Pursuit of Pleasure is Invocation of Pain : 8. ( Last Part )

There are also objects in the world other than the one towards which the mind is moving. What will happen to them? Because of the interrelated structure of all things, it is impossible to avoid the intrusion of other factors into our experience. We cannot have summer always, or winter always, or rain always, or a particular kind of season always, because the planets move according to their own way, and so seasons change, naturally.


Experiences also must change. Everything in this world is subtly connected with everything else. Therefore, if we interfere with any particular thing, we will be interfering with everything else also – knowingly or unknowingly. But, due to the ignorance of this peculiar way in which nature works, the mind takes into consideration only that particular object or group of objects which is visible to its mental eye, as if it is looking at things with blinkers, and completely loses consciousness of other factors with which the very existence of this object or group of objects is concerned or related. Thus, reactions are set up.


The reactions that are produced by our actions, called the karmas that bind us, are the unconscious repercussions which are consequent upon our interference with things in the world. Though we are contacting objects not with an intention of interfering, but with a so-called pious motive of getting what we want through them, we are thoroughly mistaken, because every contact is an interference with nature. Nature is an indivisible whole and it cannot brook interference of any kind, and it has no partiality of any kind in respect of its content. It does not love one to the exclusion of others. But this individual sense does not know this truth. It thinks that a part of nature is its property – it belongs to it, and it tries to possess it wrongly and make it a part of its own being, not knowing that nature will not allow this and that its law will operate.


Sukha-dukha come together; pleasure and pain are simultaneous. Every endeavour at pleasure is an invocation of a pain that is to follow one day or the other. Today we laugh, and tomorrow we cry. We cannot go on laughing throughout the day, throughout our life, because there is a negative side for everything in this world. Everything has two aspects: the aspect of visibility, as it is presented to the limited vision of the mind and the senses, and the aspect of invisibility, which is the other side of things, of which the mind is not aware and the senses cannot perceive, but nevertheless it is there.


The individual sense is a foolish one, indeed, in that it cannot succeed in its attempts. Yet it persists, though it does not succeed, because it does not know that its failure is due to its own erroneous methods employed. It thinks it is right in its methods, and that something is wrong with the objects themselves. We always find fault with conditions outside when we fail, not knowing that the failure is due to a mistake committed by us in the methodology employed. But, the mind will never understand this. Nobody will ever accept that there is a mistake in one’s own self. We always impute the mistakes to circumstances and conditions outside. So goes this world.


This is the short history of the immediate consequences that follow from an ignorance of the true nature of one’s own Self, a consequent sudden affirmation of personal individuality, and then the running after pleasures of sense.

END.

Next : The Cause of Unhappiness

To be continued  ...