The Difficulty of Inquiring

Having looked into what it means to inquire and how it involves staying with and understanding one’s suffering, it is quite clear that inquiring is a difficult process.

What happens when one is feeling miserable? Doesn’t the mind come in and start looking for ways to be less miserable?  It could happen in many forms- random thoughts, daydreams, extensive plans for the future, seeking pleasure in countless activities – profession, religion, reading, ceaseless chattering, gossiping, TV, movies, social media, sex, alcohol, drugs etc. The mind resists suffering. And it is from this resistance that all the escapes in the world have been invented.

It also means that the entire structure and the norms of the society, that the mind has built, are inherently built to validate and reinforce these resistances. The family, society, the culture, the entire world is built on the idea of constantly acting in order to avoid/escape/mitigate suffering. This avoidance/mitigation/ escape from suffering happens by following ready-made templates, frameworks or structures for living in the form of religion, social norms and expectations, the economic and political systems, moral standards etc. and by following the authority of those who are deemed to be experts or gurus i.e., by staying in the known.

Rebelling against existing templates only ends up creating new templates, such is the force that the known exerts on us through the world and through us on the world.

Thus, to inquire in such a manner is a tremendous risk for it means questioning the deeply entrenched ways of seeing and believing that we have taken to be unquestionable truths, individually and collectively. Such questioning brings about punishments and retributions of all kind- from threat to livelihood, social ostracization, ridicule, contempt to physical harm.

So, it is extremely difficult to go against the tide of such force that our world exerts on us (and through us on others) not just externally, but also mentally and emotionally. E.g., consider the voice in our head that warns us against deviating from the social role we are expected to play and the resulting anxiety and all kind of psychological ailments.

To inquire in such a manner would imply not blindly following the existing templates, or wanting to create new templates i.e., not living mechanically. It would imply living, responding to each and every moment in life with utmost sensitivity and intelligence.

To inquire thus would mean swimming against tide of such force. It would mean being comfortable in being alone, not necessarily physically, but inwardly.

It must mean that one would have to be open to bringing about a radical change in the way one sees and one acts. One’s sense of self i.e., one’s identity is formed of these existing ways of seeing and acting. So, inquiring into the current ways of seeing and living also means inquiring into one’s sense of self.

The possibility of the current ways of seeing and acting being inadequate, or even incorrect must be inherently unsettling, because this possibility shakes the very foundations of the sense of self.

It’s not possible to inquire while holding fast to one’s existing beliefs or to ones entrenched sense of self.

The process of inquiry and the process of setting aside one’s beliefs, ideologies, identities etc., and hence setting aside one’s sense of self must go hand in hand.

A shadow trying to inquire into its existence is bound to grow increasingly terrified as it comes closer to the truth of its (non?) existence. 

All inquiry, by its nature, must be discomforting.

Does this mean that one has got to be this miserable, insufferable bore who can’t laugh or see the humourous side of life?

Inquiring in this manner demands a great seriousness towards life and earnestness in following and staying with the questions.

This seriousness and earnestness are of course extremely difficult in today’s day and age, when mindless, frivolous entertainment is omnipresent. So as one begins to inquire one may, or perhaps must begin to peel oneself away from mindless escapades. If the force of the need to inquire is driven by a real urgency, then this peeling away would happen almost effortlessly. Why? Clearly because the beginning of such inquiry is itself based on the insight that escaping the actuality leads to greater suffering.

But that doesn’t mean that humour, laughter and entertainment have no place in life. On the contrary, such seriousness puts entertainment in its correct place in life, where our life is not a slave to it. And as one proceeds in inquiry and begins to see the amount of self-deception involved in one’s life, one is shocked and perhaps struck by sorrow. But then as one begins to observe without attachment or aversion, one begins to see the lighter, more humorous side of all of this.

True seriousness requires a tremendous lightness of being, and vice versa.