Two headlines caught my attention recently: the International Monetary Fund declaring India having a US $2.6 trillion GDP economy – the world’s sixth largest – and in Mumbai, one of the world’s richest cities, a young chartered accountant named Mokshesh Sheth deciding to renounce his family fortune of Rs 100 crores (about $15 million) and become a monk at the age of 24.
Both news are variations of human destiny: of seeking wealth and comfort in the mundane world, and seeking even greater ‘wealth’ and freedom in a supra mundane world, beyond the world of our daily routine.
Cultural differences cloud understanding of benefits beyond the world of matter and the physical body. And so interesting too were comments about the news articles of young Mokshesh Sheth renouncing his material wealth to become a monk.
Indian or Asian readers offered their respects and good wishes, while comments under western names called him an idiot. A culture strongly hinged around material wealth makes for difficulty in understanding why young Mokshesh could not at least use his wealth for social welfare – like providing drinking water in remote villages or donate for lifesaving medical costs.
It’s a question of misconceptions and misunderstandings, one that plagued those few stepping back from the world to serve the world: serve to solve perpetual problems of the mundane world, or serve in a deeper and more beneficial way, to a greater happiness and freedom beyond? Be a bird in a gilded cage, or fly out of comfort zones to seek and share a happy freedom no money can buy?
If needs of the body and pleasures of the senses were all we have to worry about, then kings would never have renounced their thrones as so many have in India’s history; the crown prince Siddhata Gotama could have inherited his father’s kingdom in what is now the good country of Nepal, and served his people as a most benevolent ruler.
About five centuries later, the carpenter’s son born in Bethlehem could have continued his father’s good work and opened a chain of furniture shops, instead of showing the world the way to live a wholesome life and getting crucified for his troubles.
Like with realities beyond the mundane world, misconceptions cloud those taking up the career of renunciation – the very hard work of going out of comfort zones and stepping away from the world to serve the world.
A marine scientist working in the Antarctica, an explorer in the heart of Africa, or astronauts living outside the Earth in the International Space Station do not face accusations of “running away” from the world.
Yet those renouncing the mundane world, or going away to Himalayas to work with the subtler realities of mind and matter, have to sometimes face sneers of being escapist. There is no escapism in the very hard work to purify the mind, and share the merits thereby gained with all beings.
The meaningful, beneficial renunciation is no running away from the world; on the contrary it brings the monk or ascetic closer to the world. The true ascetic works hard to eradicate impurities in the mind and the false ego.
Bigger the ego ‘I’, bigger the problems; attachment to this great ‘I’ becomes a bitter barrier in work and relationships, and poisons the peace of mind. The real escapism is ignoring the real work in life, beyond the mundane world.
Those truly renouncing the mundane world also renounce everything that is ‘I’, ‘mine’, and the baggage of the big ego. They break this ego barrier separating them from fellow beings. It’s not physical proximity or geographical distance that divides or brings closer people, but the positive or negative thoughts arising in the mind.
What is impermanent cannot be a source of enduring happiness; and everything in the mundane world is impermanent, changing, has an end sooner or later. Whatever we hold dear, to which we are attached, has an end, and when that end arrives, suffering too arrives.
In fact, suffering arrives like a shadow with every attachment, with the tension, insecurity, fear of losing that to which we are attached. This objective reality has to be faced. No running away. How to go beyond this suffering? How to end this endless cycle of the arising and passing away? How to break free, and serve others on the path of freedom?
With the reawakening of an ancient civilization like India come the answers, the reawakening of its great strengths that are shared with the world. And India to me is undergoing a process of reawakening through the timeless, ancient practice of Vipassana (www.dhamma.org). I can experience an undercurrent of change – deep, powerful and silent as the currents of ocean depths.
Correct practice of Vipassana gives the faculty to see the inner reality, and practical wisdom to go beyond apparent realities of the impermanent, continuously changing world of the mundane. We experience actual reality. These subtler truths give the more enduring, real happiness. Feasting on sugar coated poison only brings the diabetic misery of suffering, the inevitable bills of painful reckoning after the feast.
These subtler realities become more evident after experiencing wealth and realizing money cannot buy everything. And so Mumbai – the financial capital of India and capital of Maharashtra (the Great State) – has the most number of Vipassana practitioners and Vipassana centers in the world.
Young Mokshesh Sheth symbolizes the spirit of Mumbai – of both chasing wealth and looking beyond it, and reflects humanity’s timeless tradition of renunciation: of giving up mundane wealth, power and impermanent comforts, to gain limitless benefits of a life with supra mundane wealth and comforts of a free mind.
This choice of renunciation – when the time comes – is actually no choice: it’s like choosing between the prison of suffering and freedom of real happiness. And life is about making the right choices.
The writer is a senior, Mumbai-based journalist.