If India had a one-child
policy like China, I would never have existed. If my parents had a two-children
policy, I wouldn’t have existed either. I was their third child. The nirvana of
non-existence was not to be mine.
I always
imagine nirvana as non-existence. The Buddha too meant that, I’m quite sure.
What else can ‘non-self’ and ‘emptiness’ mean? If nirvana is indeed the end of
all desires and feelings and illusions, as the Buddha saw it, then it has to be
as good an existence as a stone’s. Which is as good as non-existence. When you
don’t know that you exist, do you exist? Ask the stone and wait for the
response. [That is one route to nirvana, I assure you.]
If nirvana is
non-existence (the end of the self), then it logically follows that non-existence
is the ideal form of existence. The next best is the stone’s existence. No
desires, feelings and illusions. Animals must rank one step higher than human
beings since they have no illusions though they have desires and feelings.
Human beings are the most unfortunate.
No wonder poet
Whitman wanted to “turn and
live with animals.” Animals are so placid and contented, he thought. They don’t
sweat and whine about their condition, do not lie awake in the dark and weep
for their sins, sicken other creatures with theology or ideology, and so on.
Whitman
longed for nirvana too, I’m sure. Like most other enlightened people, he must
have known the superiority of non-existence over existence. Like the key to a
happy family is for there not to be a family, as Julian Barnes put it. Or at
least, not one living together.
Barnes was another
enlightened being. He said we are all damaged creatures. Damaged from birth. “How
could we not,” he asked, “except in a world of perfect parents, siblings,
neighbours, companions?” They all necessarily damage us and we damage others
and so it goes on. That is how life is.
Nirvana is the
ultimate escape from all damages.
I sit under
my mango tree with a cool evening breeze stoking the enlightenment that
emanates gently from the whisky I had just sipped.
Hari Om
ReplyDeleteAs a Scot, I cannot condemn a man for taking a dram... but I can tell him that nirvana is definitely not to be found in it! Oblivion, perhaps, for a brief spell. Then the world returns. YAM xx
Of course. 😊
DeleteIt was at the fifth line from top when I realised how much I've missed reading your posts. "The nirvana of non-existence was not to be mine." I read it a couple of times. It made me smile.
ReplyDeleteReading this post has had the kind of effect reading Hermann Hesse's Sidhartha had on me. Only if. I wonder and sigh. But all these human desires pull me back. Stones are fortunate, indeed.
Religion has always disturbed me, Arti. I gave it up long ago but it keeps haunting me. Once in a while, I exorcise myself like this - by writing.
Delete