How to build life?

Building lives are often the most complicated, most despairing and most confusing of all, as we are often caught in the mire of forces of attachment, which makes us believe that the life and its objects are real. Again, when the forces of attachment are cut asunder by the forces of nature, the objects around which we build our lives crumble, creating chaos and confusion. When the basis of life around which we build our lives crumble, we become desperate. In that state, we begin to seek answers for life. Life has to be altogether built on a new platform which doesn’t crumble or fail. Building such a life would be a huge challenge, as the new basis of life would often conflict with our conventional ideas that we hold. So how to build our life?

How to do it?

We will look at the prerequisites of the new platform upon which life has to be built.

1. Build a life that doesn’t die – The first major failure in life is life itself. Life is slowly ebbing out and we need to find a solution for that. Death takes away everything in our lives, of all our achievements, and of all our relationships with people and society. Therefore, we ought to build a life which defies death. Is it possible not to die? Yes, it is. Death is always a body- phenomena. We need to know that man is more than the body. If we were only the body, then we would be like animals and cannibals, always fighting for survival alone. Death is a limited dimension, but there is an unlimited dimension in man which doesn’t die. The man has to grow from this limited dimension to the unlimited dimension.

Build a life without death

The idea of body is nothing but the forces of attraction which intends, ‘I’, and ‘mine’. The forces of attraction always operate through the senses. All forms of gratification through the senses strengthens the idea of the body. All forms of restraint of the senses reveal the limitless dimension of man. Any sense impression, which intends the idea of enjoyment, must be rejected. In fact, meditation is all about negating sense impressions.

A man meditates only to converge his forces on a higher plane, where the limitless dimension is revealed. Meditation is a tool to reveal this limitless dimension. A man meditates to overcome death. Entertaining the idea of enjoyment and meditating at the same time is incompatible and futile. So the first thing to build a life is to restrain sense impressions, to restrain all the forces of attraction which intend enjoyment, to restrain all senses not to form any sense impressions. This act of restraint must be followed by a meditation process which reveals our infinite dimension.

2. Build a life around non-objects – Most of us build of our lives around objects which are dear to us. The objects are sometimes our loved ones. We work for them for our whole lives. We develop great forces of attraction towards them. We do a great mistake by holding on them to be permanent and forever. Beauty fades, and what appeared once attractive becomes repulsive. Old age creeps it and death overtakes eventually. This is the fate of all of us.

Building life around relationships

Next, we build our lives around our wealth and property. The problem is again the same. They are not going to remain forever. These objects are made of material and they have a life cycle. They are subjected to corrosion and ultimately all objects go down. So How to build our lives?

Those who have developed a great spiritual maturity can altogether shed objects completely, but for those who could not it is better to develop forces of detachment. Forces of detachment don't mean you have to hate your loved ones. You must love and at the same time remain detached. This is little tricky but with practice, it can be achieved. A man is involved in objects and at the same time remains aloof.

3. Build a life on strength – Strength means detachment. A person who is attached is subjected to love, hatred, and anger. By expending our forces on attachment, hatred, and anger, we become weak- physically, mentally and morally. We lose our strength. We must remember that nobody is going to hurt, expect ourselves. Therefore pointing fingers at others is always vain. It shows our helplessness.

Therefore, life has to be built around strength. The body, mind and breath must be tuned to perform at an optimum level. Any deviation in the forces of body, mind and breath is not going to help to achieve our goal.

Build on strength

The key to building our lives lies in not the forces of attachment but in the forces of detachment. Try and build your lives over it, I am sure you will not suffer.

Thank You.

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