Live Free or Die! Have you heard that slogan for the US State of New Hampshire? People in New Hampshire are independent-minded have this libertarian streak if you will. They don’t want too much interference from the government in their lives. If you think about it, most of us want to live free. We want to be able to make our own decisions and do what we think is best for us.
But are we really living freely? Most times, we are tied to the so-called eight worldly winds: Pleasure & Pain, Gain & Loss, Praise & Blame, Fame & Disrepute. Think about it, almost every decision that we make is either to avoid the negative winds or to attract the positive winds. Let’s take pleasure and pain for example. We all want pleasure from any activity that we engage in. What we don’t realize is that pleasure is transitory. When the winds shift, pain replaces pleasure. What gives pleasure at the moment may inflict pain at some other time. I have often talked about the pizza example that is so appropriate here. Say you love pizza. Eating pizza gives you pleasure. But if you keep eating that pizza beyond your capacity, you will eventually throw up. The same pizza that brought pleasure can inflict pain. It is certainly not the pizza that gives us pleasure. Sadhguru always says that “pain and pleasure are within us”. It is so true. What does that mean you may ask? It means that the experience of pleasure and pain comes from our minds. It is our mind that interprets something to be pleasurable or painful. Pizza itself from its own side is neither pleasurable nor painful.
Let’s talk about the next set of worldly winds: gain and loss. If we get elated by gains, we will be hurt as much by the losses. As we all know, it is a cyclical world. What goes up must come down and if we are too excited when we are going up we will be really in pain when it comes down. My dad always says to remember there is always Sunday after Saturday. What does that mean? It means, not all days are going to be as comfortable as you are enjoying right now. Just be mindful and not get overly excited when things are going your way.
The next set of worldly winds are praise and blame. We all like when people praise us or our work. But with praise, we should be prepared for criticism also. If we are all pumped up when someone praises us, we will be equally disappointed when someone criticizes our work. It is natural to think that not everyone is going to praise us or our work. It is just not possible. Let’s make sure we stay even kill when praise comes our way and that will help us stay even kill when the blame is assigned to us.
The last set of worldly winds are fame and disrepute. Everyone wants to be famous in this social media culture of ours. We live by likes and dislikes on social media. But if the fame puts on top then we must be prepared for disrepute that may show up someday. In the age of social media, that is very easy, unfortunately. Remember that saying that goes the higher you climb, the deeper you drop? If the fame brings you on top of your world, the disrepute will drop you to the bottom.
Why do I talk about all this? This ties back to the equanimity discussion we had in the past. When the worldly winds of pleasure, gain, fame and praise are blowing our ways; we need to learn to be equanimous and not let that boost our ego too much. That will prevent us from falling hard when the winds shift towards pain, loss, disrepute, and blame. That is what is most important. If we can do that, we will be truly living free and not be slaves to worldly winds.