The Seven empty clouds
This is almost certainly the most important article of the website. Because this article is going to face, and then try to answer, the most important question of our lives: How should we live? (You will understand the meaning of the title at the end of the article...)
In our world these days, there has been a phenomenal increase in the amount of information that we are surrounded with. In earlier times, in centuries gone by, society was an organised order with masses divided into established classifications. Knowledge was the exclusive property of a confined group, while labour was the sole duty of a large chunk of the population. But now, the world is an altogether different place. Now our planet is a turbulent place. Because of unprecedented progress of science and technology, and a previously unimagined expansion of the mankind’s sphere of knowledge, the boundaries have melted. And the advent of internet in the second last decade of the last century and its succeeding boom has truly made the world a swirling mass of information.
Now, let’s see this from the perspective of our topic of discussion. We were asking ourselves: How should we live our lives? Now, people have different views in regard to this. And different views mean contradictions. Contradictions about the purpose of life have always existed throughout the civilized history of mankind. Today also, these contradictions exist. The only difference today is in the sheer amount of the contradictions, which is simply overwhelming.
Today, if you go on internet, and run a search on personal development, you get 116,000,000 results. Yeah, you read it right. And if you type life purpose, you get 313,000,000 results. Each equally tempting. And if you go out in the world, and try to talk to people about this, each one of them is going to put forward his/her own personal view.(Sometimes, people put forward their views even if you don’t ask them...free-advisers, you know...)And the thing is- everyone is damn sure that he/she is right. And he/she is the only person who is right. And then you are left confused, because everyone is speaking with quite a lot of self-confidence! Everyone is pretending to be an authority. This often leaves the individual stranded, weighted down by the sheer diversity of the so called advises.
I used to think on this. I used to think if everyone’s view is really that different from each other, or if there is an underlying unity. I used to think if these seemingly overwhelming numbers of views could be systematically categorized. If we can tear through the complexity to arrive at the fundamental simplicity.
Well, as it turned out, the answer is yes. We can.
How the different views aren’t really that different...
We learn in science that though there are numerous forms of energy in the universe, nuclear energy, chemical energy, thermal energy, steam energy etc, the number of fundamental forces in the universe is limited. If one really has an analytical look at it, chemical energy is, in fact, potential energy, because it’s stored energy. In the same manner, steam energy is kinetic energy. And so on.
The same is the case with views. Basically, there are just a limited number of views. But everyone expresses the same thing in different words, in different manners. Hence we, at first, think that everyone has got his/her own random view. But if we distil the people to their bare beliefs, we see that the world isn’t really that random. We see that, fundamentally, there are just four types of people in the world. Just four. And hence, as a conclusion, there are just four types of views in the world, because same people will have same views.
That’s the truth- overwhelmingly simplified.
Have a look at the below pic, which virtually explains the four types of people, and their views.
(You can click on the image to enlarge)
Everyone is searching for the same thing and finding it in different places....
At surface, it appears as if everyone wants different things. It appears as if the pleasure seekers want fun, entertainment, enjoyment etc; the dignity seekers want a life aligned with values plus they want to be respectable citizens of the society; the legacy seekers want to do great work and do something to advance our race forward; and the truth seekers want to gain insight in the true nature of our life.
But then, after going a bit deep, we make an observation that even though it appears that everyone wants different things, that’s not true. At all. Everyone wants the same thing.
And that thing is called sense of meaning.
The pleasure seeker runs after fun, entertainment etc because that’s meaningful to him. Sitting at home and doing some work is, according to him, a meaningless pursuit.
The dignity seeker finds his meaning in a life that’s lived on sound time-tested principles and a life which gets respect from the society.
The legacy seekers find their meaning in doing genius-level work; in leaving their mark behind.
The truth seekers discover their meaning in spending their time to know and experience the ultimate reality.
So, there you are. Everyone wants the same thing- meaning. But everyone finds that meaning in different things. So, are they all correct? Nope, they aren’t.
The pleasure-seekers and the dignity-seekers are never going to find that sense of meaning, because they are looking in all the wrong directions.
Here is how.
A word to the pleasure-seeker: My friend, you try to find meaning in enjoyment. And the bad thing is: enjoyment does offer a fleeting sense of meaning. You feel good, you feel happy, and you feel satisfied. But for how long does that sense of happiness, that sense of satisfaction remains? Not for long, as you know. Suppose that you eat a chocolate. Now, eating one chocolate is enough? No. You enjoyed the chocolate while it lasted, and when it finished, you wanted another one. And then another one. So you didn’t really find any real happiness in eating that thing, because real happiness can’t be that temporary.
So you are never going to find real happiness in enjoyment. Enjoyment is unreal and short-term happiness, while happiness is real and long-term enjoyment. (Read that line thrice.) So, if you try to find meaning in enjoyment, you are not going to find it. Because it simply isn’t there.
A word to the dignity-seeker: Well, wanting a balanced, conservative life isn’t a bad thing. But the trouble starts when you want to get respect from the society. Can the society give you respect? NO. NOT AT ALL. This world of ours has a very bad reputation for ridiculing breakthrough ideas, for having a very cynical attitude towards life. Always remember that legends were mocked at initially. J.K Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was turned down by twelve publishers (the poor fellows now must be regretting it like anything...) before it was finally accepted by Bloomsbury. Michael Jordan wasn’t selected for his high school basketball team. Thomas Edison was pronounced an idiot by his teacher. The list is endless. I remember Napoleon Hill, who, in this matter, said, “Mob laughs at what it cannot understand, ridicules at what it cannot comprehend.”
Now, the above mentioned people always valued their own self-worth. They didn’t let the net public opinion become their personal opinion. If they would have accepted the views of others, they wouldn’t have been they.
So, my dear dignity-seeker! Don’t ask for respect from the society. It may give you respect today, and take it way tomorrow. If you will attach a sense of meaning to the reverence that you get from the society, that sense of meaning will fly out of the window when that crowd admiration fades. You gotta respect your own self.
Initially, we started out with the question- How should we live our lives? Now, we have discussed the fundamental four life views. Pleasure seeking, dignity and respect seeking, legacy seeking, and truth seeking. And above, we have ruled out two of the views.
So that leaves us with two more. Legacy seeking and truth seeking.
Let’s have a look at them.
Now, basically, these two life views are pretty similar. The legacy seeker says: If I have come in this world, then let’s create some value and do enduring work. Let’s leave a legacy that outlives me. The truth seeker says: If I have come in this world, then let’s delve deep and try to solve the enigmas of life. This entire world is of ephemeral nature, everything keeps on changing. What is that one, unchanging truth? What is the ultimate reality? That’s what I should aim to find out.
Both these people’s views revolved around the idea, “If I have come in this world...” I would neither rule out any of these as wrong nor would I propagate that only one of them is correct. These two views aren’t extremes. They don’t contradict. Rather, they are progressions towards the perfection that we all are aiming for.
I think that it gets important to mention here that I cannot, by any means, provide you with an absolutely idealistic way of life. Nor can anyone. Life is an enigma, a mystery, an experiment. Even Mahatma Gandhi called his autobiography “THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH.” He said a few times that his life consisted of nothing but those experiments. So life isn’t a problem that you solve in the beginning. Rather, it’s a riddle that has to be lived through, and then tried to be unravelled.
That much said, it always helps when we put things in perspective. And that’s exactly what I am doing here. I am trying to put some clarity on this subject of life. So, now let’s come back on the topic of discussion. I said that legacy seeking and truth seeking don’t really contradict. Steve Jobs lived in an Ashrama during his early years. He was a truth seeker. And then, he went on to establish the world’s biggest company, and made Apple a symbol of hotly innovative products. He had become a legacy seeker. Another example is Vivekananda. He left his home, and did hard spiritual austerities under the guidance of Ramakrishna. He was a Truth/God seeker; he had no plans of going and changing the world. He wanted to remain absorbed in his quest for discovering the ultimate reality of the universe. But then, because of a series of events, he was propelled onto the world platform, and he burst upon the global scene like a bomb. He almost single-handedly revived the fading glory of his motherland; and through his unmatched eloquence (Englishmen admitted that Vivekananda’s English was way better than theirs), propagated the timeless spiritual truths to the whole world. Further on, he established a philanthropic organisation, which is today the most respected philanthropic organisation in the country, which runs the best schools in the nation and spends over a billion dollars in its activities every year. Yeah, I am talking about the Ramakrishna Mission established by Vivekananda. He started as a seeker of truth, and then went ahead to leave a legacy that would inspire the world for untold millenniums.
So legacy seeking and truth seeking aren’t polar opposites. We can strike a compromise, and take the middle road. And that’s what we are goanna do.
Both these views have some core principles, which I have noted below in the classic flowchart manner. Go through them, and then we conclude.
(You can click on the image to enlarge)
At surface, it appears as if everyone wants different things. It appears as if the pleasure seekers want fun, entertainment, enjoyment etc; the dignity seekers want a life aligned with values plus they want to be respectable citizens of the society; the legacy seekers want to do great work and do something to advance our race forward; and the truth seekers want to gain insight in the true nature of our life.
But then, after going a bit deep, we make an observation that even though it appears that everyone wants different things, that’s not true. At all. Everyone wants the same thing.
And that thing is called sense of meaning.
The pleasure seeker runs after fun, entertainment etc because that’s meaningful to him. Sitting at home and doing some work is, according to him, a meaningless pursuit.
The dignity seeker finds his meaning in a life that’s lived on sound time-tested principles and a life which gets respect from the society.
The legacy seekers find their meaning in doing genius-level work; in leaving their mark behind.
The truth seekers discover their meaning in spending their time to know and experience the ultimate reality.
So, there you are. Everyone wants the same thing- meaning. But everyone finds that meaning in different things. So, are they all correct? Nope, they aren’t.
The pleasure-seekers and the dignity-seekers are never going to find that sense of meaning, because they are looking in all the wrong directions.
Here is how.
A word to the pleasure-seeker: My friend, you try to find meaning in enjoyment. And the bad thing is: enjoyment does offer a fleeting sense of meaning. You feel good, you feel happy, and you feel satisfied. But for how long does that sense of happiness, that sense of satisfaction remains? Not for long, as you know. Suppose that you eat a chocolate. Now, eating one chocolate is enough? No. You enjoyed the chocolate while it lasted, and when it finished, you wanted another one. And then another one. So you didn’t really find any real happiness in eating that thing, because real happiness can’t be that temporary.
So you are never going to find real happiness in enjoyment. Enjoyment is unreal and short-term happiness, while happiness is real and long-term enjoyment. (Read that line thrice.) So, if you try to find meaning in enjoyment, you are not going to find it. Because it simply isn’t there.
A word to the dignity-seeker: Well, wanting a balanced, conservative life isn’t a bad thing. But the trouble starts when you want to get respect from the society. Can the society give you respect? NO. NOT AT ALL. This world of ours has a very bad reputation for ridiculing breakthrough ideas, for having a very cynical attitude towards life. Always remember that legends were mocked at initially. J.K Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was turned down by twelve publishers (the poor fellows now must be regretting it like anything...) before it was finally accepted by Bloomsbury. Michael Jordan wasn’t selected for his high school basketball team. Thomas Edison was pronounced an idiot by his teacher. The list is endless. I remember Napoleon Hill, who, in this matter, said, “Mob laughs at what it cannot understand, ridicules at what it cannot comprehend.”
Now, the above mentioned people always valued their own self-worth. They didn’t let the net public opinion become their personal opinion. If they would have accepted the views of others, they wouldn’t have been they.
So, my dear dignity-seeker! Don’t ask for respect from the society. It may give you respect today, and take it way tomorrow. If you will attach a sense of meaning to the reverence that you get from the society, that sense of meaning will fly out of the window when that crowd admiration fades. You gotta respect your own self.
Initially, we started out with the question- How should we live our lives? Now, we have discussed the fundamental four life views. Pleasure seeking, dignity and respect seeking, legacy seeking, and truth seeking. And above, we have ruled out two of the views.
So that leaves us with two more. Legacy seeking and truth seeking.
Let’s have a look at them.
Now, basically, these two life views are pretty similar. The legacy seeker says: If I have come in this world, then let’s create some value and do enduring work. Let’s leave a legacy that outlives me. The truth seeker says: If I have come in this world, then let’s delve deep and try to solve the enigmas of life. This entire world is of ephemeral nature, everything keeps on changing. What is that one, unchanging truth? What is the ultimate reality? That’s what I should aim to find out.
Both these people’s views revolved around the idea, “If I have come in this world...” I would neither rule out any of these as wrong nor would I propagate that only one of them is correct. These two views aren’t extremes. They don’t contradict. Rather, they are progressions towards the perfection that we all are aiming for.
I think that it gets important to mention here that I cannot, by any means, provide you with an absolutely idealistic way of life. Nor can anyone. Life is an enigma, a mystery, an experiment. Even Mahatma Gandhi called his autobiography “THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH.” He said a few times that his life consisted of nothing but those experiments. So life isn’t a problem that you solve in the beginning. Rather, it’s a riddle that has to be lived through, and then tried to be unravelled.
That much said, it always helps when we put things in perspective. And that’s exactly what I am doing here. I am trying to put some clarity on this subject of life. So, now let’s come back on the topic of discussion. I said that legacy seeking and truth seeking don’t really contradict. Steve Jobs lived in an Ashrama during his early years. He was a truth seeker. And then, he went on to establish the world’s biggest company, and made Apple a symbol of hotly innovative products. He had become a legacy seeker. Another example is Vivekananda. He left his home, and did hard spiritual austerities under the guidance of Ramakrishna. He was a Truth/God seeker; he had no plans of going and changing the world. He wanted to remain absorbed in his quest for discovering the ultimate reality of the universe. But then, because of a series of events, he was propelled onto the world platform, and he burst upon the global scene like a bomb. He almost single-handedly revived the fading glory of his motherland; and through his unmatched eloquence (Englishmen admitted that Vivekananda’s English was way better than theirs), propagated the timeless spiritual truths to the whole world. Further on, he established a philanthropic organisation, which is today the most respected philanthropic organisation in the country, which runs the best schools in the nation and spends over a billion dollars in its activities every year. Yeah, I am talking about the Ramakrishna Mission established by Vivekananda. He started as a seeker of truth, and then went ahead to leave a legacy that would inspire the world for untold millenniums.
So legacy seeking and truth seeking aren’t polar opposites. We can strike a compromise, and take the middle road. And that’s what we are goanna do.
Both these views have some core principles, which I have noted below in the classic flowchart manner. Go through them, and then we conclude.
(You can click on the image to enlarge)
Conclusion
After a discussion that has lasted two thousand words, we finally conclude the topic. Above, I have given the core principles of legacy seekers and truth seekers. And now, below, there is the final summarizing flowchart.
On the left side, we have the core principles of legacy seekers, and on the right side, principles of truth seekers are noted. In the middle, there are 7 empty clouds.
And that's the surprise.
Wanna know why I left those clouds empty? Well, how can I decide your life principles?Neither I can, nor can anyone else. You will have to decide your own life principles. So you first take a print out of the above flowchart, and then, taking hints from left and from right, fill out those 7 principles with which you would love to live your life.
After you have filled the 7 clouds of principles, I would strongly suggest that you view the paper every night before going to sleep and every morning after waking up. This way, your decided principles will be imbibed in your subconscious, and before you realize it, the dreamed ideals of a few weeks before will become your magnificent reality, elevating you to greater heights of achievements, and more importantly, peace.
After you have filled the 7 clouds of principles, I would strongly suggest that you view the paper every night before going to sleep and every morning after waking up. This way, your decided principles will be imbibed in your subconscious, and before you realize it, the dreamed ideals of a few weeks before will become your magnificent reality, elevating you to greater heights of achievements, and more importantly, peace.