Creative Writing – The Bliss Of Acceptance

The planes contact with the ground woke me from my semi-conscious state and I looked most anxiously, to lift up where I was. We had fin totallyy landed, and I felt life flow congest into my limbs as I stretched in my seat. A gentle murmur go up as the plane slowed devour, and the reassuring sound of the pilot echoed through the plane. Ladies and gentlemen, we run through now arrived in Delhi, the temperature is a pleasant forty three degrees with clear skies, and local sequence is four fifteen PM. Stewardesses strutted up and down isles collecting litter, and passengers began to abscond from the plane.As I lifted myself to my feet, hush in a half(prenominal) alert state from jetlag-induced fatigue, I stumbled into the sunshine outside. The down(p) monger dazzled my agitated eyes, and I grumbled to myself in irritation. The scorching acerb sun was already upon me, burning my unconditi adeptd skin in a similar sort to a magnifying glass burning an ant. Hours followed as we compile bags showed passports and performed countless other tasks that made me want to curl up on the floor and lapse into hibernation. Whether I was in Delhi or London, I was still exhausted and rumptankerous.Finally we managed to regain our car, and, as I had suspected, a desire trip hundreds of miles upwards to Northern India followed. On our journey, my irritation began to crumble. The first colonisation we stopped at, where I could appreciate the scenery, was coterminous the Punjab, in a coarse area. The village itself looked primitive and simplistic, with buildings partially finished, abandoned with no roofs or waterproofing, same(p) an unwanted animal abandoned on the street. Poverty reigned rampant, and incoherent languages deluge towards me. We drew nearer to the village market, passing by unsavoury sounding beggars and lone children.An old man peered at me through a half developed cataract, before falling into a coughing fit. The world around me seemed dismal. In a split moment, my impression changed. Just as the runoff washes dirt from its path, so my notions about India changed. We turned the corner into the market square, and were met with a blissful scene a crowded square full of laughing, yelling and commotion stall owners bellowing at the top of their voices to advertise their unspoileds, and amidst the gleeful chaos young children scuttled around like playful insects.A fatty variety of vivid colours met my eye in the form of blood-red apples, striking yellow bananas and earthy brown yams. Countless fruits held my gaze, which I had never known before. The poor no longer seemed menacing a half smile on their face was notice suitable, as if they were simply quelled by the atmosphere. Everyone around me seemed happy and the first question that I asked myself was, why? put up in London for a moment, the answer arrived. A grey sky enveloped the urban center, and people trudged in their various directions, minding their own busin esses and keeping themselves to themselves.After dungeon in my home for ten long time, there were still people on my street I didnt know. However, the main question I was posed, which was how could people with elfin money, health care, and a low standard of lifespan be happier than those living in a modernised world with excessive amounts of money and a high standard of living? The sad answer was, that we appear to meet forgotten how to obtain mirth. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher living around three hundred BC, spent much of his life finding out what was required to obtain accredited happiness.A well-known phrase of his is The human soul is as material and mortal as the human body. To live a skilful life, is to exercise prudence and to venerate life through stimulating the senses, subjecting oneself to indifference and scientific study. Later, however, he concluded that to obtain true happiness one must hire a number of things. Friends, a frugal lifestyle, time and thoug ht were all considered prerequisites for happiness. Visualising the crowded metropolis of London in my mind, attempt to ignore the shouting of the stall keepers intent on making me steal their spinach, I felt that we had all these.What was it that these people had that we did not? This question remained on my mind throughout my trip in India through the bustle of the city in Jalundar the peaceful tranquillity in the village the faint sounds of gunshots near Kashmir even during the humorous incident of seeing a man podgy in the middle of a field only feet away from a road. Sitting back at home in London comprehend to the gentle drumming of the rain, I contemplated why it was so hard for the western sandwich man to gain happiness. Like the correct document finally beingness found in a stack of papers, I finally produced the answer.A Chan (Zen) Buddhist once said Humans are afflicted with all external forms of life we are subject to life and death, pleasure and pain, enjoy and fe ar, good and nefariousness, beautiful and ugly. We tend to sway, or strive towards one side, and deny its opposite. There is no real escape of one or the other, merely we somehow believe that sooner or later, we testament be able to conquer the other side if we stay focused long enough. The solid ground the average man in the West could not find happiness lies in acceptance.Driven relentlessly by the Capitalist machine, we are continuously told we must improve, do better, get promoted, find a better job, or save for the latest electronic gadget. The real obstacle in the way of happiness was an excess of opportunity in the West, which in turn sows the seeds in mens mind that they gage achieve better all the time, difference only a handful of people who achieve their goal, and reject the nap of the spoiled harvest of the population who are scarred with depression and left field with an empty feeling in life that they have achieved nothing.It could be said that pain is meaty for pleasure, if pleasure is to be known as pleasure. If we did not know of evil in the world, then how would we be able to distinguish good? defensive bank bill of one of these extremes is similar to denying the existence of both. If we believe that evil gitnot exist, or that we can block it from our lives, then good cannot exist, because then there is nothing to measure it against. However, if we accept that both good and evil exist in our lives, it can allow us to feel more at home in the world, perhaps obtaining happiness.Looking back to India as evidence for this, I remembered an invade with a family of peasants. The husband of the family was a peasant, working for the richer men as a farmer, constantly toiling at the fields every day with no hope of extra pay or advancement in his job. The wife of the family took care of their four children, all destined for the same lifestyle, in what some(prenominal) would call an endless, and pointless cycle. However, far from pityin g them, I envied them.They were contented with their lives they make enough money to live under a roof with comely food and drink. The end result of this was that they were happy they had no ambitions to gain wealth, and were satisfied with their lot. To be truly happy we must not linger in the past, or hypothesise about the future, but live life for the moment, and enjoy its small pleasures. By losing the foresight of the future, or hindsight in the past, we open up that world of acceptance. Some people will steal because they see that they have something more in their future.Some people will perform good deeds because they desire to feel better about themselves. In this confederacy, we can never truly be completely happy. From our first few years of life we have ambitions to decide what we will be when we grow up, and how we will choose to live our lives. Without these ambitions society would, unfortunately, not function correctly no one would have any motivation to do well at their jobs and get promoted, as the idea of a Marxist/Communist society shows.It seems to me the human population has dug itself into a pit where the light of true happiness is growing more and more remote as we get the picture further and further down. There will always be, even in the mind of a Buddhist monk or Christian nun, a growing desire to gain something else, no matter what it may be. This, I conclude, makes it impossible for anyone in the modern 21st Century to gain the status of Buddha, or The Enlightened, or Blissful One.