SIMPLE LIVING, HIGH THINKING!

    "IF I CANNOT DO GREAT THINGS, THEN I’D DO SMALL                                         THINGS IN GREAT WAY."

You’d say that simple living means leaving your whole life behind and going in a peaceful place with nature.

The definition of simple living is different for different people. As few consider peace comes from earning money, some say it comes from spending time with their loved ones, while others may consider it as a state of mind which is only achieved through meditation. The definition has changed over the years. But what about you? Are you happy and stable with whatever you have? The answer for most of us is no because our desire to have everything never ends.

A simple life can help you attain all the happiness in the world and give you peace with it. The less we have, the more we are happy.

Am I happy or not?

The answer lies within you, let me tell you a story from a famous book named “A Monk who sold his Ferrari”, authored by Robin Sharma. He says that his friend Julien Mantel, a well-known lawyer, earning millions suffered a cardiac arrest, post discharge he wasn’t seen for next 2 years. After 2 years when he visited Robin, mantel was looking young and stress-free, peaceful and happy. When the author, out of curiosity, asked him Mantel told him "I sold my bungalow, my Ferrari, and went to the Himalayas after my discharge. In the mountain ranges I met a Monk. Amused by his attitude towards life, I asked him how to be peaceful so he narrated a story.The monk told me imagine a garden full of flowers, birds, trees, you can only hear wind waving and birds chirping , in center of garden there is a big lighthouse, there comes a sumo wrestler only wearing Rikishi, wrestler sees a golden watch and he smell the beautiful yellow roses while doing that he explores a road full of diamonds.” Mantel asked the monk what was the purpose of his life to which the monk said,“
1. Garden is your mind: your subconscious mind is the greenery, while conscious mind is gardener, you’ve to treat your subconscious mind the way gardener treat garden to have mental peace.

2. Lighthouse gives your purpose: just like lighthouse gives direction to ships same way you should have a purpose, a goal, a direction to follow to achieve success.

3. Sumo wrestler is for improvement: In Japan wrestlers keep on improving on a daily basis, the same way even we should have a daily goal and we should progress on a day to day basis.

4. Rikishi i.e. underwear represents a boundary: everyone should know their limitations their boundary.

5. Golden watch signifies the importance of time: watch signifies that time is imp so we should use is wisely and carefully.

6. Rose represent kindness & selflessness: yellow roses are perfect example of being selfless, whatever you’ve you should share it; we should always help others in every way possible.

7. Diamond road defines living in present: what happened was past and what is ahead of road is future, so instead of regretting about past and worrying about future one should live in the moment, enjoy the moment.”

This really struck Robin’s mind and he began thinking deeply about it.

Human being has four levels of awareness

 PHYSICAL, 

EMOTIONAL, 

INTELLECTUAL, and 

SPIRITUAL.

We usually are stuck on how we look what others think about me i.e. physical, remaining people gets stuck on second level i.e. emotional where we want to be adored by others, where we want to get pampered and loved by others. Because of getting stuck at these two levels no one rises above it, when you rise above these two level and get to third level i.e. intellect where you crave for knowledge over attention and looks, where you want to know more than physical and emotional things never bother you. Last stage is the spiritual when we explore and start loving ourselves; we start loving everyone around us and consider the whole world as our family.

To conclude I would just say that simple living high thinking does not come from going in villages and Himalayas and leaving everything, it is actually vice versa when you reach the spiritual level of awareness your thinking becomes higher level and you automatically start to live simple.

Written by

Rtr. Rohit Lalwani,

Rotaract Club of Thane East.