I notice a strange phenomenon where a person accepts that he has very limited exposure and yet is adamant about not growing. We can see it all around in individuals and communities. Such people will find hundreds of reasons not to grow and will try to pull down others as well in relationships with them out of sheer insecurities. They have a number of arguments about continuing to behave like that.
I was trying to find an answer to this question that was troubling me for quite some time. Then I recalled the lectures of Shri S N Goenka ji which I listened to during the Vipassana camps. I remember at one place he mentioned that Buddha said that there are 4 types of people in this world. The first one travels from light to light. These people understand the temporariness of the material world and since childhood, they carry this understanding and live accordingly. They explore this world while being in the human body do not get attached to it and always remain free. The second kind of people are traveling from darkness to light. These people are born without much awareness of their true self, however, as they live life, they work on themselves and start gaining insights into their inner and outer world.
The third type of people travel from light to darkness. They are born with an awareness of reality, but while living in this world, they get fixated on one or the other thing that attracts them. This becomes the cause of their sorrow and grief. The last type of people travel from darkness to darkness. They never understand the reality throughout their lives and never make an effort to understand the reality of whatever pains they go through.
Probably, if the people who are traveling from darkness to darkness, or light to darkness, get material possessions or powers of support or pleasures, they get fixated on them. They become greedy like the person who wants to kill the hen laying golden eggs. It appears to me that awareness is like a habit. We clean our homes every day. If we do not clean every day, there will be dust and dirt in our homes because the dust and dirt are coming from multiple sources. We can't stop dirt and dust from entering our homes, but we clean them every day so as to remove the unwanted elements. Similarly, we can not close our minds to the outside world. Till we live in society, so many impurities and filthy thoughts will keep touching us. In the world of WhatsApp and social media, information and thoughts travel very fast and reach us instantly. However, we can stay aware and keep cleaning our minds of dirt and dust.
However, cleaning the home requires a basic level of intelligence to understand what dirt and dust are to be thrown out of the home and what is to be held back. If some person is not aware, while brooming the home, he will throw away the precious jewels at home and keep the dirt and dust inside. That is what people traveling from light to darkness and darkness to darkness keep doing for the whole of their lives. The biggest logical fallacy they carry in their minds is that the whole of society is doing that. They fail to see what this accumulation of dirt and dust is doing to them. It is making them sick. These thoughts are making them restless and they want to get engaged in more and more of such thoughts. They like the company of the people with a similar mindset. They keep talking over the sickening thoughts for hours and keep becoming more anxious.
Any sane person living with them will say that they should not accumulate the dirt and dirt for their own benefit. However, they do not listen to such advice. It is because of the reason that they have never developed the wisdom to see what is dirt and what is precious stone. In a society that promotes the accumulation of dirt and dirt and the people who have accumulated the most of that are the biggest celebrities, it is quite difficult for sanity to prevail. However, common sense demands that if we are constantly falling ill, we will examine the reason for falling ill to realize soon that it is the dust and dirt that is making us sick. Similarly, if somebody has constant anxiety and stress, one needs to examine the fixations and thoughts one has accumulated in one's mind. Common sense demands that it is time for deep cleaning and to make our homes clean again to live a healthy and happy life.
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