[PhanKhoi]

How to Overcome Your Difficulties
By
K. Sri Dhammananda

Worry and fear

Are you worried? Are you miserable? If so, you are invited to read this booklet. The theme of this booklet is dedicated to you and to those who worry themselves unduly – even unto death!

Worries and miseries are twin evils that go hand in hand. They co-exist in this world. If you feel worried, you are miserable! If you are miserable, you are worried. We must face facts. Although we cannot run away from them, we must not let these twin evils of worry and misery overcome us. We must overcome them. We can do so by our own human efforts, correctly directed with determination and patience. With proper understanding and carefully applied intelligence, we should be able to subdue our emotional feelings and do away with worries and miseries.

Our worries are of our own making. We create them in our own minds, through our inability or failure to understand the danger of our egoistic feelings and our inflated and false values of things. If only we could see things in their proper perspective in that nothing is permanent in this world and that our own egoistic self is our wild imagination running riot in our untrained mind, we should be going a long way to finding the remedy to eradicate our worries and miseries. We must cultivate our minds and hearts to forget about self and to be of service and use to humanity. This is one of the means whereby we can find real peace and happiness.

Many people have longings and hankering, fear and anxieties which they have not learnt to sublimate and are ashamed to admit them even to themselves. But these unwholesome emotions have force. No matter how we may try to bottle them up they seek a release by disordering the physical machinery resulting in chronic illnesses. All these can be repelled by correct methods of meditation or mental culture, because the untrained mind is the main cause of such worries.

Whenever you have worries in your mind, don't show your sulky face to each and every person you come across. You should reveal your worries only to those who really can help you. How nice it would be if you could maintain your smiling face in spite of all the difficulties confronting you. This is not very difficult if only you really try. Many teenagers worry too much when their friendship with the opposite sex is lost. They often plan even to commit suicide compelled by the plight of frustration and disappointment. Some find place in lunatic asylums. Many such broken-hearted youths lead miserable lives. All these unfortunate events happen due to a lack of understanding the real nature of life. Somehow or other departure or separation is unavoidable. This may happen sometimes at the beginning of a life career; sometimes in the middle and sometimes at the end; it is certainly unavoidable. When such things happen one must try to find out where the cause lies. However, if the separation is beyond control one must have the courage to bear it out by realising the nature of life. But on the other hand it is not difficult for anyone to find new friends, to fill the vacuum if one really wants to.

Wheresoever fear arises, it arises in the fool, not in the wise man says the Buddha. Fears are nothing more than states of mind. One's state of mind is subject to control and direction; the negative use of thoughts produces out fears; the positive use realises our hopes and ideals, and in these cases the choice rests entirely with ourselves. Every human being has the ability to completely control his own mind. Nature has endowed man with absolute control over but one thing, and that is thought. This fact, coupled with the additional fact that everything which man creates begins in the form of a thought, leads one very near to the principle by which fear may be mastered.

A noted British anatomist was once asked by a student what was the best cure for fear, and he answered, Try doing something for someone.

The student was considerably astonished by the reply, and requested further enlightenment whereupon his instructor said, You can't have two opposing sets of thoughts in your mind at one and the same time. One set of thoughts will always drive the other out. If, for instance, your mind is completely occupied with an unselfish desire to help someone else, you can't be harbouring fear at the same time.

Worry dries up the blood sooner than the age. Fears, worries and anxieties in moderation are natural instincts of self-preservation. But constant fear and prolonged worry are unfailing enemies to the human organism. They derange the normal bodily functions.

If you have learned how to please others, you always will be in a good mood. This is because your mind does not allow worries to be accommodated in it.

The voice of nature

For the sake of material gain modern man does not listen to the voice of nature. His mental activities are so preoccupied with his future happiness that he neglects the needs of his physical body and entirely forgets the present moment for what it is worth. This unnatural behaviour of contemporary man is that immediate result of his wrong conceptions of World Order, of human life and its ultimate purpose. It is the cause of all the frustration, anxiety, fear and insecurity of our present times. One who really likes to have peace should not disturb another man's freedom. It is a wrong method to seek happiness by disturbing and deceiving others.

You can deceive some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you cannot deceive all of the people all of the time. (Abraham Lincoln)

If man is cruel and wicked, always lives against the laws of nature and the cosmos; through his acts, words and thoughts, he pollutes the whole atmosphere. As a result of such misdeeds and thoughts, nature may not produce things which man requires for his living but instead man may be faced with epidemics and various kinds of disasters.

If, on the other hand, man lives in accordance with this natural law, leads a righteous way of life, purifies the atmosphere through the merits of his virtues and radiates his loving kindness towards other living beings, he can change the atmosphere in order to bring about better results for the happiness of man.

You may be a very modern busy man, but don't forget to spend at least a few minutes a day in reading some valuable books. This habit will give you a lot of relief and enable you to forget your worries and to develop your mind. At the same time you have to remember that you have a religion also. Religion is for your own benefit. Therefore it is your duty to think about your religion and to spare a few minutes a day for the performance of your religious duties.

Mental health and criminal tendencies

In relation to health, it is not T. B., or even cancer, that is the most alarming of the ailments of our age. T. B. is now almost under control, and there is every hope that a cure for cancer will be found in the near future. Actually, the most alarming of all is the prevalence and increase in all kinds of mental ailments and disturbances. We are forced to build more and more hospitals and institutions for the mentally sick and neuroses of various kinds. There are many more who do not receive any treatment, but who are in need of it badly.

It may be asked why the criminal element within our society is mentioned in the same breath with the mentally afflicted. One of the positive and far-reaching results stemming directly from the research work of Freud is the recognition that criminals and delinquents are also mentally sick people, more in need of treatment than punishment. It is this liberal outlook on the problem that lays the basis of all "progressive" social reform, and opens up the way for reclamation rather than revenge.

Know Thy neighbour

We never see how other people live; we may not even know anything about the lives of people of different social levels from ourselves or of lesser or greater wealth. If we are healthy we cannot know what it is like to be sick and if we are invalids we cannot understand the energy of the strong.

Such lack of experience makes for intolerance, because tolerance is born only of understanding and without experience there can be no understanding. Hence it is a good thing for us to get as wide an experience as is possible of all aspects of life, and especially to travel and let us make sure we do not always travel in luxury!

Man's unhappiness

Buddha taught that all man's unhappiness comes from wanting the wrong sort of things, the pleasures that money can buy, power over other men, and, most important of all, to go on living forever after one is dead. The desire for these things makes people selfish, he said, so that they come to think only of themselves, want things only for themselves, and not mind overmuch what happens to other people. And since they do not get all their wishes, they are restless and discontented. The only way to avoid this restlessness is to get rid of the desires that cause it. This is very difficult; but when a man achieves it, he reaches a state of perfection and calm.

* We did not enjoy pleasures but were ourselves overcome by pleasures (i.e. by endless anxiety in seeking those pleasures all our energies were sapped). We suffer more than we enjoy in seeking the pleasures of this phenomenal world.