A Journey Through Nothingness...

Nothing in the world can take away from a man, who has nothing; Nothing in the world can hurt a man who wants nothing. I thought about the plight of a multi millionaire man resting on his death bed. If riches is what could fetch one happiness, he must have lived a life of the happiest man in the world. Today, this is the notion of happiness amongst everyday people - you and me. An everyday person often mistakes excitement for happiness. To be able to fetch your favorite ice-cream, winning a few hundred dollar lottery or meeting your favorite person are various forms of excitement. This feeling brings the mind of an everyday person to it's highest emotional peak. Similarly, there is a lowest emotional peak - fear. Then what happiness really is? Some say it's contentment or satisfaction. Some say that happiness is stability of mind. For me, happiness is nothingness - to be able to stick to nothingness in adverse everyday situations. And that is the path of cultivation - our practice of Falun Dafa.

Our conventional thinking about our materialistic attachments is the biggest hurdle to our cultivation practice of body and mind. As a new practitioner, I wonder how many of us can really stay away from our materialistic thoughts while performing the Falun Gong exercises. Oh! my friend owes a thousand rupees to me, I haven't paid my electricity bill yet; when is the due date? My neighbor has got a new car; I wish to buy a better one than him! I must rush home after the exercises lest I would be late for office. Although you think that you are practicing cultivation, the mind is cultivating evil deep within. But to say, we are still practicing cultivation. And we know that cultivation is good. Isn't this contradicting somewhere? Definitely, this is evil cultivation. With a mind filled with various kinds of attachments, it is very difficult to practice nothingness and cultivation.

In order to be a practitioner in the real sense, one must be very loosely connected to our possessions. Thinking too much about our possessions create an evil called attachment. There are various forms of attachments which will restrict your growth in the course of cultivation practice. Attachments need not always bear a monetary value. Feelings like jealousy, anger, hatred and even love is a form of attachment. Being attached to the human society, one is bound to gather various feelings, relationships and materialistic possessions. In our Falun Dafa, one is permitted to possess riches and materialistic properties. If a practitioner gives away everything, he won't be any different from a monk or a sanyasi. We are permitted to carry and manage our money and possessions since we are still practicing amongst everyday people. The crux is how lightly we take and pursue interpersonal conflicts, preferences of self interest and our attachments.

The path of cultivation is good and difficult at the same time. Good and bad is relative in the dimension of everyday people. What one person thinks good might be bad from the perspective of another everyday person. Similarly, what one thinks bad might be good from the perspective of another everyday person. So far our thoughts and actions comply with Zen-Shan-Ren (Truth, Benevolence and Forbearance) which are the characteristics of the universe, it can be termed as good. Cultivating mind and body is by adopting righteous thoughts and conforming to these characteristics of the universe. The path of cultivation passes through nothingness and for a everyday person, this seems to be the most difficult thing to do. The higher a man progresses through his path of cultivation, the closer he is to the truth of the universe.

Accolades: This post was chosen as the Best Post from the Indian Blogosphere by BlogAdda - their topmost pick on 26th February, 2011

Who : Neeraj Shinde
What : A Journey Through Nothingness…
Spicy : Neeraj informs us about the journey of nothingness through the path of cultivation, a practice of Falun Dafa. In today’s world we are too much attached to our materialistic things. The practice of Falun Dafa is about being loosely connected to those things. Get closer to the truth of the universe through Neeraj’s post!