Simple Pleasures of Life  

By Jayaram V

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We hardly live in the present. What we experience in the present is almost always superimposed by the memories of our past. We cannot experience anything and make sense of it, without labeling it, categorizing it, comparing it or contrasting it. Here comes the most significant existential problem of our lives. We experience reality through our minds and our minds do not perceive reality accurately, as they are subject to many filtering and disruptive mechanisms. Our past is the filter, the accumulated knowledge, through which we experience the current reality. What we experience currently is mostly understood and interpreted in terms of what we already know or what we have already experienced. Hence it is seldom the real reality.

When we live through the windows of our past, there is hardly much scope to enjoy the spontaneity and beauty of life. Jiddu Krishnamurthy, a wise master of modern India, once said something to the effect that there was no true observation if there was an observer. It is true because when we see everything from the colored lenses of our past, there is no actual seeing, but a validation of what we have already seen. He also said that when we looked at something, we were conditioned not to see the thing itself, but invoke a copy of its image stored in our minds and treat it as real.

So, for example, when you see a rose, you actually do not see the rose, but an idea of it or an image of it that is already present in your memory. When one falls in love, one actually does not fall in love with the person, but a glossed over image of that person or an ideal image, which is why when one is in love one hardly sees any flaws in the other person. It is also why human love fades away as quickly as it is formed, once the reality settles in and both sides begin to see each other more clearly and objectively.

We are conditioned to perceive the world this way. It is our normal behavior. It is how we are created and there is little we can do about it, because we to overcome such limitations, we have to use our minds against our minds and that also within the limitations, to which they are subject.