Upanishad & Bicycles - The Answer ? - Part 4

Since it is peace and happiness which most people are after, it is best to begin by identifying the cause of the mental disease called unhappiness and investigate the nature of the remedies which we may possess. Let us ask: What makes one unhappy ?
The easiest way to analyse this question is to think about some incident in your life which caused you lot of unhappiness recently. An unfulfilled desire, leading part of your brain to produce repeatedly a sequence of thoughts over which the rest of the brain has no control - this is what all pangs of unhappiness boil down to. It should be clear now that the problem can be attacked only by either of the following two strategies: (1) The first strategy is completely subjective; it consists of training our brain not to produce any uncontrolled responses when confronted by external stimuli. It is obvious that such a perfect control over one's brain will ensure eternal peace and happiness, totally independent of the external circumstances. (2) The second strategy, which is what we usually try out in our quest for happiness, is centered around the external world: Control our external conditions in such a manner that our expectations and desires are always fulfilled. This solution demands you to constantly work attempting to fulfil all your desires: If poverty is causing you unhappiness you try to acquire wealth; if diseases are the source of your trouble you try to improve your health; if you don't like your boss you either overthrow him or change your job, etc.
It is trivial to prove that the second strategy described above is, in general, inferior to the first thereby demolishing the utility of 99.9999 percent or so of human preoccupation. It is inferior because of two reasons: Firstly it is not universal enough to tackle all situations. Secondly, even when it is applicable, it produces results which are qualitatively inferior to those obtained by the first strategy. After all, Emperors and Kings who had far greater control over their circumstances have been known to be very unhappy. All forms of social and political structures, moral and ethical codes, economic systems, charitable acts ... much of human endeavour towards global and local happiness is illusionary and waste of time. You should transform yourself, not the system. The authors of Upanishadic literature, it would be amusing to note, had considered it beneath their dignity to spend time proving this point! Their attitude is remarkable: `You think you can achieve happiness by controlling the external circumstances and satisfying your desires ?', they would have said, `go right ahead and try it out! When you are finally convinced it is a stupid venture, come back to me and I will tell you the Right Way'.
Getting back to the main theme, we have asserted that the key to human happiness lies in preventing the brain from producing uncontrolled responses to external stimuli. Once we acquire such perfect control over our brain, we can generate in it any state for any long period of time (and go high without drugs!). It certainly seems to be worth exploring further.
The trouble, you will doubtless point out, is that the brain is not a simple thing to control. Unless this idea can be translated into more concrete terms which anyone can put into practice in their day-to-day life, we might as well forget the whole thing. Just stop reading for five minutes to observe your mind and you will know how it functions. If you are an average individual you will notice that your mind triggers a series of thoughts based on previously stored memories or in response to the immediate external stimuli. In fact, most of our day-to-day activities are accompanied by uncontrolled - or at best partially controlled - thoughts in the brain triggered constantly by the environment and memories. Try drinking a cup of coffee thinking only about that cup of coffee. The chances are that, you will fail miserably; your thoughts will roam all over and will cover subjects quite disconnected with the cup of coffee in hand. Similarly, when we brush our teeth, take our bath, read our newspaper, say our prayers, write the important draft which the boss wanted, in all these actions we only involve a part of our brain. The rest of it is having a free ride thinking whatever it wants. Most of the time, these are low intensity, mildly diverging thoughts which does not cause any harm; so we indulgingly tolerate this poisonous habit of distraction. But every once in a while, the uncontrolled part of the brain, viz. the mind, gets stuck at a powerful thought current and repeatedly shoots it forth disturbing the other orderly part completely. And we feel miserable.
Where does the mind find so much of material to produce such a constant background noise of random thoughts ? It gets it from the vast storehouse of impressions and memories locked up in our brain. Usually, every action we perform and every thought which we think leaves a trace in our brain. These traces are constantly collected, co-ordinated and stored in the memory. As the bulk of information to be stored increases, layers of them are pushed down to a subconscious terrain over which we normally have no conscious access. But I am sure you have dreamt in your sleep about people and places of which you have no conscious recollection. In other words, the uncontrolled part of the brain, which we have called the mind, retains access to those pieces of information stored in the subconscious, even though the controlled part, the intellect, couldn't use it. It is this subconscious storehouse of Impressions which propels the mind.
We are thus led to the basic theoretical principle: The peace can be achieved by killing the mind and eliminating the stored impressions in the brain on which the mind thrives on. Note there is no such thing as `peaceful mind'; if you have a mind, you can't be peaceful! The conventional techniques of meditation attempt to do this along the following lines. One is told to provide something for the conscious mind to chew on and keep the mind at it. Once certain degree of concentration is achieved one tries to sink into a state of quietness by removing the original material given to chew on. For example, one may be given a mantra to chant on; as the chanting goes on, at some stage one could halt it abruptly. the time gap between the last chant and the moment when the first stray thought enters again will be a state of quietness. If this time gap can be increased with practice, one eventually can eliminate the chatter. Alternatively, one can try to chant the mantra more and more slowly with larger and larger gaps making sure that no stray thought enters in between. these gaps - as they become longer - will help to reduce chatter. Some tantric and Buddhist systems use the breath as a clutch to concentrate on; prayers etc are yet another means to provide the conscious mind with something to chew on.