Beating stress through Eastern Philosophy

As you must have gathered by now I have no short term fixes to help you to deal with stress. I am asking you to accept, think over and make real to yourself certain concepts, which will result in your looking at the world in an entirely new way. This will result in your de-hypnotizing yourself from false beliefs. It will take time and effort but the resulting changed outlook will stay with you and help you for the rest of your life. And this will help beat stress and many other ills of modern life.

The concepts were explained in the first chapter, the worldview. Briefly they are as under:

1) All is impermanent.

2) All is unsatisfactory.

3) All is a manifestation of the Tao. This is the Zen Chinese view.

4) All is Not-Self. The BMI (Body–mind-intellect) is not the Brahmin. This is the view of the Vedanta of India. This concept and the one above are two ways of looking at the same thing and lead to the same result – your not taking the ego and its needs as seriously as you did before. Use whichever concept you find most useful.

5) The Universe is one organic whole – a view of the ancient eastern philosophies that is confirmed by Quantum physics.

6) You will have to die one day. Meditate on death. In time it will result in a sense of release. Make the concept of your death real to yourself. To repeat a verse I stated in the opening chapter :-

Of all footprints,

That of the elephant is supreme,

Of all mindful meditations,

That on death is supreme

I am also asking you to get into the habit of witnessing the mind and its antics. Be regular in your meditation practice (any meditation practice). That is also I think essential. This will help t deal with stress.

In time you will observe the following changes in your life that will help you to deal with stress and eliminate it altogether from your habitual responses. You will get into the habit of:-

i) Accepting your stress: All is Tao and your stressful panicky state of mind is also a manifestation of God. Surrender to it. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle gives same essential guidelines to Surrender. This again is a powerful method of beating stress.

ii) Being prepared to accept whatever losses you may suffer: All is – in any case – impermanent and unsatisfactory. Whether you succeed or fail your situation is impermanent and unsatisfactory. This outlook will help you let go of attachments and aversions. Make this outlook real for yourself though meditation.

Meditation on death will give you a sense of release, as you will realize that in any case you will have to leave behind your wealth, possessions, relationships, achievements, failures and successes, your body and your mind. You can never really possess anything permanently. So why take the prospect of its loss so seriously now. Why take your likes and dislikes, your wants and your needs so seriously, why be obsessed by them? It will all came to an end and you can do nothing to prevent it. The is a cure for most ills and will certainly help to beat stress.

iii) You will have the attitude of a warrior dealing with all your challenges. When you are in the habit of witnessing without reacting it will be easy to dis-identify with the mind and its wants and fears. Meditation on death and impermanence will also help you release your attachments and aversions and fears. It will be easy enough then to be unshaken in the midst of all your troubles and thus avoid stress.

As you are reading this you may be wondering what I am talking about. It may seem like castles in the sky. But I am speaking from experience. All this is happening to me. I am not saying that this process is happened this process of my de-hypnotizing myself from a false way of looking at the world is taking place in me. I am also not saying that I am up to facing any and all challenges that life may bring. But it really does not matter does it? All is impermanent, all is unsatisfactory, and death comes as the end.

iv) Be free of the sense of compulsion – once you are free of your attachments and aversions through meditation on impermanence and death it will be easy also to let go of any sense of compulsion in you own mind. It will also be easy to witness it without identifying with it. Please, please start meditation regularly. That will help you witness and dis-identify and thus beat stress. Then you will do things because you want to do them and the conflict will end in your mind.

v) Get a sense of perspective – Bertrand Russell was a well known as agnostic, hedonist, mathematician and philosopher. He believed all religions to be both false and harmful. But despite the fact that I now dis-agree with many of his views, I have probably be more inspired and helped and learned more by a reading of his books than the books of any other author or authors.

In The Conquest of Happiness Russell makes the point that nothing that happens to as can have any cosmic significance. That is certainly true, the universe will continue to function whether we live or die or not, whether our problems are solved or not. Eastern Philosophy assures us that we can experience a Union with the whole of existence with the whole Universe; that you are in fact one with the Universe night now. It is just that you do not know it experientially. Russell would have dis-agreed with this view. But as far as our bodies & minds are concerned, as far as the needs of the ego, of our families or our jobs and businesses is concerned, as far - in fact - of everything that we now take to be our selves is concerned it is certainly true, that none of this has any cosmic significance. Get a larger view of life and the Universe and beat stress.

Russell states that to get a sense of perspective on our troubles, we should set ourselves to find out all the reasons why the feared event – if it happens will not be a catastrophe. Such reasons always exist because – as Russell says – nothing that happens, to the body and mind can have any cosmic significance. Convince yourself and your sub-conscious through intense moments of thought. These moments may be very brief but if we bring enough emotional intensity to these moments our sub-conscious outlook to life will change. Instead of be pre-occupied with the needs and fears of the ego we will feel exhilarated and up to the meeting of any challenge.

vi) Enjoy life in your moments of rest – this is easy enough. I don’t think I need to repeat myself. De-hypnotize yourself from false beliefs, change your world – view, learn to witness without reacting and surrender to the antics of the mind and the ego. All troubles will pass. In the end, we ourselves will pass. There is nothing we can do to change this. So why get an ulcer about it?

Again as I said before you will not come to this outlook though a reading of this book. You need to work at it. Through reading books, thinking and contemplating and meditating regularly. But it is more than worth it. This is a sort of Golden Master-Key that will enable us to face all the challenges of life - not just stress but many of the other ills of modern life.

Thank you for going through this ecourse. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something but now you need to put it into practice and that involves work - even a lot of work.

To repeat what i mentioned about the Buddha in the early part of this course - The Buddha cannot transfer his state of mind to you or me. We have to walk the path and nobody else can do it for us.

I wish you could do this as easily as making money when a friend gives you a hot stock market tip - but you can't. There is only so much that even the Buddha can do for you - and no more than that.

The one thing I can guarantee you is that these methods work. I have seen the changes in my own life.

Please join my newsletter and email me if you have any questions or comments. I promise to respond to all your queries within 48 hours. This much at least I can do for you and I will.

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