The Five Lessons of Life Part 2

THE FIVE LESSONS OF LIFE

BILL ADAMS

RIDER                 2000

PART 1I

 

Chapter 2: The Lessons of Life

• My plan was to get back as soon as possible to where I had last seen Sangratan. ‘You are looking for me, Mr Bill?’ I turned sharply, surprised to hear my name. There, at the side of the house, knelt Sangratan, tying up his bedding roll. The dog sat on its haunches beside him.
• He stared at me with dark brown eyes, as if he was reading my thoughts. ‘I can see you were looking for me.’ He smiled. ‘I am Sangratan and this is Kirti.
• I told Sangratan that I had sought him so that I could learn why the people of this region seemed so happy and full of joy despite their material poverty, the harshness of their environment, the dangers they faced and the relative isolation of one family from the other.
• “The people here are not isolated. They have each other. Unlike in your world, they are taught that everyone is a friend until he proves otherwise. There is no such thing as a stranger, only a person who they do not know yet. They are taught that if you treat people you do not know with warmth and kindness, respect and generosity, you are much more likely to be treated well in return. This is one small part of the Lessons of Life that we all learn at our mother’s knee.”
• So it was that in the warmth of a Himalayan summer morning, beside a gushing stream as the sun rose over the snow-peaked mountains, Sangratan told me of the origins of the Lessons of Life. What follows are his words as I remember them.
• All life is hard and, often, as outside influences and forces pull us this way and that, we bury deep inside us what we would really like, but we think we cannot have. In ancient times an approach to living was formulated so that all men and women could live life harmoniously together and pursue their personal wants and desires in the most effective way possible.
• In the most ancient of times through trial and error, experience and reason, men and women learnt to live harmoniously together and with the world. But men and women are not perfect. They constantly change. They develop and grow, age and decline. They move on. They forget. They become distracted.
• Even with the best of intentions they sometimes stray from that which gives them joy. The great strength of human beings, their quest for improvement, often causes them to move away from what makes them fulfilled. They become narrow-sighted and obsessive.
• Wise men realized that the problems which caused people to be unhappy were the result of the changes life brings, and people’s inability to cope with their changed situations and perceptions. They decided to codify an approach to life which could be used to teach people how to live life to the full and overcome the obstacles that nature presents.
• Before the time of Buddha, the first Lessons of Life were written down. Learned men took this code for living to Tibet, China and other parts of India. In these ancient centers of learning and reason the original, codified Lessons of Life were supplemented, changed and expanded. Over the centuries new sections were added and older ones modified.
• The final version of the Lessons of Life was written on scrolls shortly after the time of Buddha, by Tenzin, the greatest of the Amchi. Tenzin taught the Lessons of Life wherever he traveled and soon other Amchi and many monks and lamas also took up the teachings. Some wrote down what they had learned, and so there came into being several versions of the Lessons of Life.
• Tenzin disappeared and neither he nor the original Lesson of Life were ever seen again. Now the Lessons of Life are to be found, in a complete form, only in the heads of the true Amchi, for it is their duty to learn and memorise the lessons and pass them on to their successors.
• It is also the duty of the true Amchi to teach the Lessons of Life, so that people are helped to live life to the full and maximize the joys life brings.
• As Sangratan explained the origins of the lessons of Life, I found his deep voice and slight lisp strangely hypnotic. His eyes which had seemed watchful and probing, softened, and as I listened I found myself picturing an idyllic past.
• When he had stopped speaking I continued to imagine the wonderful world of Tenzin and the other Amchi, where men and women lived in harmony. Finally I looked up to see Tulsi had arrived with the chai. I had been lost in my imagining. They were both smiling indulgently at me.
• Sangratan shook his head. “The world was never that good Bill-ji. If it had been, the Lessons of Life would not have been needed.”

 

Chapter 3: The First Lesson of Life

• Sangratan explained that the first Lesson of Life helps you find the answer to the questions: Who am I? What should I be doing? These are the words of Sangratan.
• You must learn to determine what you value, and how much you value it. For if you are not clear what you value, you will never be fulfilled; you will waste your life and never find joy.
• The first Lesson of Life is, therefore, to keep in front of you what you value most. Then you can go on to decide what you want, and how much you want it in relation to the other things that life presents.
• Life is about change. Everything changes. We call some things ‘good’ and some things ‘bad’. We value everything according to our needs, our understanding, what we have been told, what we sense and what we learn is right.
• Our values define us, as a group, and one from the other. But we change. We learn and forget, strive and succeed, or strive and fail. Often what we most value changes with time and circumstances. What seemed very important at a particular age, in one set of circumstances, may have hardly any importance to us when we are older, in different circumstances.
• People want different things at different times for life is for-ever moving. Some people do not know what they value and do not know what they want. They want things because they are there. People often appear to have everything, yet they suffer from feeling unfulfilled, confused, disgruntled or simply unhappy.
• Sometimes our values change yet our behaviour, through habit or thoughtlessness, continues as before. This makes us increasingly frustrated and unhappy. Life presents so many different choices that we lose sight of, and do not pursue, that which is most important to us.
• We cannot have it all. Everything has a value and everything has to be earned. We should pursue what we value most at the time we value it most. Obtaining the things we truly value brings us joy.
• The first question we must ask ourselves is: what is important? This is not easy. Many people get the answer wrong. We are told by others what we should value. Sometimes we suppress what we value because it conflicts with the values of those we hold dear. We grow up to put great value on many things, but we also have many things thrust upon us by others.
• The first Lesson of Life teaches us that we need to answer these questions: What do I really value? Why do I value it/them/him/her? What is most important to me? When we give honest answers to these questions, we can give a clear purpose to our lives.
• There are so many things that we give great value to, for many different reasons, but everything changes. Sometimes the change in our values is dramatically quick, sometimes so very slow that it is not until we stop to think that we realize a change has occurred.
• As our mother’s strength declines, they need our care, and for us to protect them. As our relationship with them changes, why we value them also changes. We value them not so much for what they give us but for what they have given us in the past. But the past is not before our eyes as the present is. Unless we make the effort we cannot see the past as clearly as we should. The Lessons of Life teach us to make that effort.
• By regularly asking ourselves why we value some thing or some person, we help ourselves to appreciate the object or person we value better, and understand ourselves more. This is true not only of objects and people but of principles, relationships and desires as well.
• The third question we ask ourselves – What is most important to me? – is to determine if there is a conflict between what we value most and what we think is most important for us. To live in harmony with ourselves there must be harmony between what we think is most important and what we  most value.
• So often when we see those who are unhappy we find that what they value most has been lost within them, and overcome by things they do not really care about. By regularly thinking about what we value, we ensure that we always pursue what is most important to us.
• To determine what is most important to us, we must ask ourselves these further questions: What do I spend most of my time wishing for? What is it I have always wanted? What is it that gives me most pleasure? What do I most regret? What ways of being do I find most admirable in others and myself?
• Is there a contradiction between our values, and what we spend most of our lives wishing, craving, wanting or working for? If so, we must reassess what we believe to ensure our values reflect the true importance we give objects, creatures or people.
• For those of us who want to be in control of our lives, this process of value assessment is the very first step, for it is these values by which we give purpose to our lives. This assessment should not be seen as a once-in-a-lifetime event.
• The first Lesson of Life is to see the value in everything and to always know at any one time what we value most so that we can give that most importance. To do this we must continuously reassess our relationships with objects and all sentient creatures.
• Sangratan’s words inspired me to look at everything with new eyes and to ask, ‘Do I value this?’ I discovered how much I loved my wife and, in the process I was discovering a new me.

 

Chapter 4: The Second Lesson of Life