Exquisite Simplicity

Based on class notes "Concentration and simplicity: 14 June 2022"

If asked “what generates happiness”, it isn’t immediately obvious that concentration and simplicity could be the answer - and not shopping :)

The great meditation Master Nagarjuna said: From concentration comes peace. In other words, if we want to feel happy, we need the ability to focus / control our mind.

I could actually stop here because that’s it in a nutshell, except to say simplicity helps.

The world has been inspired by spiritual people who lived simply: Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Mohammed, St. Francis, Confucius. The Dalai Lama says: If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements. And finally, there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation.

Thich Nhat Hanh said: "In order to be happy, we have to learn to live simply. When you live simply, you have much more time and you can be in touch with the many wonders of life. Living simply is the criterion for the new culture, the new civilisation. With the development of technology people nowadays have become more and more sophisticated and they don’t live simply at all. Their joy is to go shopping. Even when we visit a new city, we cannot do anything else but go shopping. Shopping is a disease of our new civilisation. The criterion for being happy is to live simply, and have a life of harmony and peace in yourself and with people around you, without aggressiveness, irritation and anger. Those who easily get angry have to learn the art of mindful breathing. When you are easily irritated you have to go back to your breath right away and take good care of your conscious breathing, calming and releasing, so that your face will not be red from anger and irritation. We must learn to know what is our limit, how much is enough. It is the opposite of wanting more and more and more. You know what is sufficient, what is enough for you."

In my reading on simplicity I came across an essay: "The Value of Voluntary Simplicity". Originally published in August, 1936 in the Indian Journal Visva-Bharati Quarterly By Richard B. Gregg, a Quaker lawyer who worked with Gandhi in India in the 1920's / 1930's. The full essay, which is 16 pages of bedtime reading can be found here. (I think it's worth skimming, perhaps hopping over some of the sections which might feel a bit outdated.)

He writes that in choosing simplicity, the focus should be on what we deeply wish to achieve or gain, and that simplicity is both an inner and outer condition.

He writes the we should practice simplicity through “restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions.” In other words, it can mean getting rid of clutter - but simplicity also means having a purpose, directing our energy, a deliberate designing of how we live.

Because we are influenced by our surroundings, he writes, “it is wise to create deliberately such an environment as will influence (our) character in the direction which (we) deem most important – to make it easier to live in the way that (we) believe wisest.”

We might think of simplicity as paring down or ‘taking away’. But voluntary simplicity is more like an exchanging/ replenishing – or even adding something to our life. Whether this is authenticity, beauty or stillness. That kind of simplicity is not easy because you can’t force it. It just doesn’t work.

He writes: “there is one important precaution - I can explain best by something which Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, "Then don’t give them up. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired."

Some food for thought. Have a happy week :)

_/\_

metta