There are a lot of buzz words in the domain of self improvement and perhaps even in the movement for liberation. Positive thinking, not giving up, realizing your potential, fighting for what you deserve and so on. Even “bliss” is aspired for and designing a life of freedom appears to be a grand goal. A little bit of reflection and we realize that nothing whatsoever is guaranteed and much of what we think is good or worth pursuing is actually bondage. With a straightjacketed focus on anything that appears desirable, be it something as basic as good health, not to speak of joy or good fortune, we invariably create more bondage.

Even the sun and stars live in bondage, lit up and dying in the chains of cause and effect. Many of us are consumed with the desire for good health. Some introspection and it becomes evident that we control very little of our own bodies and in fact the body is really a burden and the mind endlessly fickle. If we can come upon moments of peace without the usual aspiring or controlling or overcoming, there dawns an inescapable sorrow. That all that we value will be nothing and all that we think is pleasure actually generates unhappiness. And all our striving is at the end of the day really quite pointless.

The buzz words or phrases mentioned celebrate success and effort. A life successfully lived seems a worthwhile aim and we fail to see that all our efforts set up perpetual inadequacy. It really does appear that ‘ordinary’ is the least bondage! A life lived simply and with very little begets an unfettered mind and if we are lucky, peace that depends on very little. Everything else, no matter what popular, conventional rhetoric propounds is just plainly more bondage.