Why search beyond your own horizons?
As an engineer, I usually approach the answer to a question by first defining all of its key elements. This explains the meaning of my words and makes it much easier to explore the potential answers.
What is the world? I define the world as something that encompasses all perceptual phenomena. In other words, the objects I perceive through my senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and mental levels of awareness.
What is “better”? An optimist would say that “better” is a comparative adjective for “good”. A pessimist would think in terms of “bad” and “worse”. Whether my world is good or bad depends on my current mindset. The words are nothing more than attributes. And, like many other people, I am a master when it comes to spur-of-the-moment attributes. I instantly arrive at an attribution without really thinking about the fact that others may assess things quite differently. What’s worse, I often think that my assessment is the only one that could possibly be valid.
What does it mean to improve something and make it better? Perhaps it means an action that changes a situation so that it is perceived or experienced as more valuable, nicer, more pleasant, happier, more peaceful, joyful, etc. And this brings me to the definition of sensations: Pleasant sensations bring happiness. Unpleasant sensations are associated with suffering. Neutral sensations lead to ignorance. The reason for my sensations lies in my prior actions or reactions. If I act in a non-beneficial way, I experience unhappiness. If my action is beneficial, I feel happy. The real-world situation is only a contributing factor to my happiness, but never the main reason.
What does it mean to do something? Doing involves actions on three levels: physical, verbal and mental. There are beneficial, non-beneficial, and neutral actions.
What are changes? If I carefully analyze this, changes are neither real nor possible. Situations are in a constant state of transition. A new situation arises every moment, when certain conditions are met. Within a split second, the current situation ceases to exist and is replaced by another state. There are countless conditions, and most of them defy our control.
States of being are transient, like all composite entities. In this sense, there are no changes, because changes can only exist when there are new conditions. Does this mean that I am incapable of improvement? Oh no, that would be an extremist conclusion. I cannot change the actual state of being. But my actions create the next future. The only thing I can really change is the intention of my actions that determine whether I perceive the world as pleasant or unpleasant.
These are the guidelines for ME and MY better world:
- Go with the changes and BE the changes
- Gain an understanding of which actions are beneficial and which are not
- Practice a form of equanimity that is free from extreme approaches
- Liberate yourself from delusions of a “self” that is separated from others. A self that needs to be overly protected, one that you completely over-estimate. A sense of self that is unyielding, autonomous, unchangeable
- Instead of trying to be happy, just BE happy
- Practice wise egoism: Wise egoists never harm others because they understand that genuine altruism precludes self harm
In the hope that MY understanding of a better world will benefit others!
René Meinhardt is a chemical engineer who works for a company that produces batteries for industrial and photovoltaic applications worldwide. He was born on March 13, 1975 in the town of Zittau, in the Free State of Saxony, which is located in former East Germany.