing that you should ignore those that are temporary in nature, or throw your mind onto a roller coaster of emotions.
Pilgrim: How can I be in the company of good people?
Guru: That is rather selfish, don’t you think? Why would good people wish to be in your company? It is not what someone else is – good or bad, it is how you are. Don’t seek out good people, just know that you are in the company of people.
Pilgrim bows at the feet of the Guru.