A Story of a Wisdom Seeker

There was a rich person who had all material things in his life. But he was tired of having everything in his life as he is left with no goal or wish to achieve anything more in his life.

The more you achieve you understand you don’t get satisfaction or happiness with it. A poor person has lots of wishes, desires in his life. That makes that persons life going. But for rich person all his wishes are complete and he understands the things which he was running after are meaningless. He realizes that’s mirage.

Then this mas starts seeking for wisdom, the ultimate truth. He starts his search for Guru who will guide him. Someone tells him the wise person resides in Himalayas. He takes effort to find him in Himalayas. Finally, he finds that wise person sitting in ice under a tree. The rich man is very tired by the time he finds the wise man. He greets the wise man and asks him how will I be happy, show me the way to achieve wisdom. The wise man asks for cigarette to him. The rich man gets surprised. But he offers few cigarettes to wise man. And ask again the same question. The wise man tells him get me few more cigarettes next time and I will tell the truth. The rich man gets stunned. He says I have very short life, I am very tired, let me know what should I do to get happiness. The wise man asks him to go home, take rest and come back. But, don’t forget to get cigarettes for me. The rich man becomes annoyed. The wise man says its up to you, if you feel like to come back you can, there are many people who come here to seek wisdom will get cigarettes for me. The rich man agrees to go back and thinks will come back if I am alive.

The depressed rich man starts thinking over what the wise man said to him. Go home and take rest. May be the wise man has spoken the truth in encoded message. So he understand ones home is his own mind. Free yourself, search peace within yourself, you will find happiness.

Rats In Cage

A psychologist named John B Calhoun performed a classic experiment with laboratory rats that demonstrated the territorial urge. He constructed a network of cages containing four pens, two with only one entrance which could be defined by dominant male and two in the middle which were difficult to defend. Two dominant males (with retinue of females) quickly established the desirable pens as their own territory, forcing the rest of the males to live in the central pens. The central pens became overcrowded and the rats fought constantly trying to establish territory. As the overcrowding got worse, so did the rats behavior – they formed gangs and raped, killed and became cannibals.
In their natural state, rats have elaborate courtship rituals and rarely fight to death. Overcrowding had induced anti-social or criminal behavior in the rats.

Isn't that explains human behavior as well? Limited resources inducing anti-social behavior in overcrowded area.

Over population is root cause of many of the problems in India. Isn't it?

Reference - Written In Blood

Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs

The first need is food and water. A hungry or thirsty person will think about little else than finding something to eat and drink. They are not particularly interested in philosophy, music or may be even being nice to other people. But having satisfied the first need, people start thinking about the second need – shelter, a cave or a roof over the head. People search for security. Having achieved a food supply and somewhere to live, their minds turn to third need – love and sense of belonging. Humans are social animals; they need to be with other people. We need to feel loved, we need family and community. The fourth need is esteem – we not only want to belong to a family or community we want to be liked and respected. Fifth need is self-actualisation – the need to understand the world, to create or solve the problems just for fun of it.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps explain both altruistic and barbaric behavior in some situations.

My observation is some people can not rise ever... eg. few are stuck with their first need for the entire life even if they get plenty of food they are never satisfied... few get stuck with money (could be esteem as money gets you respect in society) how much ever they earn.

However few even if they have no money no food they have need to seek knowledge about the world and curious about the things around them keep solving the puzzles... few earns money so that they can solve the puzzles about the world and help the other.

So the hierarchy explained by Maslow is common behavior of people but there are exceptions. Everyone has different needs.

Reference - Written In Blood