A Map to Home

Go home to Self where there is no more suffering....Suffering and happiness are not enemies...they inter-are.  We can't have happiness without suffering. We cannot have suffering without happiness.

Thich Nhat Hanh (maybe not exactly as said but close enough! :)) 

I was listening to Thich Nhat Hanh as I was soaking in the tub last evening. These words were so impactful that I was able to remember them until I could jot them down. 

Where is this Self Thich Nhat Hanh is talking about?

We as conceptual beings like to be able to visualize our destinations, don't we?  We need directional terms to help us do that.  Whereas Self is likely nothing more than empty space...we can, maybe, satisfy the intellectual mind by saying it is to the inner most layer of who we are that we must return to.  It is the "ananda body", the fifth kosha that is home. 

So in directional terms we can say we need to go inward and deeper in order to go home and get to Self. We need to work our way through the first three koshas. Let's imagine drilling a big tunnel through the physical body, our energetic body, and our mental body. We are drilling through the suffering layers to reach the happiness layers. 

Huh?

Let's make the distinction between pain and suffering before we begin. Pain and challenge are natural parts of life and suffering is resistance to that natural flow.  When we learn to accept and allow in a way we can  become active participants in the dance...we can find happiness. Most of us spend our lives, however, resisting, especially in the first three layers, therefore we suffer.

Physical Kosha is Not Home

The Self is wrapped by four other bodies.  The most outer layer is where most of us, in the west, are stuck. We see the physical body as being all there is. Some of us are so identified with this belief that only matter and physicality is real that we never go deeper. There is a lot of suffering on this layer...a lot of tension and physical resistance to the painful or unpleasant...a lot of attempts made to create comfort and safety for the body.  We live in survivalist mode, resisting pain, disturbance, challenge when we identify only with the physical kosha and assume it is home etc. We seek happiness in all the wrong places-"out there." We struggle against the world to get it. We suffer.

The Energetic Body is Not Home

Some of us  may move into the energetic body which many of us in the west fail to understand.  We just want to feel "good" to feel that energy up. We will play with our energy fields in an attempt to maintain that sense of "feeling good". We will reach for substances, activities, outer world pursuits from the physical layer to keep this energy going.  We see this false euphoria that never lasts, that breeds craving as home.We suffer. 

The Mental Body is Not Home

Some may move a little deeper into the mental body. This is the part of us where the conceptual mind reigns...where emotionality reigns. We settle into our beliefs, our dogmas, our doctrine, our ideas, our judgements, our thinking, and our feelings here.  We create a home called "me", a psyche, a personality, a persona we display to the world. We do everything to build and defend it. We do everything we can to make this home comfy...to make the "me" happy.  But the trouble is we look in the wrong direction for that happiness.  We see happiness as a pushing away of pain and challenge and a clinging to anything "out there" that makes it remotely comfortable in here.  We live in very, very messy and chaotic homes when we do that creating agreat deal of suffering. We suffer.

We need to realize in this layer that our  so called homes are a mess, that this idea of happiness seeking and suffering avoidance is not the way.  We have to see that neither our suffering or our happiness is dependent on the conditions of the outer world.  We have to see that there are deeper layers to explore, and that the conditions of happiness lay within those layers.  This external world and these first three layers are not home. 

The Wisdom Body is Not Home

When we reach this point of realization, instead of digging we fall into the fourth layer...the jnana or wisdom layer.  We can call this home briefly.  Here we begin with concepts to explore the possibility of our beingness.  We begin to ask "Who am I"? As we ask these questions we begin to realize that they cannot be answered with more concepts. Realization is a "felt expereince". We suffer much less here.

The Ananda Body is Home

We fall from wisdom into the Ananda body...where we expereince Self...where we realize we are and always were home. This is not just the end of suffering; this is not just the finding of happiness...this is bliss. Home is Bliss...More precicely it is Sat Chit Ananda: Existence Consciousness and Bliss.

All is well in my world.