The Secret to a Better Life

Is there any one thing, which if we do, we will have a better future?

I would say "Yes, there is".

BE STILL! Do nothing!

Essentially, we are all spiritual beings, who are here for a reason. We are given a chance to live life in a manner that benefits us and others.

As we see, each one of us experiences life differently, based on our past experiences, our past acts done out of anger, humility, love, greed and so on.

But, because of our limited knowledge of the universe and its workings, we are happy during good times and during bad times complain that God is being cruel to us for no fault of ours.

What we fail to realize is that whatever experiences that we are going through in our life, it is all the result of an accumulation of past activities; ours, our ancestors and our society. It has been called many names from ancient times, but for the sake of better understanding, we will call it Causal action.

The Buddha Story

You must have heard about this story about the Buddha. He used to go about the village everyday, seeking food from the residents. People used to give him food, while some desisted. But, there was one household, where the master of the house scolded him for begging for alms when he was hale and healthy. Why can't you go and do work? He rained the choicest abuses upon him. All the while, the Buddha maintained his silence. And, when the abuses stopped, he went on to the next household.

The next day, he went to the same households again and in this particular house, the master got even more angry and hurled more abuses seeing the Buddha again.

This happened every day for the next few days. The abuses became feebler as the days passed by, until one day, when this person asked the Buddha, "When I abuse you, you are not responding and talking back and not even trying to offer an answer. Are you not angry?". The answer the Buddha gave was "When you offer me something, it becomes mine, only when I take it from you. I have not accepted any of the abuses that you offered me during the past few days. They remain with you."

This is a profound incident, which should offer us some understanding of how the Universe works and how enlightened souls respond to stimuli.

The Secret of Life

There is another aspect to this which I would add here. The Buddha was shouted at by the householder, because of his past actions. At the time, the Buddha did the right thing of not responding to the householder, because that would mean that he is creating another "causal action", which would result in further responses on his life.

We are just looking at one single incident here. There may be umpteen such incidents that will happen in our entire life. When we stop reacting aggressively to all that is happening that is causing us distress in our life, we reduce the "accumulated causal action" from our debt and hence our later life would be better than it is right now.

So, there you are, with the most important secret to our life;

In short, BE STILL! DO NOT REACT AND TAKE LIFE AS IT COMES!

No, this does not mean that we do nothing. What it means is that we do all the things that we do everyday, while refraining from doing things that adversely affect others, while at the same time, not reacting to bad things that happen to us.

What has to happen, happens, will happen. We would do well not to turn the tiles again, to make it happen, again!!!

Here is a tidbit to go.

Our actions result in positive or negative impact on other beings around us. These will be recorded for and against us for the future. It is also called the spiritual bank balance, as opposed to our material bank balance. The material bank balance, we cannot carry forward to the next life. But, the spiritual bank balance, we can.

As an example, if you have made a billion in cash in your lifetime, donate half of it in the benefit of the society and nature. You would have then saved by instant transfer, for your next life.

Good luck to you all!

Btw, What is Luck anyway? Let us discuss that elsewhere.