Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Do you think, duality is a mystery of life?



Duality prevails in everybody’s life. Whether you are rich or poor, literate or illiterate, healthy or unhealthy, wise or fool, you will be always encircled with this phase of duality.  Sometimes, the effect of duality will be so severe that even a man full of wisdom and who always takes the correct decisions for any of his problems may be besmeared with doubts and at that moment may take a wrong decision causing unpardonable damages in his life’s progress. This phase of duality is a deeply illuminating philosophical consequence.  Duality in a true sense is a regular phenomenon in our earthly life, where an opposing and contradicting elements exist. Further, duality consists of contrasting opposites – the right and the wrong, good or evil, darkness and light, summer and winter, joy and sorrow, birth and death and likewise.  As per Chinese psychology, the meaning of Yin and Yang defines the above situations. The traits like joy and sorrow, good and evil are the guards of mind’s perception and these perceptive values define our feeling to characterize these dualities. Against these experiences of dualities, certain things have absolutely no confrontation for identification. For example, when we experience the emergence of sunlight, we find that day has started and in the same way, when darkness engulfs us, we opine that night has appeared. Here, you are clear about the consequential effects and your observation has only residual value unless you are a creative person and want to create something in a different way out of this change of day and night scenery. By experiencing and saying something good for any accomplishment, we conceive and perceive the opposite of the same as bad. Both these experiences are true.  But by giving a judgmental value of good for something, we create an iota of doubt to describe the opposite of this thing as bad. This only creates an illusion, which only leads us to duality. This illusory perception decides opposite observations with a correlation of our mind’s behavior, which intensifies observation power. Without the knowledge of “good”, the idea of “bad” cannot be identified and ascertained in true sense. When you recognize something as full of beauty, which is already otherwise recognized as the same, the whole world of yours has to accept the above fact. But if you say a blooming red rose is much better than  some well groomed thorny cactus, then the analogy is not that simple with respect to beauty. In fact, both are beautiful in their respective places.  As you appreciate the red roses spread across a rose garden, you have to appreciate the forming of cactus in rows, when they inhabit a desert. There is no ambiguity at all.

Now, if you think to use either rose or cactus to decorate your house, you will be in dilemma and invite dual frame of mind whether to decorate with rose or cactus. At the same time, you may like to illuminate the grandeur of your house putting both these plants. Which one to follow will ultimately put you in duality? If you choose rose discarding cactus, you give prominence using your perception to one at the cost of the other. Not only your behavior will be guided by duality, but you may be in anxiety, whether  all your family members will accept your decision or not. So, your mind will be perturbed and will be clouded with a bit of anxieties as you like to get the knowledge of others opinions. We, the human beings, always pass through these types of perspectives, which consist of happiness and despair, life and death and hope and despondency and many other consequences.  During the course of the day in our daily life, we come across these types of  syndromes at a varied degree when our mind gets agitated with unpleasant facts, awareness of interdependence of various situations or states, which will rise to equanimity. This will lead our desire to aggravate on the eve of various impediments.



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As we experience various seasons in a year, our life is also experiencing various contrasts.  Extreme situations and volatilities out of the same make us more discernible and  we accumulate  many gratifying experiences. Keep vigilance into the abundance of the limitations of life as well as plenty of opportunities and happiness; you will be astonished to find out the results.  The scorching sun and heat of the same provokes our mind to go and take the shelter in the lap of cool breeze of winter, so that our body gets a soothing effect.  If you toss on a coin of joy and sorrow, the deeper the sorrow inflicts your mind and body, the more joy you will be able to achieve after a certain period of suffering. This is a natural cycle in any human being’s life. The cup, which is used for your drinking purpose is invariably getting burnt in the potter’s oven. Even though, it is an inanimate object, it has suffered pain before it displays its aesthetic finishing as a cup. What is the significant explanation behind the duality that every good cause has a good effect and every bad cause has a bad effect and vice-versa. If you are too much bothered about these dualities, you will be more sufferer. You must know how to come out using your correct judgement.

Khalil Gibran, the eminent Lebanese-American artist and poet explains the complementary nature of opposites. He teaches us that without excruciating the pain of various sufferings, one cannot relish the sweet fragrance of joy. Taking the cue from the poet’s philosophical explanations about the alternatives of joy and sorrow, life and death, peace and war and if you can position the same in various simulation techniques, you will see that pleasant outcome always succeeds the unpleasant situations. We must increase our experiences from this philosophical explanation. The more these experiences are accumulated in your perception, the more you will  tolerate or become stubborn to combat these dualities in your life. Despite being stricken with extreme agonies or pleasures in life, you have to face dualities because of the prevailing norms of living and once you experience the same and able to counter, you will be able to lead a meaningful life.  Drawing the analogy of the cup, which we use to put tea, milk and even bitter medicine always reminds us the least pain to hold the cup, even for a split of a second though most of the time, we ignore the sequence of accepting the pain. Our life is  like that only. It is only a container to hold many beautiful and ugly things. By knowing the fundamental values of  of the duality of life, you are acquiring much awareness to understand the right and the wrong of your living.  If you can circumvent its influence and minimize the same to the extent possible, you will remain in balance and will navigate your life in the right direction mostly.

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