Nirvana is Not the End of the Road

Think Tank #152

When left unchecked, my tendency is towards anxiety. I overthink, plan for eventualities before they actually happen. I try to maximize every second—capitalize on every moment in the hopes of one day reaching an elusive future ideal in which I can finally ‘relax.’

It doesn’t happen. For one, life has gotten in the way virtually every time I have tried. A less demanding week at work typically invites a personal emergency; a truly empty moment brings a bout of idle dread, not quiet introspection.

It’s almost like the universe is trying to tell me something. What is making me succumb to this lie, anyway? Why do I feel like I can only relax at home, and even then, only when that ‘home’ is guaranteed for me for an extended period of time, with no chance of that ever changing anytime soon? Why do I feel the need to fill each quiet moment, yet complain when I can’t seem to find a second of peace?

I had an interesting experience this morning. It was one of those transcendental moments, where you feel like your life is a movie that you are watching from the outside.

I was on the train, looking at my distorted reflection in the dirty window across from me. I found myself listening to a song I’d never heard before—something by Elton John. Suddenly, my mind started clouding.

Where was I going? Well, work, but why was I going there? I didn’t have to. It didn’t matter. For just a moment, I was a free agent, coasting through life without a care, melting into the atmosphere around me.

I was no different than the woman with the nervous expression bringing her three young kids to school, or the tired man with on the bench next to me dozing in and out of sleep, his legs outstretched into the aisle while mine were tucked neatly underneath me. We were going to different places, but our journeys would end the same way. Despite all of my clinging and manipulating and frantically keeping my affairs in order, my life wasn’t really mine.

Maybe this was the lesson—that stress doesn’t pay, that whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless. That it doesn’t even matter what happens, because the safety net we desperately weave for ourselves is just millimeters thick, and no matter how far we fall, the ground lies somewhere.

Suddenly I learned to trust life, to trust my intuition. I had found that peace at one point, before stress and fruitless people-pleasing and control-seeking sucked me right back in.

John told me about someone once. He was a Buddhist monk or some other type of spiritual guru (the details are fuzzy but I think I remember the gist of it). He achieved Nirvana or enlightenment or whatever, enjoyed the bliss of being one with everything, the absolute best that he could be. Then he fell, retreated into his old ways.

He took this as a personal failure, and it discouraged him for a very long time. It was only later that he learned that it’s not possible to stay there all the time. He had to find that elusive mental paradise all over again, and when he did, he realized that true spiritual enlightenment isn’t locating it once, but knowing how to get back there quickly, even when life inevitably diverts your attention. In other words, the goal isn’t simply reaching enlightenment, but spending as much time there as humanly possible.

It takes time and it takes toughness. At times it seems like the entire world has been designed to distract us from this place. Who knows? This might even be true. Regardless, people aren’t perfect and we never will be. All we can do is minimize our time between Nirvanas.

Our most important life’s work may simply be a mental roadmap of how to get there. No shortcuts—just efficient routes originating from any point where one might end up. If you can find them all—well then, you might just be God.

Perfection is impossible (for humans, at least). That’s the lesson that I have to keep teaching myself.

It’s only by dispensing with the idea that we can get as close as possible.

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