That, my friend, is easier said than done.
As a child, I used to start conversations with perfect strangers, as I am doing with you now. Rikshawallas, street grocers, canteen cooks at school, and fellow travelers on bus trips were all fair game. I developed a technique — start with a nice comment and a question and grow the conversation. I would tell tales of these exchanges, and my relatives (at the other end of the bus trip) would call me a little philosopher. It was not to be.
Things changed in my teenage years. I spent more time with my father’s side of the family, most of whom were obsessed with property disputes. This constant theme in the background became a part of me. How does the sanitation engineer tolerate those smells? The polite term is olfactory fatigue. I had the same problem. By the time I was a young adult, I had become a money-grubber. Even worse, since I had no actual money or property, I was suspicious of those who did. They aptly called me a budding communist.
By the time I graduated in my early twenties and started my first real job, I knew the golden rules: Having money was power, having to ask for it was a weakness, and having lots of it was insurance. As a young adult with a paycheck, I seldom bought nice things. I ate the cheapest food, wore the cheapest clothes, and lived in the cheapest apartments my wife would tolerate. I did not have the stomach to invest in stocks because I worried they might lose value. I made six figures but bought old broken-down stuff in thrift stores (I still do). The thought of a vacation was terrifying. What if they realized that I was dispensable? I felt worthless.
After my daughter Arya was born with an unfortunate developmental disability, I stumbled further. My extended family was overflowing with medical professionals, which usually made me feel safe. However, in Arya’s case, medical science and money both appeared powerless. I felt cheated and blamed my misery on every target imaginable. I spared no one, myself most of all.
My response was to double down on my bad habits. I worked ruthlessly, drowned my miserable body in junk food and drink, and binged on Netflix. As my health declined, so did my faculties and my patience. The work became tedious, and colleagues became intolerable. With life slipping away, I was at the doors of Dante’s inferno, consumed with fear and very tired. The doctors told me that if nothing changed, I would get a stroke or a heart attack within a matter of years. I felt oddly relieved.
In 2012, I got a green card, and my wife was able to start her first job. I felt old. Perhaps my life was ending and a new life beginning for my wife and children. Perhaps they would be better off in this new world. I started thinking about how I could fade away gracefully. I spent a lot of time with “retirement calculators” on the internet. With two incomes, I convinced myself to end my paranoid workaholism. After all, if I only had years to live, I had to get used to “not working.”
My son Arhant was born around the same time. I wanted to leave him something he would enjoy. A house with a big yard seemed to have more value than a million dollars in the bank. I bought the first house that my wife liked and paid off the mortgage in three years. I could not leave them in debt.
My wife’s career soon started picking up steam. In 2016 I decided to take the plunge. I left my job, started a company, and failed as an entrepreneur. I don’t think I was interested in success. This was just a final item on my bucket list, a last hoorah. Having survived that ordeal too, and still finding myself alive and with nothing to do, I returned to the employment lines.
They say a philosopher must reach a fork in the road to make real progress. In 2019, I finally got my wish. I died in a car crash… or I should have. Driving at 70 mph in my old Toyota on an icy freeway at 5 am, I was run off the road by a larger SUV. The Corolla backflipped and performed an axle jump and a cross roll before slamming into the iron railings on the Lake Washington bridge on I-90. My wife and kids visited me in the hospital. I saw my wife and children framed in the doorway, the bright lights of the ER creating a halo around their hapless faces. We were all caught in the glare of Nietzsche’s dragon, trying to be lions but only managing a whimper. For years, I had imagined a meaningless death. I was now contemplating the meaning of life.
In the next six months, I took time off to recover. I consumed copious amounts of Dharmic texts and ramped up on the latest developments in science and mathematics. I embraced every paradox, interrogated every phenomenon, and questioned every new thought that entered my mind. Over time, I started to see harmful patterns of behavior around me. I rejected the food I was accustomed to, the prescription drugs, and the social media I was lapping up. I rejected every blind ritual and habit. I made time to meditate. Two years later, in 2021, I finally understood that the purpose of suffering is to transcend the Self, to break it down and uncover what lies beyond and below.
In my meditations, I often experience “stories” — first-person experiences from multiple points of view. Through one such story — that of the archer in the castle- I finally understood the central paradox of human existence. The Self is like the archer in the castle who gets glimpses of the world outside through arrowslits. He dare not look too long and far because an enemy projectile could hit him anytime. At night he snatches a glimpse of existence which keeps his hope alive. And while he longs to see more in the light of day, he dares not. Like the archer, the Self is designed to protect the body and mind from disintegration.
Although it seems to hold us back, the Self should be celebrated. Count the number of “I’s” in the words you read in this paragraph, and rejoice! Without the physical and psychological Self — there would be no biological cells, no brains, and no boundary between life and death. Without the Self, there would be no subjective experience of the kind you are having right now. The Universe would be a menu of quantum fields trapped in an endless cycle of fleeting experience — incognate, disjoint, and cursory.
Having said that, one must achieve extraordinary clarity of purpose to transcend the castle walls and see the foundation on which they stand. This I have done. My ideas, stories, experiences, and interpretations will be passed on to my children and perhaps others. Some of you will call me a revisionist or a radical, and others will recognize an original thought. Indeed, I am all those things, and I sympathetically wear your epithets, so I am easy to spot in a crowd.
The Buddha taught us we are bound by suffering and that suffering is caused by desire. The ultimate nightmare of the philosopher is to die before learning the Truth about Life, the Universe, and Everything. It can now be said with confidence that there is no need to worry. I sleep peacefully. And so should you.
