A Simple Life
2007-05-04 15:20 | Posted by Tejvan Pettinger | Permanent Link | Sri Chinmoy
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by Vidagdha Bennett
A university-educated friend of mine once asked Sri Chinmoy if he should accept a challenging, executive position or one that offered far less pay. Sri Chinmoy responded with this enigmatic message: “Just earn enough to defray the costs of your earthly existence.” Overcoming a certain amount of ambition, my friend accepted the lower salary. It enabled him to live simply and, at the same time, this job gave him the freedom to pursue his spiritual life.
According to Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy, a moderate simplicity is a great advantage. The desire for material things not only binds us but also entangles our thoughts, our emotions. It creates unnecessary worries and anxieties in our lives. Admittedly, it is extremely difficult to extricate oneself from that cycle, but if we can make even the slightest move to lead a simpler life, the resultant feelings of freedom and joy percolate through our entire existence. That is why, perhaps, books like Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter have found such a receptive audience in recent years. They encourage us to examine all our possessions and reduce them—drastically.
Of course, since we are not cave-dwelling ascetics, it is not feasible to renounce all material goods. A car, a phone, a place to live, adequate clothes and so forth are choices that we often have to make out of necessity. It is when the longing for these things becomes disproportionate, when we are consumed with the desire for more and more things, that our spiritual life begins to suffer.
Sri Chinmoy writes, “Each time we possess something more, we become a greater beggar. Although we accumulate, we end up with no real possessions; in the inner world we have become a great beggar.”
I have noticed that when somebody leads a truly simple life, that person always seems to be complete, no matter where they are or who they are with, whereas those who have endless possessions are always hankering after something more, something better or bigger. There is what I once heard Sri Chinmoy refer to as “the scent of discontent” that goes with acquisitiveness.
I was inspired recently to read of a gentleman by the name of Dan Ho who has winnowed his earthly possessions down to about 55 things in total. On his weekly television show, he is now advising affluent Americans to adopt his vision of parsimony. He feels that one of the great keys to happiness is to become less encumbered, to unburden yourself of unnecessary objects. In a New York Times article on October 19th, 2006 he is quoted as saying, “If you have enough sheets, towels and blankets to warrant an entire closet, I can guarantee that you’ve missed some really good opportunities to do something else.”
Outer simplicity, as Mr. Ho suggests, is not just a fashion that can be adopted or discarded at will; it is indicative of a deep inner longing. If someone is genuinely prepared to live a much simpler lifestyle, it tells us that that person needs more time, specifically time to be alone.
The relentlessness of consumerism means that we are constantly being barraged, especially by electronic input. Simplicity is a move to distance oneself from all these competing external interruptions and reclaim that time to be alone with your own thoughts and imagination. It is a time to meditate, to create, to be outdoors, to be free.
Of course, each person must decide for himself how much simplicity he wishes to reclaim. Sri Chinmoy offers no radical prescription for simplicity, but rather gentle advice. “We must always discriminate,” he says. “We have to feel that the outer world which attracts our attention is ephemeral.”
He further adds, “Simplicity is the most valuable treasure in God’s creation... The simpler we can become, the sooner we shall reach our destination. A life of simplicity is a life of constant progress. It is in simplicity that we can make the fastest progress, progress which is everlasting.”
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Secrets of Happiness by Jogyata Dallas
Poems on Simplicity by Sri Chinmoy at Poetseers.org