Right from this morning I have been receiving Deepavali greetings in my cell phone and there are quite some in my mail box. I reply with a wish to bring joy, peace and satisfaction in life. Yes, I have never wished health, wealth, and prosperity, because, in my opinion, health is there for ever, for everybody and can only be complicated or destroyed through our ways of thinking, our beliefs about life. Wealth beyond certain level - a level that can easily be compared with your people, the society around you - separates you from realities of life, pushing you more and more into loneliness. Prosperity is, well, purely a state of mind created by comparisons. 'He has prospered well' you say about a person. If that person is of about the age of your son, your statement is in comparison with your son. And if it is about a person of your own age, it comes from your own present status, well, the statement could come from either envy or self pity! So I always wish joy and satisfaction.
You may ask if joy and satisfaction also are not a state of mind. Sure, they too are states of mind. And every state of mind is a creation of the mind. Then why wish joy and satisfaction if they are created states of mind? Why not wish wealth, health and prosperity?, if they too are states of mind!
Answer to this question may not not be as simple as I wish it to be. But I can try.
What do you mean by creation? You study something, observe its appeal or effect on human life and then make some tinkering so as to suit that same thing to the changing circumstances. That process of tinkering you call creation! People around you accept it as a great creation of yours. They either have not at all seen the original or have seen casually, without observing. The original discovery has lost its value; your creation has replaced it. That is what is going on around the world. How many know that Daimler of England who discovered the principle of Four Stroke Internal Combustion Engine before Karl Benz of Germany, died in abject poverty? The latest Audi, BMW or Mercedes models, - creations -are cars all based on this original discovery of four Stroke Internal Combustion Engine.
I still call the original as discovery, not a creation, because the thing was there already in nature; you only identified it. Creation is not possible by human mind simply because mind is a store house of memories - given and experienced - memories and experiences, the basis of the process of learning, acquisition of higher knowledge. A creation cannot be based on memories and experiences, however higher it might be. Creation is absolute, without the least form of influence of anything known.
So, what is the difference between joy and satisfaction in preference to health, wealth and prosperity, when all are created states of mind? In the first place they are actually not creations; they are modifications of existing memories. And it is easier to modify the states of mind regarding health wealth and prosperity than joy and satisfaction. Joy is already there and it is a matter of cleansing it from our acquired ideas about joy. That cleansing job is very difficult! Satisfaction is not at all a feature of mind; it requires a lot of hard work to realise that when mind becomes capable of shunning acquired values, satisfaction of living surfaces.
I could be wrong, or maybe hard to understand, but I only wish all of you pure, uncontaminated joy of life, which itself is total satisfaction of living on this occasion of DEEPAVALI.
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