Our University’s burgeoning Yik Yak feed rarely fails to intrigue me: hysterical jokes, umpteen SpongeBob references and generic adages overflow. One post in particular caught my eye last week: “Don’t let success determine your happiness, but instead let your happiness determine your success.”
This Yak, almost certainly a rip off from a Tumblr post or Reddit thread, mused on a fundamental question that I see many students at Duke grappling with. How does one find peace and happiness? The prototypical student walks the line between depression and hyper-functionality regularly, a state of mind the structure of society we operate in requires.
The prevalent approach to the emotional states of happiness and pleasure, or the lack thereof, speaks volumes about our culture: we bottle up pleasure and joy into our schedule, functioning with the belief that we must keep working harder and longer to achieve goals that we convince ourselves we want. A believable “theory of the universe” is needed, lest we remain players in the game of life called, in Hindu mythology, Maya or “the all consuming illusion.”
If “life” as we know it is a mere set of games that you play, is receiving results and finally dying going to equate to a human experience? This setup of functioning that we follow, and the subsequent depression that comes about when one overworks, or even overthinks, is reminiscent of the problem addressed in the four Noble Truths, maxims expounded by enlightened Sidhartha.
“All life is suffering,” Gautama Buddha begins. He refers to unhappiness as dukkha, whose closest English translation is unhappiness, but the actual significance of the term alludes to transient things as well, such as ephemeral happiness and impulsive desires. This dukkha also encompasses dependence on other things or people for your own happiness. Essentially, most notions that occupy disproportionate amounts of our time are central concepts of dukkha, or suffering. Buddha’s first sermon after enlightenment makes it clear that the principal chain of linkage between all kinds of dukkha is their inability to leave us satiated, or truly content.
It’s an intensely fatalistic notion to begin one’s fundamental teachings with, and the Buddha proceeds to highlight where this dukkha originates. There’s a beautiful euphony among various sects of Eastern religious thought: Mahayana Buddhism, Tao, Hinduism and other geographically scattered schools of thought arrive at a harmonious belief in letting go of desires and constructs. The rest of the Four Noble Truths trace the path from an egoistic existence to an enlightened one, an enlightenment that comes about with the realization that our belief in petty notions of the self and desire are in fact a grand illusion: what the Hindu texts refer to as Maya, the divine magic that fools sentient beings into buying into the illusions of desire.
From Yik Yak to central axioms of Buddhism and Hinduism in 150 words seems like quite a jump. However, this avenue of discussion is relevant because it effectively encompasses everything. These are questions everyone has asked themselves in times of existential woe: is all worth and pleasure obtained by external desires and objects? Various Western interpreters of Eastern thought have chimed in over the past century, highlighting the vast benefits of finding the oneness of individual atman (consciousness) with the Bhraman (soul) through realization and sacrifice.
When Hippocrates, arguably one of the most valuable figures in the history of medicine, said, “the physician treats, but nature heals,” he truly meant it. Esoteric translations of these texts have revealed an immense understanding of spirituality and consciousness. When most of these ancient texts were first discovered, people interpreted them in the exoteric sense, coming to the conclusion that volumes upon volumes of these works highlighted the superstitious rituals and practices of Hindu and Buddhist sages.
Be it Duke or beyond, there’s a worrying psychological pattern. It’s a worrying pattern that the Duke chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has recently actively begun registering and trying to fix. It’s a great initiative, and to me, it seems like ancient texts and religious ideas can aid in helping us understand what it means and what it entails to be human. Like the timeless task of fitting and bending into shapes society lets you take, the contrarian pursuit of widening your mind and tapping into the vast reservoir of consciousness that is Brahman requires a crucial but fundamental switch in decision making. The moment one-steps out of the self-imposed, limited decision structures available, the possibilities for self-understanding are unfathomable.
The last thing I want to come across as is preachy; I’m a student who is just finding himself lost in ancient texts and the truth that resonates within them: I believe everyone should give these timeless works a read at some point in their lives.
I spoke to my grandmother on the phone last week, an occasion that now unfortunately occurs once in a blue moon. She, the owner of one of the oldest bookshops in India, automatically asked me what I've been reading, to which I responded hesitantly, "The Upanishads.” My grandmother responded enthusiastically, “which translation, beta?" Her interest in this stemmed from the fact that she majored in Sanskrit, the Indian language most epics was written in, in college. She ended up recommending translations of most Hindu epics, mentioning how she’d read the Upanishads recently and was awestruck by the sense of perspective it had obtained in her life. This is arguably the biggest testament to the perennial relevance of these texts.
Madhav Dutt is a Trinity sophomore.
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