Contentment - as I see it today

I am pursuing contentment for some years now and I can say that: either contentment is a very skilled prey which escapes me every time, either it does not exist.

I am joking, off course, but in the same time I have to acknowledge the difficulty in which I find myself: I have to talk about contentment based only on some left prints in the sand and some memories of its possible scent. Maybe I’ve experienced for some short periods of time the state of being content, but for sure I could not keep it inside my cage, in my being, the bird has flown away every time.

First conscious questions about contentment arisen in my life after I have experienced that every enjoyable thing/object/state has an end and nothing what comes from outside does not have the ability to last. In other words, I could not find something outside myself which would last indefinite and in the same time which would create the same unending pleasure. In the end, all finished in the arms of Master Suffering, which is, by the way, the most undesirable, but the most efficient master, at least for me.

So, returning to the story, I began to feel unlucky to realize in my mid twenties that everything I will do will end in some kind of suffering and that there’s nothing in this material world which could bring me happiness by itself, by just acquiring the object. I just could not accept this conclusion and my search for happiness began.

It took me some big time to realize (and I feel that I should say that I got a lot of support on the way) that happiness is not something that I can obtain from something or somebody, but it is an outcome of an internal state of recognition. To be more clear, let’s see the example of two lovers: they show love to each other, but if they do not have the love inside them, they could not bring it out and more than that they could not recognize the signs of affection. More specific, if love would be something that, let’s say, your partner can give you, when the partner is not aside you, you will not have it. Off course, we feel love even when the partner is continents away, so it’s not something which he or her gives to us, it is something inside us which is recognized and associated with our partner, parents, friends, etc.

I will not write now about the relative/ conditional and absolute/ unconditional love, but I will note that everything conditional is relative to a specific context and these contexts have the habit not to last.

Returning to realization that happiness occurs inside me when some conditions are fulfilled, a new question arises: how to access and maintain those conditions? Well, if the conditions are outside me, in the outer world, they will change soon… the world is moving, the people change, nothing material lasts, “panta rhei” as the Greeks would say, you cannot step twice in the same river.

But what if the conditions are not outside me, but inside me? What keeps me away from feeling love and happiness minute by minute, time after time? What brings the discontentment?

Try to remember the times when you were happy, full of love, serene. What was that particular thing which was present every time? Yes, the present… We all were in that moment, in that time, nor in the pas, nor in the future, away from other desires, just there and then.

The discontentment is a mental state which appears when a difference between desire or “how things should be” and the immediate reality is recognized.  “Between the banks of pleasure and pain flows the river of life.  If you spend much time on either bank you will miss out on life” said Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Staying on either bank of pleasure or pain is not the solution and as usual the truth is somewhere in the middle, in the balanced attitude. Contentment transcends happiness and sorrow, contentment has the balance in it. Even if I’m happy or sad, if I can accept this fact, if I have acceptance of the play of the mind and the sinuous flow of life situations, I have already a sort of balance. And if I have a balance I am a step closer to contentment.

If I would have to define contentment I would say that contentment is a state of the mind in which I remain in balance unregarding of the external conditions, transformations, relationships, events or states.

Many things shall be lived fully, as an absolute, in order to achieve and keep the contentment:

-    acceptance of uncontrollable and transformative flow of life

-    discrimination between the real and unreal aspects of life which appear in the form of illusion

-    belief that life is a fair teacher and not a slave master

-    at least, but not last, (self) sincerity

I do not have a sure way to success, a magic formula to bring contentment in my life. I’ve only observed that observing my mind (funny, huh?) I can reduce the amplitude of the pendulum of the mind which reaches the opposites, which visits the both banks of the river of life. Observing my mind, sometimes I can make a conscious decision not to grasp the weeds growing on the banks, staying somewhere on the river, floating like a leaf, from one beginning to another.

Let the hunt, once again, begin!