Tag: spirtuality

Consent

Consent. The big argument. Yet, we are thrown in this world without consent. To suffer without consent. Emotionally. Physically. Psychologically. Financially. Socially. Suffer. Till last breath. Without consent. And then there are threats after death. Threats of eternal suffering. But where is the consent? Would you have consented to born in this world, if asked? Have you seen a 3-year old crying with pain in a hospital? Have you seen severe pain on an innocent face? Have you imagined a sexually abused 5-year old being stitched? Have you seen kids born with major health issues? Heart surgery at the age of 2? Dialysis at 10? Have you seen someone finding Operation Theatre in a public hospital with a bleeding girl in hands? Have you seen a son taking his unconscious mother on his shoulders from ambulance to stretcher? Have you seen people taking dead body out of the emergency room? Suffering emotionally and hurt financially and broken potentially. Have you seen the ordeal of people praying outside the ICU or CCU? Have you observed people lined outside emergency counter in public hospitals, while their loved ones bleeding on an stretcher in scorching heat? Have you seen pain in the eys of your kid? Or your mother? Or your father? Or a stranger? Have you stared into such eyes? Have you seen a very familiar gaze – like of your mother – looking at you for one last time? Getting stranger by passing time? Dying with all the unfullfiled wishes? And… have you seen request / plea for death? Verbally / non-verbally? People consenting to die? People trying to die? Wishing to die? Praying to die? ‘You don’t know Jack’ perhaps. I do. And I agree with him. But not allowed. Misery is allowed, freedom isn’t. Painful beats are allowed, free absence isn’t. Killing is allowed too in certain cases, suicide isn’t. Suicide is also allowed in certain cases, if benefiting a king or a barren land or a gory war. However, there is no concept of consent in nature. Not at all. Nowhere. A tiger kills any animal he wishes. One has the power to drill his teeth while the other is only born to be eaten alive. Nothing is consented. Except pain and suffering. We want the weak ones to give consent to the powerful ones. Isn’t diat / qisas consent? From the miserable to the powerful? Freedom denied. Suffering legalized. Questions and questions. Without solutions. Right? Read again. There is no solution. Because there is no consent. Or you can denounce. Denounce everything. That exists and that doesn’t. Maybe then you will see a light at the end of this miserable tunnel of being. Or maybe that will lead to another tunnel. Who knows? Were neither asked nor told. Post Script: Schopenhauer believed that the only way to avoid suffering is not to be born at all. For him, death was the only way to peace. Nietzsche tilted from Schopenhauer’s philosophy and blamed suffering to religion. Like Marx. But Marx mentioned it as an ‘opium’ too to ease the pain for the masses. But this way or that way – you suffer without consent.

Things I Don’t Need

I have a wish to never drive or sit in a limousine. It surely sounds absurd or epic or perhaps lunatic, but to be honest, the answer to this question is as simple as the title of this blog. I will quote Aristotle here, who once said that there are thousands of things in this world that I don’t need.

Today, the whole world is about media and information technology. They are loaded with advertisements trying to convert our needs into wants; and thus making us the most miserable creature on earth.

The miserable and unsatisfied expression on the face of a homeless man can also be seen on faces of billion dollar gurus of “corporatocracy”.

This rising misery within all of us is mainly because we are taught and fed with lies of not-needed-wants daily. During my professional education, none of my teachers were impressed with lives and living styles of Prophet PBUH, Edhi, Rumi, Bhudda, Kafka, Tolstoy, Mansur, etc. All were fans of Steve Jobs, Gates, Mittal, Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet. We were mostly taught how to make money, and never about spirituality. We were taught to avail opportunities, without moral or ethical considerations.

We sometimes run into someone different during life moments. It is said that we can have tens of teachers but only 3 to 4 mentors. One of my mentors, who happened to be the only spiritual teacher in my professional education, focused more on teachings of Ibn-e-Khaldun, Karl Marx and sufism. Being a teacher of a professional business course, he never emphasized on making money, accumulating furniture, carrying handheld devices, buying cars, attires, formalities, or being artificially smart and unbeaten by plea.

But, with around forty materialistic teachers and one spiritualistic, I turned out to be more of a machine. The biggest problem that Pakistan, perhaps the whole world, is currently facing is the problem of being someone else; like being famous without doing anything, having heavy bank balance without working physically and being recognized for someone else’s work. Unfortunately.

Answer to this dilemma is simple: having patience, being conscientious, living within limits, understanding the cycle of life, reading regularly…

We need to shift focus. There are beggars and there are advertisements on the billboards at a road signal.

We simply have to change the seeing and thinking attitude and change in preferences will follow.

I have been in problem that I have mentioned above, but I am not the solution that I have described above. I am working on it. You have to pin your own bubble of wants yourself. Only then you will realize there are billions of things in this world you don’t need.