‘THE ROOT OF ALL SUFFERING IS DESIRE ‘ – Gautam Buddha

2500 years have passed since this saying of Gautam Buddha, but neither sorrow nor desires end.  We need a strong desire to end all our desires. The truth is that, some  desire will always exist. If we had this strong determination to control our desires then we could easily put an end to all sorrows in our life. The question is that do we have the mental strength or motivation to end the constant desires of our life. The sorrows and problems that are around us, are such that 90 percent of them are not acting on us directly, but we are so weak and susceptible that we allow situations around us and the perceptions of people to influence us, even when there is no reason or justification. Sometimes when people around us say something about  a certain topic, it might not concern our life or work directly but we believe that whatever the person is saying is right and it related to us. Our life starts to change according to what other people say. In order to avoid this situation we have to develop a Belief system in ourself. In order to remain happy we have to develop our self esteem. We have to give importance to ourself. This does not mean that we have to be obstinate and maintain that whatever we are saying is correct. We have to think practically and rationally and let our actions follow suit.

Tricks for Tackling Problems

Acceptance

If we learn to easily accept small things in our life, over which we have no control, we would be in a happier state of mind. In India, there is a tough competition for admissions to IIT’s which have only 10,000 seats compared to 1 million aspirants who appear every year. Candidates who are unable to get admissions in the these reputed institutions are disheartened, even though there are others options, like NIT’s and Private Engineering colleges. If these candidates accept the fact that they have missed out on the opportunity just because of the less amount of effort and talent, they could have been much happier and their lives would have been much better. In Physics, Newton’s law of motion states that ‘ Action and reaction are equivalent in proportion.’ Similarly the work and the efforts we put in our life gives us results accordingly. This applies to majorly all aspects of life.

Avoid Constant Comparing and Criticizing Others

One of the major causes of sorrow, is not what we have in our life but what others have. A perfect example is of a person who is driving a car since 4-5 years, but all of a sudden he feels that his car has become old when his colleague buys a new car. Similarly, if  you buy an uncommon dress and you wear it and go to a party, where you see someone wearing the same dress you lose all your enthusiasm. This constant desire to be unique or uncommon is also a cause of sorrow in life. One needs to understand  that you cannot be a part of competition all your life. Competition is not a destination or an end, it is a way or means . Whichever competition, we are a part of has to end one day, it cannot go on forever. If we have no target or competition, life becomes dull and monotonous. We have made it a habit of staying in competition with others. If we are behind others we are sorrowful, if we are ahead of others our entire energy is spent in ridiculing them.

Genuine Causes of Sorrow in our Life

Losing our near and dear ones causes grief , permanent physical disability causes grief , extreme poverty causes grief and people who are extremely busy at work all day long  are sorrowful. The decline of  Moghul Empire was because emperor Aurangzeb failed to delegate responsibility which caused problems. In order to reduce stress in our life, we should pay someone to do our unproductive work, so that our happiness quotient increases.

The gist of the topic is that if we analyze the situation we will find that most of the sorrows are not sorrows at all. They are the result of our perception, our interpretation of the situation. Most of the sorrows are very trivial. We are habituated to having grief in our life. Its not a question whether there is sorrow or not in our life, the question is that how we handle that sorrow, so that our mental and emotional strength increases and the grief and sorrow is resolved. We should adopt an easy ,comfortable, spontaneous and natural way of thinking and living in life.