The Misery of Understanding

We all try to Understand – understand life, death, fortunes, misfortunes, people, why something is the way it is and many other things which are important to us. Volumes and volumes of literature have been produced on meaning, purpose and the like. Many movements, ideologies, gurus, cults have promised or attracted a vast stream of followers to help with Understanding – of life, the cosmos, the individual in question and what not. Many historical events, not always peaceful, have been triggered due to misunderstanding (which to me is just a variant of understanding).

Before proceeding further, let me try to define Understanding. I refer to understanding as an attempt to form a coherent mental, emotional, intellectual picture of a phenomena, where in we would know all its aspects, the cause-and-effect relationships, the exceptions if any, such that we can say we ‘know’ it, are ‘comfortable’ with it and generally feel there is nothing that the phenomena has which lends an element of uncertainty to us about it.

Given this, my proposition in this article is as follows –

·        

The very need to Understand (and by corollary, to be understood) is a cause of problems, nay misery.

·         

The need to Understand distorts the core of our existence, in fact often times destroys it

·      

   This need originates and perpetuates an illusory process, from whose grip we struggle to get out, very often unsuccessfully

·        

The purpose of life (I doubt there is one) is Existence, which obviates the need to Understand. I would even go on to say that understanding does not exist, only existence does

Why does the need to understand cause misery?

The attempt to understand can and often times leads to misunderstanding, which causes misery. When we try to understand, it is impossible to always only understand, avoiding misunderstanding completely.

Secondly, understanding can never be complete. The potentialities that normally exist/exercised by us are limited in comparison to the multitude of dimensions of any person or phenomena, leading to at best a partial or limited understanding of it.

I would even go on to say that misunderstanding or limited understanding is very much a part of the understanding continuum, with no clear point of switch over

Why does the need to understand distort the core of our existence?

Simply because Existence has no component of understanding in it! A tree does not try to understand, nor does a bird or a blade of grass. Even a child, who is perhaps the closest to nature that we can see in a human being, does not try to understand anything or anyone, least of all his (or her) mother whose presence and care is so inviolable to his existence. Despite the absence of understanding or the need to understand, children are indeed born every day and they continue to enjoy their childhood. ‘Grown-ups’ on the other hand, at best experience only periodic snapshots of joy

Secondly, when we try to understand, our consciousness shifts to the mental/emotional/intellectual plane which then tend to dominate our being. On the other hand, there are occasions (this happens often when one tries to be in meditation as also in the twilight zone when one tries to slip into sleep from waking state) when this mental chatter or thought process ‘switches off’ and suddenly a whole new world opens up, a world of calm, of sheer existence. Our senses suddenly become more active. We hear sounds hitherto unheard, feel the weather in our skin much more ‘alive-ly’, find the body a lot less ‘stiffer’ with the boundary between itself and the surroundings getting more and more ‘thinner’ and non-existent. We are more ‘alive’,’ deeper’, ‘stiller’. We also realize, all that our mind was trying to grapple with all along is like an optical illusion that suddenly has become null and void (this can be true for even an intense emotion or pain that one may experience at that point in time).

So to be alive, to exist, there is no need to understand anything. On the contrary, trying to understand distorts existence

What is this illusory process that I refer to?

As stated above that the need to understand originates and perpetuates an illusory process, from whose grip we struggle to get out. Yes! There are no questions and therefore no answers in Existence. Questions and answers arise only in our attempt to understand Existence. The origin of questions and the consequent need, nay a malignant desperation, to find an answer is a tragic conspiracy that our minds weave.

Let me explain.

The most potent questions which create tectonic agitations in us, which threaten to declare the whole enterprise of our lives ‘meaningless’ unless answered, simply vanish when we go to sleep! Secondly, if were to maintain a diary of ‘existential questions’ that bother us at various points in time of our lives, we would have evidence to prove to ourselves that what is existential at one point in time is inconsequential very soon. Thirdly, as I have stated above, the moment we try to quieten our mind (or say ‘switch it off’) we realize that not just the questions, but our thoughts, emotions and all that we were experiencing seem to evaporate into nowhere

Therefore doesn’t the very authenticity of the questions come into question?!

Worse, in seeking to find ‘answers’ we go on a desperate search like headless chickens. We read, write, listen, ask, follow, argue and defend ideologies, frameworks, practices and what not, which promise to lessen our agony. Even worse, in our attempt to find answers we encounter words which at first sight seem to help but in reality take us deeper into the cesspool. For example, to answer the question why someone is rich and someone else poor, we may come across words like fate, destiny, sin, etc. We immediately go on a semantic tailspin expending all our energy trying to understand these terms forgetting the fact that they were mere instruments which we came across for our work

Finally, an answer to a question is never final or complete. It only leads to more questions. So a question, non-existent in the first place, sets off a circular chain reaction of questions and answers which have no end. We are left high and dry, akin to a dog trying to catch its tail! Some one seems to be having a good laugh at our expense!

Life is to exist, not to find purpose

(Before saying anything further, I mean ‘to exist’ as being ‘alive’ in the fullness of consciousness and not as being a slothful, passive recipient of what happens to us)

I feel we come into being simply to live. Perhaps our coming into being is itself the achievement of a purpose we cannot know. There is no further purpose or meaning to be extracted from life.

To explain, let me go back to nature – does the tree have a purpose, does the bird have a purpose, other than to just live? Well, one can argue that the purpose of the tree is to produce fruits, but that is a very limited argument, for the tree does a lot more than just bear fruits. For a moment even if we were to accept that bearing a fruit is one of the purposes of the tree, it may be so only to beget another tree, for the cycle of existence to continue. In essence, the underlying purpose (if one were to consider it so), is existence and nothing else

In conclusion, perhaps when we abandon the need to understand, we no more will need any philosophy and life might just become blissful!