The Art of Living

The art of living is not just following the pattern,

Which is a repetition, day and night, all along with our life,

Of the struggle to meet the never-ending demands

Of our body and mind;

The struggle, which is born out of the duality

Wherein we may find it either necessary or desirable

To identify divisions in everything that we come across,

Is, perhaps, mistaken for the living to be natural;

Have we ever asked, “why at all we must struggle?”

One who desires to be in harmony might ask one day

But, there is a duality created by then;

The pursuit of one thing would create its opposite

As long as we are unaware of the words of opposites,

And we do not know that the word is not a thing;

In the pursuit of something, however pleasurable or noble,

There must be a struggle of some sort

As there is a movement of the mind away from its fact;

So, can we ask, instead, “can we not see the fact as it is?”

And then there may arise the spark of wisdom

Since the mind cannot escape from the fact now

But can only stay with it for understanding totally;

The cessation of any movement away from the fact

Must gather all the energy needed for the enquiry

About whether it is possible for one to live

Without a struggle of any sort;

The art of living may then find its meaning in the act

Of understanding of the very possibility of such a living,

Which must be a constant enquiry all along with one’s life;

An enquiry about how to live without a struggle

Is mere an idea or an ideal one would try to follow,

But, an idea or an ideal cannot be a fact

And hence, the act of following an idea

Must imply the act of escaping from facing the fact.