masterwordsmith-unplugged

The following post is by Biz, a blog reader, who kindly shared this post in a comment HERE. May it inspire you in many ways! Carpe diem!

Once Confucius had a student who seem to complain about everything and anything. Then one day while passing through a graveyard he called this student up and asked him to look at the graveyard. "Those people there have no more problems."

In the movie "Dead Poet Society" the teacher in trying to convince his students not to throw away their life in frivolity called the class togather round the portraits of some of the great men that had graduated from that school. A hush fell over the group and he asked them to listen intensely as to what these men were saying. When the silence was pregnant with anticipation the teacher gently whispered "Carpe Diem"…"Carpe Diem" – "Seize the day". And he ended by saying that those great men are now "feeding the daffodils."

We live in or perhaps trapped in the world of our own making. Our own mundane and selfish concerns often filled our day. We often think that all these will bring us happiness. We strive for attention, to look pretty, to behave appropriately, to struggle for the next promotion and often stabbing others in the back to get at it etc.

When our precious little world is threatened or some how dented by the presence of another we do all we could to either diminish or remove the perceived threat. So we resort to rumour mongering, creative reframing of who the person is, add a little mud on the other person’s character etc. and we walk away feeling high and mighty. In so doing we actually deny ourselves the opportunity to really know the person and in the process grow from it. We are comforted by the little prison that we create for ourselves.

Carpe Diem – can only take place if we learn to grow beyond our delusions. It is within these delusions that we conjure up images of the people we relate to. We never really relate with another, not even our lover – a person that we had chosen to unite body, mind and spirit. What we relate to is our images of the person. The way we respond to sensory objects(including our mind objects) all depend on what we hold of the events and persons within our own mind. If it is someone we like it brought about a smile. If it is someone we despise we become upset and filled with ill-will.

Some times when we realised that the person approaching wasn’t whom we had expected we felt silly. We are all caught up in a emotional roller-coaster of our own making and think that we are actually sane and is able to hold all of these together.

In short our relationship with another is a relationship with our delusional images within our own mindstream. And these had been formed from our experiences, conditioning, past life, upbringing etc.

To truly seize the day we have to go beyond our delusions otherwise we would again be deluding ourselves that we had really lived a meaningful and useful life. The will to meaning is so strong within our own psyche that psychologists are convinced that it is a path towards happiness and mental well-being. Again these are social trappings and disguises that we create to dress up the prison of our mind.

When we truly seize the day our whole consciousness, our whole being is totally immersed in it. It has no meaning nor does it seek meaning. In seeking the day is lost, in getting we snuffed the life out of it. It is like trying to catch a bird and our life is needlessly consumed in the process. And when we managed to catch it, we would have snuffed out the life of the bird. In catching, flight is lost and we can only saviour the empty shell of a bird. And to us this is meaning and happiness.

Can we go about our day without meaning or purpose ?

Seize the day or before long we will all be feeding the daffodils as well.

*Thank you, Biz, for taking the time and trouble to share your thoughts with us here.