Re: it's a beautiful world

It is a beautiful world for me—not you…

The view one has of the world is selectively subjective.

It has been said that the world is illusion. And this whole illusion exists around you because you have not learned one basic thing— that of being alone, being free of attachments, your attachment to things and to others.

By attachments it is meant relationships that really don’t exist, only you believe that they exist. For example: you are a husband—you believe that a certain relationship exists between you and your wife, but it is just a belief. Living with a woman for forty, fifty years, there is a side of her you may never know, she just may remain a stranger, and you remain a stranger to her? Then suddenly the day comes, she wants to be with someone else. The illusion, the belief, is shattered. The expected turns into the unexpected—frustration results and misery.

You cling to the wife, you cling to the husband, to the children, to the parents, to the friends. You cling to person, to things, and everything is in constant flux. The wife falls in love with somebody else—you are frustrated. The husband escapes—you are frustrated. The child dies—you are frustrated. The bank fails, goes bankrupt—you are frustrated. The body becomes ill, weak, death starts knocking at the door—you are frustrated. But these frustrations are because of your expectations. And only you are responsible for them.

Relationship is just a make-believe. It helps. It helps in a way. It allows us to feel that we are not alone. It makes life a little more comfortable, but that comfort is illusory. The other remains the other, and there is no way to penetrate the mystery of the other. We only meet on the periphery, we nevery meet heart to heart. It is not is not possible. We are alone. This is the reality of the situation.

All relationship is just an absurd effort, because you cannot reach the other, you cannot touch the center of the other’s being. And unless you have touched the center, how can you relate? But the dream, the desire, is created, one clings to it, one becomes attached to the belief that it is real.

When your happiness depends on others, your unhappiness also will depend on others. If you are happy because a woman loves you, you will be unhappy if she does not love you.  If you are happy for a reason whatsoever, then any day that reason is not there, you will become unhappy.

This is the normal situation for worldly type people. The way they live their lives is dependent on others, on what others’ opinions are of them. It is a life which depends on relationships. This dependence on relationship and one can never feel really blissful. Because depending on others is a bondage. One can never really be free. Blissfulness is possible only in total, unconditional freedom.
In the East this freedom is called moksha. Moksha means absolute freedom. To be with oneself is moksha because now you don’t depend. Your happiness is simply your own, you don’t borrow it from anybody. And nobody can take it away.

The way out is only through knowing where desires, attachment, having dreams of futue lead to - misery.  That nothing is yours, nothing can be possessed. That in this life nothing is permanent. That you are here for just a short while. That it is not possible to make a permanent home here. This understanding comes by finding this out through one's own experience, not through belief, not by obtaining that information from someone else. The moment when you come to know this for your own self, then desiring simply drops, because you know where it takes you to.

You can be in the home, you can be with your wife and your children, but be aware that nothing belongs to you; remain alert that you don’t fall into attachment; remain alert that if things change you are ready to accept the change, that you will not weep for the spilt milk, that you will not cry, that you will not go crazy or mad.
(With excerpts from THE DISCIPLINE OF TRANSCENDENCE VOL. 1 Discourse #3)