Take a break. Stop everything or anything you are doing or going to do now. Just sit in a quiet place. Be comfortable. You can settle in a chair, a sofa or even lie down on your bed. Close your eyes, but don’t sleep. Think. Ask yourself, ‘What is the purpose of my life? What do I want from this life? Do sensual pleasures keep me happy forever? Don’t I long for more and more and more? Am I able to avoid the pain and suffering that always accompany my pursuit of power, money and pleasure throughout my life? How can I really avoid pain and suffering? Is there a way out? What is true happiness? What is the message of Buddha, the Enlightened One, and how does it help me in my life? Can I really find the same kind of awakening that frees me from this compulsive pursuit of sensual pleasures that ultimately subjects me to untold pain and suffering? How do I go about finding it anyway?
To find answers, go read the Buddha’s story and see if you have the same spirit in you, the same urge for peace and for the true happiness that implies freedom from suffering and pain. The Buddha story is not long or tedious, unless you want it to be. It is not a fable. It is a true story of a prince of a Himalayan kingdom. It happened over 2,500 years ago, long before the history of the Prophet Muhammad and even long before Jesus Christ was born. It also gave birth to a new non-theistic religion, and more than that, a new philosophy of life that you, like many others, can adopt or adapt with considerable benefit, without sacrificing any of your own religious beliefs.
Prince Siddhartha, son of King Suddhodhana of Kapilavastu (a kingdom that existed on the present border between India and Nepal) lived a life of abundance, pleasure and palatial luxuries, well protected from the outside world (where the common man experienced misery and poverty, pain and suffering, sickness and death), until he was thirty years old. One night, however, he renounced the claim to succeed his father, his possessions and all his relatives, including his beautiful young wife, who was fast asleep with his newborn child. of him next to him. That night, he set out on his journey to discover outer life and inner light. After leading a frugal life, practicing intense meditation and self-mortification, sometimes depriving himself of any food, he realized that the best way to achieve enlightenment was not in a life of luxury or in a life of extreme deprivation, but to take a middle path. . He became the Buddha, the Fully Enlightened One.
While you crave sensual pleasures, or your egoism influences your way of thinking and determines the goals of your life, you only run after a mirage of happiness. If you want peace of mind instead of turmoil, physical rejuvenation instead of exhaustion, spiritual enrichment instead of impoverishment, resist your rampant temptations and stifle your selfishness. Calm your anger, greed, jealousy and other negative emotions. Put yourself to render a disinterested service and learn to be content.
Practice meditation. Extract the inner riches, instead of sighing for external pleasures. Discover the land of eternal pleasure and endless happiness that is deep within you, and when love and compassion adorn your personality, you will not experience any misery, pain or suffering. Then you will have unraveled the Buddha that lies in you.