Everyone has heard about Buddha. If not everyone, I hope you have heard about him. Siddhartha Gautam, more commonly known as Buddha was born as a prince of small kingdom located in modern day Nepal. All the stories about him being the pioneer of Buddhism are out in the open.But sometimes I wonder. He was a prince, soon to be the king. Why did he leave his home to find peace out in the world? I did leave my home too but I am still not Buddha. Being a prince, Buddha had everything he could wish for. His father, the king was very protective of him and did not want him to see the real world where there was pain. So much protective that he built a small city where only young, happy faces were living.

After he grew up and when his father felt, he does not need to be overly protective anymore, Buddha went out to the other cities. There he saw pain and suffering for the first time. Diseases, deaths, old people, people crying for their dead ones; all these he was seeing for the first time. He asked his driver and his father what had happened to those people, why were they crying and how can he make it all go away? He did not get the answer he was hoping he would get. Everyone said he could not make those pain go away and it is the process of life. You are born, you age and eventually you die. He could not comprehend that. He wanted to find answer, he wanted to find the cure. But, all the wealth, power and a whole kingdom. All you could ask for but he could not find what he was looking for. So, one day he decides to leave everything, his wife, new born son, family and the kingdom to go out and find the truth.

Now, he was not a prince any more. Eventually he became one homeless, hungry guy who was surviving by begging, living in a forest and meditating. He hit the rock bottom and realized he had nothing to loose. Because he had nothing to loose, he found out that he does not have any thing to cling on. After meditating on that for a long time, he found all the sufferings in human life is because of attachment. Once he was not attached to physical possessions, he could also detach himself from other attachments like attachment with fear of death, fear of loosing something or someone. He felt all his burden taken away. That does not mean we have to give up everything we have and start living in woods meditating. While meditating is a good habit to start with letting go of stuff is also a trait we would like to develop. Start with small stuff, build on that everyday until one day you realize you do not have to anymore. Buddha realized the same thing and he started living a non attachment based life. And that is the cue to more fulfilling life.

Easy to say! As smooth as it sounds, its hard to let go. Especially of the one that are close to us, with whom or what we are attached to. Fear of loosing something has always worried us. These days with the increase of materialistic thing, the fear has increased too. More stuff to buy, more stuff to loose. That attachment to materialistic possessions make us unable to let go of many other possessions, even non materialistic like worries and fear. I am not saying one should not fear but, one should not worry about that fear. The time we spend on worrying is worth more than that. One way to be present at the moment or work on worrying less is by being mindful.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is so simple but yet so difficult concept for us. Especially because there are millions of things that could take our attention. Our brain has a lot more things to think about now than ever. Focusing myself at the present and not being disturbed by random news is something that I have been struggling with, for quite sometime now. Mindfulness helps me come back to where I want to be. What to do to become mindful? There’s not three steps to that. It is not about what to do to be mindful. You do not have to do anything to be mindful or achieve mindfulness. You do what you are doing or what you want to do and stay there with that task. And if you do not have anything to do, stay with your breath. Breathe! Feel it how it goes in through your nose, how cold it is when it goes in and how warm it is when it comes out. Lets say, I like to play games in my phone. I am playing and at the same time I am thinking about my assignment that I have to submit soon. Now, I am neither enjoying playing the game nor doing the assignment. See how I got caught up in between. If you want to do the assignment, get up and start. If right now you do not want to do the assignment, you want to play game, then just play. Maybe give yourself a time schedule to play. Lets say, from 7 pm to 9 pm I am going to play games. And at that time just play game. Put your worries aside and just play game. One after another we do the same in everything we do. Find something you like to do and do it with full presence.

Sometimes I like to find anchor that keeps me in the present, and when ever I feel I am lost in my head with my thoughts I recognize it and try to get back to my anchor. It can be anything a plant in your room, your window, the person sitting in front of you. Mine is usually my breathing. So lets try that and see if it works.

Love,

Prabin Shrestha