Living Without a Formula
One of the mind’s favorite games is trying to find formulas. The idea is that if you have enough of the right formulas, you won’t have any more problems. The mind applies formulas to simple things, like how to make a fluffy dishes and how to change a flat tire, and even to more complicated and unpredictable things, like how to have a good marriage, how to be successful, all the way up to how to become free of suffering. The mind doesn’t know when to stop. It tries to apply formulas to everything, even to things that formulas will never work for. Life is too mysterious, too full of surprises, too alive to ever fit a formula, but the mind keeps trying nevertheless.
When you approach life with a formula, you end up with an idea of how things should be, which rarely matches how things actually turn out. For example, one formula might be: if I’m nice to people, they’ll be nice to me. This sounds good, but we all know it doesn’t always work that way. The problem with formulas is that when our expectations aren’t met, we suffer. Suffering comes from this gap between how we think things should work and how they actually are working in the moment. For a long time, what we do in the face of this is try to improve our formulas, with the ultimate goal of creating a “me” that has all the answers, which is an impossible and exhausting project.
The alternative is to let go of all formulas. If you don’t have any idea of how things are supposed to be, then there is no suffering, no tension—no sense of things not being right. What you are left with is this messy, beautiful thing called life, unfolding as it always has. There is no way around this tendency of the mind. This is why many spiritual teachings are packaged as formulas even though they aren’t meant to be. One of these is Ramana’s practice of self-inquiry: asking, Who am I? It sounds like a formula and yet it was never Ramana’s intention that an answer be found. He knew that any belief or concept that showed up as an answer to that question would be exposed as faulty. If that question is asked sincerely, it has the power to dissolve your concepts, beliefs, and formulas. It burns away whatever is in the way of your natural happiness.
There are actually two questions at the center of spiritual life for which there are no formulas: Who am I? and How do I live my life? This is a beautiful pair of questions, which point in two different directions. Who am I? points to the Absolute, while How do I live my life? brings you back down to the challenges of day-to-day existence. If taken together, these questions point us to both the absolute truth of our being and to the relative truth of day-to-day life. When we take both of them together, a dance between the absolute mystery of our being and day-to-day life can happen.
Most of us really like the question How do I live my life? Our minds like to get involved with that one because it seems like it might have a formula. That’s why I am also pointing to this other question Who am I? which takes us beyond the mind. That is the question that needs to be asked first, and the how will then take care of itself. My teacher, in response to most questions would say: “First things first. Find out who you are, and then see if this problem still makes any sense.” So, I invite you to put all of your effort every moment into this question Who am I? When you are busy taking care of life, ask: Who is doing this? Who is it that is cooking? Who is it that is driving? Then, your energy goes into this rather than the how, while the how is just being allowed to happen. This is the opposite of how most of us have been trained to live our lives. We’re taught to keep as busy as possible and not look into this question Who am I? If Who am I? is asked honestly, the only answer you find is a fantasy, a lie. The idea “I” has no actual correspondence to the bigger mystery of who you are. The question Who am I? brings you back to the present moment, which doesn’t fit into any of your formulas or ideas about how it should be. Have you ever noticed how the present moment never matches up to how you think it should be? It never quite makes it. Who am I? is the question that pulls the plug on all of your lies and misconceptions. We find very creative ways of avoiding this question because then we can avoid the here and now and keep hiding out in how we would like it to be or how we think it should be.
In particular, we hide out in the false idea we call “I,” which is the source of all our problems. That’s why the effort should go into finding out who you are if you want your suffering to end: “First things first.”
If you ask either of these questions sincerely, they take you to the same place: here and now. This day-to-day existence is the Mystery— it’s not separate from it—and there is no formula for it. The good news is that when you stay in the here and now, you discover you don’t need a formula. Life knows how to live. It has never had a formula, and it hasdone a perfectly good job up to now, but you only discover that when you stay right here.
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Pawan Kr. Gupta
Pawan Kr Gupta is IT Professional by profession. He is motivational speaker , writer and consultant. He has written over 100+ blogs covering the topics, from God, religion, spirituality, philosophy, mind, meditation, psychology, consciousness, and many more...