Beyond happiness
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THE POWER OF NOW Eckhart Tolle
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s long as a condition is judged as “good” by your mind, whether it is a relationship, a possession, a social role or a place in your physical body, the mind attaches itself and identifies with it. It makes you happy, makes you feel good about yourself, and it may become part of who you are or think you are. The Buddha taught that even your happiness is dukkha, a Pali word meaning “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is inseparable from its opposite. This means that your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one. Only the illusion of time separates them. This is not being negative. It is simply recognizing the nature of things so that you don’t pursue an illusion for the rest of your life. Nor is it saying that you should no longer appreciate pleas-
SPIRITUALITY wrote, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.” When you reach this point, you are one step away from despair – and one step away from enlightenment. A Buddhist monk once told me, “All I have learned in the 20 years that I have been a monk I can sum up in one sentence: All that arises passes away. This I know.” What he meant, of course, was this: I have learned to offer no resistance to what is; I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions. Thus have I found peace. To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and light-
Cycles will come and go but with dependency gone, there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.
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ant or beautiful things or conditions. But to seek something through them that they cannot give – an identity, a sense of permanency and fulfillment – is a recipe for frustration and suffering. The whole consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought their identity through things. The more you seek happiness this way, the more it will elude you. Nothing out there will ever satisfy you, except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience much disillusionment before you realize that truth. Things and conditions can give you ���������� � ��also give ��you �� pleasure, but they will pain. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy. Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state, not something you need to struggle to attain. Many people never realize that there can be no “salvation” in anything they do, possess or attain. Those who do realize it often become world-weary and depressed: If nothing can give you true fulfillment, what is left to strive for? What is the point in anything? The Old Testament prophet must have arrived at such a realization when he
ness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being a certain way. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle on your part and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away; cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease. The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance. Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace. Adapted from The Power of Now, copyright 1999 by Eckhart Tolle. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA, 800-9726657 (ext. 52). Visit www.eckharttolle. com
