Simplicity is an Amazing Awakening

Simplicity is an Amazing Awakening

Perfect people are pure and simple, without useless complexity. − Lao Tzu

The following is how I make my world too complex and complicated, and oftentimes, self-deprecating. It starts with “bad news” (sometimes the reverse, but more commonly this way round), such as being notified that I made a mistake on an income tax filing. Then my machine starts collecting other bad things that are happening. The refrigerator is on the fritz and money is tight now, and that peculiar ache has returned to my hip, and I was planning to drive to a park for a hike this weekend. The car maintenance is also overdue, so maybe I should not take that drive.

Before long, the list grows quite long, and then I run through this mental list repeatedly in my imagination as if everything is falling apart. It is as if life is unsolvable and overly complicated. I pile up an insurmountable high-walled maze in my mind. Everything is against me. But, according to my School’s teachings, this self-made complexity is unnecessary suffering or negative imagination, both of which pull me into a downward spiral into mechanicality and sleep. In either case, this lower state of consciousness is predicated on unnecessary complexity.

Awakening depends on simplicity. − The Teacher

Life is simpler than that or at least it can be. Of course, we all find unanticipated or undesired struggles in our daily lives on small and large scales. This woe-is-me perception, however, is inherently flawed because I can see through this fog, overcoming this maze of confusion and complexity, and can reach a simpler place of internal peace, even when confronted by challenges.

I could say that my progress in the Work is dependent on unraveling myself from the complexity of such challenges. I can internally transform my woes from a maze to amazing. A fellow student once said that “With simplicity we can interact with whatever is in our field of vision,” and not be lost in it.

The deep waters . . . seem turbulent when we peer into them too curiously: but when contemplated in a spirit of simplicity, they are calm. Let us therefore sail these waters with simplicity of mind. – The Philokalia

While my life is complex at times, I can choose to make it simple. Higher consciousness and peace of mind are characteristic of my state when I choose simplicity over complexity. I am not sugarcoating that I face challenging times for myself individually or collectively. But with self-remembering and the transformation of suffering, I have a choice about keeping my life simple and pure. Rising above the maze and seeing it from above.

All about me may be silence and darkness, yet within me, in the spirit, is music and brightness. − Helen Keller

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Jina Neminatha, Gujaret (late medieval), Mumbai Museum, India