Simple Living High Thinking

I think that this phrase is often quoted with respect to people who are respected in society for their higher qualities. The words we hear are What a great person is so and so and yet see how simply he lives his life. This suggests that greatness in thought does not go along with simplicity in living. 

If I were to ask randomly individuals how do they define Simple Living the answers will vary with most persons in terms of weather simple living is seen as austerity,uncomplicated relationships or even passive existence. Similarly High Thinking the answers will vary too. It may mean scholarly intellectual thought, value driven thinking or even type of thinking when one is high on spirits. 

So in my quest to make sense of this phrase I searched the origin of this quotation if any. The name of Mahatma Gandhi came on top and the Bhagavad Gita. I wonder weather it was the Google algorithm related to my browsing history that created this. On a deeper dive this was a saying from the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda. 

Experientially speaking our generation who were born in the sixties and lived through the seventies and eighties to the present day have seen it all from simple lives with scarcity of resources like basic food, water, cooking gas, basic telephones cars etc. to the present day. This was a forced austerity and justified by our socialist frame of leadership where a poor nation was told by it's leadership to sacrifice for the greater common good and profiteering was considered a bad word. We lived in protected markets where Indian manufacturers not subjected to competition were allowed to dish out substandard stuff. Our reaction was to covet foreign returned individuals with shiny goods and look forward to acquiring them by getting smuggled goods or evading customs. Our simple living was mostly a sham. 

However, till 1992 when the market reforms opened the door for competition and foreign goods we got choices like never before. The rise of the middle class along with higher disposable incomes led to the proliferation of malls and shopping centers designed to attract and dazzle the customers. Advertising and nudging people to buy today as though there was no tomorrow became the raison d'etre of living. The mantra became Acquire and Enjoy. Instead of buying and acquiring based on our need we catered to our greed. This spilled over to all walks of life and the obsession to get more and more and feeding our desires became a way of life. Instant gratification became an addiction and this led to a constant state of agitation. We were worried about our past and anxious about our future. 

The ladder of desire has been written about in the Bhagavad Gita Chapter II 

When you keep thinking about sense objects,
Attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire,
The lust of possession which, when thwarted,
Burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgment
And robs you of the power to learn from
Past mistakes. Lost is the discriminative
Faculty, and your life is utter waste.

But when you move amidst the world of sense
From both attachment and aversion freed,
There comes the peace in which all sorrows end,
And you live in the wisdom of the Self.

Now is there a choice? Must we give up everything and retire and become hermits or live in this world and earn money for a good comfortable life. The answer is a resounding "No". 

So the solution is to buy to satisfy one's need and not one's greed. While we all have our basic needs like food water clothing which are essential to life along with basic shelters and other things like phones computers televisions musical devices books and wifi. The list of things which we possess for our greed and which we use occasionally or mot at all are there for all of us to see. So if you use your discrimination as alluded in the further verse of Chapter II the answer to this conundrum is evident. 

What is now the concept of High Thinking? This is the power to use your discriminative faculties and choose carefully between need and greed and chose that which gives you mental peace. Hard that it may sound this is not impossible. We need to use our consciousness and if a certain thing is dictated by a mimetic desire ( I want it because he or she has it, even though I can live without it) then overcome that desire by activating your consciousness. This can be done by the knowledge that we are one and nothing in the world belongs to me the body-mind-intellect entity. 

Shreyas and Preyas are two Sanskrit words which need explanation. Shreyas is that which is good for the Atman and Preyas is that which pleases the Senses. If we have to choose we must choose Shreyas over Preyas. So in life at all times we have to make a choice between that which gives us perennial joy and the things which give passing pleasure. We intuitively know this yet get sucked into indulging in passing pleasure. So we choose to eat junk food avoid satvik food, we choose extra sleep over morning walk, fancy attire over simple comfortable clothes, high heels over ordinary flat shoes, loud raucous music over quiet soothing music, pulp fiction over classic books. We can go on and on and the answers seem obvious but yet like like bees attracted to the honey pot we run towards the passing pleasures of life and live wasteful life. 

In Indian philosophy Kama desires are not taboo nor is acquisition of Artha or wealth but they have to be within the framework of an ethical approach of Dharma (defined as obedience to the unenforceable rules of living). This approach leads to the true definition Higher Thinking. 

We can go on and on about High Thinking but let us not be under any illusion that this is easy to emulate or practice. However, remembering Shreyas and Preyas and writing a purpose of life statement are steps recommended to take steps in the right direction.

Vispi Jokhi