# 016 Simple Straightforward formula for Happiness - PORT

Each of us want peace and happiness in life. Still, happiness often evades us. “Is there a simple, straightforward roadmap to get happiness and peace in life”. “There is.” Says Swami Paramarthanandaji ‘Reducing PORT is the best way’. PORT stands for Possessions, Obligatory Duties, Relationships and Transactions. How to reduce these?

Happiness is a state of mind; it does not come from possessions alone. There are severe limitations of happiness sought in objects. First, deep effort and some pain are involved in acquiring objects. Many waste their entire life in pursuit of desirable objects. There is no guarantee that even after getting those objects or positions, you would be happy.  You may feel ‘let-down’ after putting in so much of effort. You may think, ‘this is not what I laboured for’.  Also, objects of desire keep changing, and so also our goal posts. The chase continues and   every new possession brings with it own burden. If someone has a house with swimming pool and ten bedrooms; imagine his plight in maintaining it. He is busy all the time cleaning, fixing, protecting. Does the house serve us, or do we serve the house? Again, objects make us dependent on them. For instance, once we are used to certain objects, a particular style/standard of living, it is very difficult live without those objects or changed life style/standard. Hence all possessions usually create bondage.

Relationships are meant to make our life happy. But do they? We have to maintain some blood relations for social cohesion, but we create other new relationships, which complicates life. Every new relationship has to be maintained. You have to remember to wish people on their birthdays and anniversaries, participate in functions like marriage and engagement, or reach out in case of sickness or loss. Also you become sad or experience pain when the person with whom you have a relationship does not reciprocate. It is said that grief is never caused by outsiders or unknown people. It is caused by people with whom you have a relationship. Depending on your attitude, your relationships might cause you more pain than pleasure.

Every possession and every new relationship creates its own obligatory duties. You have to insure your vehicles, for example, remember to send it for regular service. Similarly we have to attend to the expectations of relationships. These add to our list of obligatory duties. We cannot avoid basic, minimum obligatory duties towards the office, business, parents, spouse or children. But our optional duties also become obligatory when you maintain too many possessions and relationships. We should also be careful in accepting new roles in life just for the sake of ego-satisfaction. If you are made President or Secretary of a Society, you may feel good, but that adds to your obligatory duties also.  

Performance of each of these duties involves a number of transactions. Thus any additional relationship increases duties & responsibilities and increased transactions. But trying to cope with large number of transactions usually brings in pressure on one’s time leaving no time to be happy!

This is not to say that you should have no objects or relationships in your life.  There is no problem as long as you can manage them. It is ok as long as you are aware of their limitations and are able strike a balance in life. But the moment the increased possessions and relationships upsets the mind, peace and happiness will be lost. Life will be peaceful only if you are able to discriminate between what is necessary and what is unnecessary in your life. That is the PORT of call for happiness. 

# 015 Freedom is the goal of Life

Freedom is the goal of life.

This freedom... is spiritual, a state of consciousness unhindered by any desire, unchained to any desire, ‘unimprisoned’ by any greed, by any lust for more. It is utterly empty, because if there is something, it will hinder freedom; hence it is utter emptiness.

This word ‘emptiness’ has been so very misunderstood by people, because the word has a connotation of negativity.... Emptiness is absolutely positive, more positive than your so-called fullness, because emptiness is full of freedom; everything else has been removed. It is spacious; all boundaries have been dropped. It is unbounded — and only in an unbounded space, freedom is possible. This emptiness is not ordinary emptiness; it is not only absence of something, it is a presence of something invisible. For example, let’s say you are about to empty your room: As you remove the furniture and paintings and the things inside, the room becomes empty on the one hand because there is no more furniture, no more paintings, no more things, nothing is left inside; but on the other hand, something invisible starts filling it. That invisible ‘thing’ that you now perceive is ‘roominess’, spaciousness; the room becomes bigger. As you remove the things, the room is becoming bigger and bigger. When everything is removed, even the walls, then the room is as big as the whole sky.

Freedom is the ultimate goal of true religion. Freedom is the highest, the summum bonum; there is nothing higher than that.

Osho

# 014 Third and Fourth Yagnopaveetam - When is it worn?

Today when I took out the new Yagnopaveetham, Sacred thread (Janav or Poonal), there were not the usual 2 but 3 of them. Somehow it has gotten into my mind that the third one is worn during 70 th or 80 th birthday ceremonies. Curious to get at the fact, I searched the net and to my surprise found out that no additional Poonal is worn during either the 70 th or 80 th birthday celebrations. Instead I came across the following. Never heard of the 4 th one. Is anyone aware of the same?

A Brahmachari wears one single triple stranded Yagnopaveetham (Janav or Poonal). When he gets married, he is called a Grahasta and wears two. When he performs the "Seemantha" to his wife when she is (usually 7 months) pregnant, starts wearing three Yagnopaveethams. (This practice is now not common). When he takes Adhyayanam of the fourth Veda, i.e. Adharva Veda, he is invested with the fourth Yagnopaveetham (who is doing Adyayanam (Learning) of even one Veda now a days, leave alone the Fourth one?)


Understand that in ancient times women also wore such sacred threads and performed Sandhya rites. During subsequent periods, a married woman's privilege or responsibility of performing such rites was transferred to her husband. Since then, each married man has been expected to wear a pair of triple stranded sacred threads, one for himself and another representing that of his spouse. Thus he is expected to perform Sandhya rites on behalf of both and share the benefits with his spouse.


Now a days third Yagnopaveetam is worn during the marriage purportedly in place of the second Uttahareeyam or Angavasthra. Vedic Scholars look down on this practice as a stupidity arguing that a Yagnopaveetam cannot, by any stretch of imagination, make up for the Angavasthra.

# 013 Terrorism is manifestation of violence within oneself

From wars and clashes to terrorist attacks and individual crimes, we are witnessing increasingly shocking acts of violence these days. These are all manifestations of the violence within us.

When humans forget their true nature and identify with their bodies, their roles and material assets, they come under the influence of vices.  To think and act under the influence of vices is to commit violence, because it violates the true nature of peace, joy and love.

Violence come from five vices – lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego -- connected to the feeling of wanting or desiring.  

Lust destroys all purity.  Lust is not just to indulge in physical pleasures.  People often spend their lives lusting for money and power.  Lust is an obsessive or addictive desire to seek support, fulfillment, happiness and self-worth by indulging in pleasures that finish all inner powers and dignity.  It creates endless cycles of desires and indulgence.  It makes one extremely selfish and finishes all clarity, sensitivity, love and truth.

Anger is a fire that burns the self and others.  When expectations are not met; when people don’t follow our way, we become angry and react violently. Anger blunts our discernment and decision-making powers.  We are not able to think and act rationally when we are angry.  We are overpowered by negative emotions and we use emotionally charged words or actions to force others to meet our expectations. Anger always makes one subservient to other people’s behaviour and situations.  Anger can lead to destructive behaviour that can cause great damage on large scale such as war, terrorism and murders. 

Greed keeps one in a state of continuous seeking and chasing desires. A greedy person is always poor and empty inside even though he may have lots of material assets at his disposal.  Greed inevitably leads to unrighteous and corrupt practices.  It makes a person very unhappy, fearful, dishonest and irresponsible.  Greedy people can never enjoy life as they always want more.  Greed can lead to total imbalance and exploitation of man and nature which can result in widespread damage.

Attachment is the root of all suffering; it comes from the need to feel supported and valued by people, objects and roles.  It creates strong sense of false support and identity.  Attachment keeps one entangled in the web of ‘mine’ and the need to hold on to whatever one is attached to.  It makes one selfish, petty and narrow-minded.

Ego is the subtlest enemy.  When we are under the influence of ego we are totally disconnected from self-respect; we fabricate and identify ourselves with false self-image.  An egoistic person always feels insecure and seeks attention. It is said – if it hurts, it is ego.  An egoist is in delusion, always influenced by praise and defamation.  Ego isolates a person and creates clashes, discord, hatred and blind competition.

As we are part of the whole when violence happens within us, due to any of the above, violations happen in the universal laws that are needed to sustain peace and harmony in this world in the form of corruption, crimes, war, terrorism etc.

Based on the blog by Dadi Janki of Bramakumaris in Speakingtree

# 012 Excellent article Co authored by Deepak Chopra on need for Humans to think on reality.

DEEPAK CHOPRA co-authors an article highlighting the incredible differences in the world view of humans and other species, based on sensory perception

Reality Is An Illusion

Albert Einstein said: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Quantum mechanics has shown for more than 80 years now that the perceived reality of hard objects that senses give us, is an illusion. Yet, if things lost their thing-ness, which our senses make us believe in, we’d have little choice but to re-evaluate what is real and what isn’t…

The Mystery Of Perception

If we follow the mystery of perception, many issues arise than the fairly simple one of hallucinations. They are rare, but the brain’s ability to turn electrical impulses and chemical reactions into a world we see, hear, touch, taste and smell, is baffling. There is no light in the brain. Yet, the light of the sun is blinding. This disparity is crucial, because without someone to see it, the sun is invisible.There is no visible light in nature without an eye to perceive it. What if your brain, having taken a totally different evolutionary path, didn’t ‘see’ light but ‘heard’ it? There’s no obstacle to such a development. (During the LSD ‘60s, trippers discovered they could taste colours or see music.)

Different Realities

Sensory abilities differ vastly among the millions of species on the planet. What is real to one species (like a bat’s sonar) is hidden to another (a deaf paramecium - a single-celled freshwater animal which has a characteristic slipper-like shape). Even among seven billion humans, every person has a different ‘mix’ of reality depending on personal acuity, predispositions, habits, memories,and upbringing (the child of a horticulturalist might automatically see 20 different wildflowers in a meadow where you see a blur of colour). We tend to ignore that sensory abilities differ from one person to another, unless the difference is striking, as between one person who is stone deaf and another who has perfect pitch. Yet, the larger truth is that each of us uses the brain like a personal CGI (Computer Generated Imaging) factory, creating a 3-D movie of the world unlike anyone else’s. Are we illusion makers or reality makers? Big question!

Visuals differ

Humans have one lens in each eye, and our eyes are trichromatic — we have three types of colour sensing cells, or cones, which allows us to distinguish combinations of a million or so colours. But even within humans, there is a twofold or threefold physical difference from one person to another in every aspect of our visual system (eg: the size of the optic nerve, lateral geniculate nucleus and primary visual cortex, etc).

Dramatic Difference

However, colour vision and eyesight vary even more dramatically among different species, many of which are monochromatic, such as seals, sea lions, and owl monkeys. If a species is a rod monochromat, then for it, the world is free of all colours other than shades of grey. If a species is a cone monochromat (with only one type of cone), then it can see about 100 shades of a single colour or its combinations. Cats are dichromatic, which means they can see only about 10,000 colours. There are gender differences in animals — among New World monkeys, males are dichromatic but many females are trichromatic, like us. Honeybees are trichromatic but they cannot see red; and they can see ultraviolet frequencies.

Evolution Differs

Evolution hasn’t ordered living creatures in a straight line from crude sight — as we humans would judge it — to more evolved sight, meaning our own. Many birds, insects, and fish are

tetrachromatic, so that some spiders and birds can see ultraviolet, which humans cannot. This would make insect prey glow green in the dark. The reason that we cannot see UV is that our lens blocks it from striking the retina, but people whose lenses have been removed in a cataract procedure or who were born without a lens (aphakia), have been reported to detect UV light.

No Normal Way

As evolution has developed different sensory systems, reality shifted.There is no ‘normal’way to decode photos of invisible light. Pigeons and some butterflies are actually pentachromats; in theory, such creatures could distinguish up to 10 billion colours even though we have no way to prove this. The Mantis has 16 different receptor types, including four types of receptors just for seeing UV light, and four others for polarised light. A human would need many distinct kinds of sunglasses to duplicate the sensation. Many snakes can also ‘see’ infrared, or heat radiation, using special detectors that send thermal information through their visual system.

What The Eye Cannot See

It’s hard to escape our assumption that eyesight connects us to the real world, but every living thing is connected to a created world. The question of matching our creation to a possible ‘real reality’ will come next. The conclusions of quantum mechanics will certainly have to be brought in. For the moment, we need to realise that the world created by other species is inconceivable to us….

Defective Perceptions

Finally, the mystery of perception must be sorted out from defective perception. Humans suffer from certain peculiar visual defects. For example, we can fill in information that we partially see (if an edge is blocked out) but some animals don’t do that. Optical illusions have proven that our visual system is often wrong in its detection accuracy for size, shape, colour, motion, and depth. (Think of desert mirages where shimmering hot air looks like water.) Yet, in a sense, confining our examples to eyesight is misleading, since the world is created by blending all the senses, and variations in touch, taste, hearing, and smell lead to bewildering riddles…

Where Do We Humans Stand?

So while feeling superior to chickens with their hundred taste buds and ignoring bees, who can smell something miles away, or sharks, who can detect faint, distant electrical impulses, humans must take advantage of one extrasensory gift — our ability to reason — in order to find out where we stand in the shadowy realm of illusion versus reality.

From Speaking Tree

# 011 Dvaita, Advaita and Vishishtadvaita - An explanation from Kanchi Mahaperiyava

From one of the talks of the great Kanchi Mahaperiyava – short, simple yet profound, lucid …. .. all adjectives and superlatives including humorous.

Whether we take Dvaita, Advaita or Vishishtadvaita, the goal is Paramatma - there is no second thought. Each path defers only in detail, as to how and under what circumstances Paramatma can be reached.

In Advaita, the relationship between the Jivatma and Paramatma is like the relationship between the sides of a square and its perimeter - four times the length of a side, 4a. It is very rational and there is no place for any ambiguity.

In Dvaita the same relationship is described as between the diameter of a circle and its perimeter – Πd. Here the number 22/7, Π is an irrational number. Its value is an approximation only. Even if you go to crores of decimals you can approach very close to the value but not the actual value. There will remain a minute difference between the values arrived at by the multiplication of Π with Diameter and the exact value of the Perimeter. Likewise Jivatma can never become Paramatma – it can only approach Paramatma very closely. Just as there simply is no known number of decimals of Π to reach the exact value of the perimeter of a circle so also the no of steps a Jivatma needs to take to reach or become Paramatma will forever remain uncertain. This limitation is described as Taratamyam brought about by Panchaboothatvam. Thus the relationship between Jivatma and Paramatma remains uncertain and irrational in Dvaita. The beauty is even in Einstein’s relativity theory also this Π is figuring in. He says there is uncertainty in all things in this universe. This is what Madhwacharya’s Panchabeta or un-equableness is about. An insentient object is different from sentient one. Why, there is difference between one sentient object and another too. And sentient beings (Jivatmas) are different from Paramatma. If Paramatma can be said to be a particular stage of Jivatma like the perimeter of a square is 4a, then the very rational relationship will be limiting the Paramatma. This will then contradict the saying of the Vedas that Paramatma is limitless, Anatha. Therefore Madwacharya’s  perimeter= Πd.

What about Vashishtadvaitam of Ramanucharya? He says Paramatma is a square looking like a circle by Maya, Illusion. He in a way accepts both Dvaita and Advaita. He says a Jivatma will lose heart if you say you can never attain Paramatma (as in Dvaita) or will become proud if it is said that he IS Paramatma (as in Advaita). So he advocates, like Aristotle’s golden mean, a path in between which says that Paramatma is an uncertain circle as long as you remain ignorant and a clear square when wisdom dawns - like Kuppan, Subban, Kandan, Kannan all different people become a ‘ticket’ to a Conductor when they get into the bus !!