My life changed when I experienced the truth of being happy as a natural state of being.
Prof. Srikumar Rao explains that most of us grow up believing that there is something we need do, get or be in order to be happy. The ineffective model most of us employ is:
IF we get this, THEN we can do this, and THEN we will be happy.
Instead, happiness is not something dependent on conditions in the outside world, but a natural state that arises within. This means that it is not something we need to strive for, or even better - something we will loose when what we get disappears. Unfortunately we have a propensity to spend our lives teaching ourselves the opposite.
This is a pleasant concept, sure… but it doesn’t mean much until you experience this truth. Actually, in my opinion, it is quite useless unless you experience it.
Each person’s experience of the world is different - for me, life changed when I experienced this internal, eternal feeling of joy and peace of simply being - a feeling of appreciation and love for the present moment as something not dependent on anything external. It has consequences that have altered the way I perceive the world around me and the way I choose to act.
This is not to say I always feel happy. It is not about clinging to happiness - as my experience is constantly changing and sensations in my body are continuously arising and passing away. Instead of clinging to an emotion, I feel an acceptance of this constant change, and awareness of the mental pain I create - and through this awareness I naturally stop creating this mental pain. It is not something I find easy describing in words - and it really means nothing until you experience it.
Still, I do forget a lot, and get stressed quite often. But some things, once experienced, there is no turning back.
May 19th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Larry Lessig is one of the most dangerous people for creative businesspeople today. While theoretically he speaks to some very interesting and arguable admirable points, what he fails to address is just how, if the laws are changed as he envisions and advocates, how are individual creatives supposed to make a living?
I work with commercial photographers, most of whom do what they do out of the passion for making their art. They monetize it by licensing reproduction of their work, under the current copyright laws. So, if HP (for example) wants to use a picture by PhotoBob, HP pays him for the license to reproduce his work, and that license is priced based on the scope of the distribution of that reproduction (what we call “usage”). If he is to make available his work, for free, how is he to pay his bills?
The argument that making work free for personal/non-commercial use doesn’t work with today’s technology as much as Lessig would have us believe. For example, if PhotoBob tells Janie Smith she can use one of his images for personal use only, for free, and then Janie posts the image on her MySpace or Facebook page, that image is now available, for free, for whatever use Myspace, Facebook, or any of their users what to use it for! All control over that image is now gone. The terms and conditions for these social networking sites state that any materials posted become available for free use by anyone. So much for “personal” use….that simply does not exist in this reality.
These issues, for the independent artist, are life and death. Lessig may speak to today’s kids being different, but it has always been thus–each generation is different. That doesn’t mean that we need to make changes to accommodate their desires (these are WANTS, not needs) when those changes threaten the livelihoods (and, honestly, the lives) of so many others.
May 19th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
WHOOPS! The above comment was meant to go under the Lessig post. My bad!!