“While those enlightened will most likely still encounter unpleasantness and pain, such experiences cause them no misery. A person who does not crave cannot suffer.”
Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens
I’m very late to the party but decided to finally read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, it’s definitely lived up to expectations. Whilst I enjoy the history in the book, I love the way that Harari reflects on what has happened, drawing comparisons to our lives today. There are many aspects of the book I could talk about but one which was surprisingly enthralling was a chapter on religion and specifically “The Law of Nature.” in this section the main topic was buddhism which was something I knew of but did not understand. Here’s my summary of this fascinating section of the book.
People pursure wealth and power, aquire possessions and build houses and palaces, although, nobody is ever content. Everyone is constantly in the pursuit of more; more money, fame, land, nobody is every satisfied. Harari says “Life is a pointless rat race. But how to escape it?” where he begins to introduce buddhist philosophy.
Everybody seems to suffer, but “suffering is not caused by ill fortune, by social injustice, or by divine whims. Rather, suffering is caused by the behaviour patterns of one’s own mind.”
The story goes that Guatama, the person who became known as Buddha had an insight which shows that “no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction.” These cravings may not seem obvious but I can see how they are ever present in our lives, when we experience something uncomfortable, we crave it to go away, when we experience something pleasant, we crave it to stay, thus, no matter what emotions we feel, we are always in a state of tension, as Harari puts it “the mind is always dissatisfied and restless.” This is the feeling of always having things flying around your head: ideas, worries, random thoughts, the feeling of your mind being clouded.
The route out of this state of unrest is proposed to understand that things simply are as they are, and if you accept that, there is no craving, thus, no suffering. The part which got me hooked was the following lines
“If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind”
This really resonated with me because I do very much feel as though we should all experience the full range of emotions and a lack of any one can be harmful, but there becomes a point where the worry or ‘craving’ for the emotions to come or go can also be harmful. This notion of being able to experiencing your emotions and not wishing for them to stay or go longer than they will is fascinating to me and what I think we should all strive for.
Its clearly not easy to get to this point of observing your emotions and being at peace with them but the buddhist belief is that meditation is the path out of craving. I have been meditating on and off for a while now and have noticed myself not getting swept up in my mind as much as I have in the past; stopping to notice whats actually going on in the world rather than what I’m creating in my mind.
There are many different types of meditation but I have been doing mindfulness meditation which has permeated western society more than any other. All this entails is sitting down and focussing on the breath, or other sensation. I’ve been using Sam Harris’ ‘Waking Up’ app which has been amazing in guiding and teaching me about meditation.
Follow this link for a free month trial of the Waking Up app.
Harrison Hansford 