On My Way to a Life Worth Living

A reflective essay by Arjun Singh Rajora, submitted for my final essay for a course which focused on discussing what makes a life worth living

I decided to get braces when I was in the tenth grade. 

I always had a crooked front tooth and it never bothered me. All my pictures from every vacation from primary school to the end of middle school showed a cheesy smile on a boy with bright blue glasses. One day as I was posing for a picture someone shouted, ”You’re smiling but your teeth are fighting!”, as they overlapped each other. All of a sudden, I began to perceive myself. 

By the end of my final year of high school, I had ‘fixed’ my smile, my skin, the frames of my glasses, the pleats on my pants, shaved daily, got a suave hairstyle, enhanced my vocabulary, put on 20 pounds of muscle, shaved off the same amount in fat and was now six feet tall. I always knew I wanted to be something, I was very ambitious and my teachers and friends could see it. I woke up every morning at 5:30 sharp, always got in a workout before breakfast and studied hard throughout the day. Living as a Hindu meant that my Dharma- responsibility to my family, my teachers and my community came first– and I continued along my Brahmacharya (student phase).

But every relationship I had, with my friends, my teachers, and others always felt as if it was through a barrier. I talked to people and whatever they said seemed to make sense, but did not matter. The responsibilities were upheld and the relationships maintained, but it seemed to be an obligation rather than something I wanted. Somehow, people’s criticism affected me, but their words of encouragement didn’t!

Last semester, I decided to take a stand and fix this. I thought the reason was that I didn’t understand the human psyche well enough, and I did the thing I knew best- read. I read about anthropology, studied human hormones, how dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin and serotonin affect our psyche and moods but I didn’t make much progress on why it would change. I went on an experiment back then too- trying to optimize my actions in daily life on the basis of Game Theory Optimization. The goal was to ensure higher rates of success in my social interactions, and it worked– but I didn’t feel any better. In an engineer’s words, the signals were stronger, but what the signals meant remained elusive.

Late December, after a particularly bad night tossing in my bed, I picked up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Reading the Roman Emperor’s diary, it surprised me the whole first chapter just him simply being grateful for everybody in his life. All I had known of Stoicism was that it meant to not let external factors affect your psyche, and here– Book I, Meditations– this man was talking about and thanking his everyone he had ever met!

Over time, I adopted the Stoic philosophy along with Hinduism into my beliefs, meditating daily and focusing on enhancing inner control.

Stoicism considers the world to be deterministic (but with infinitely many unknown initial conditions which makes it an equation you cannot solve) while Hinduism considers the forces of Karma to return upon you, with your bad and good actions creating an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s Third Law but with latency, in a sense), over the course of many lifetimes (assuming n --> infinity, which would mean this is a recursive equation with no closed form solution, and thus you cannot predict anything) leading both to the same conclusion- we should live our life well with no expectations of anything- ie. your Dharma or principles must guide your actions.

Just as Professor Ard Louis mentioned, I too, believe that science and math reinforce my beliefs in my faith and philosophy, there are no contradictions.

But Buddhism is where I really stumbled. The concept of letting go of the self– it paralyzed me. The reason I was suffering was staring at me in the face- I was too attached to the self as the Buddha said. I considered myself as my responsibilities, my grades and my relationships. If I don’t see the results for myself do I stop working hard? My dukkha, suffering, was the one of self-delusion– living in my own fantasies of achieving an arbitrary goal, while ignoring the present– the dukkha due to sankhara, believing that I am a ‘self’, separate from the world.

Waking up from my delusions, I decided to finally tackle the question ‘Who Am I’ for the first time in my learning journal-

WHO, the context of my life: I am a cheerful student studying engineering and Chinese in Hong Kong from a disciplined boarding school, with a family that moved cities every 4 years.

AM, what is my source of living: I enjoy the beauty of the world and getting better at my regular activities-  being curious to the outside world and disciplined to the one inside.

I, what makes me unique: I am a bridge, integrating the technical and the humanities, the cultures of India with the Chinese, the process of meditation with the goal of success.

Now, my life read like a story, just something to be aware of. The ‘life I led’ was just one of many paths that I could have walked upon. Instead of my grades, hobbies or relationships, I’d like to believe that I am a thinker, that I’m kind, and ambitious– someone who creates action rather than possesses. The Upanishads mention that the Aatman (essence) remains the same despite the changes in the Maya (the material world).

This would mean that I am an actor, playing the role of an engineering student at the moment, it is not my self, and thus not an attachment I suffer due to.

I had internally framed self-optimization as a responsibility to become my best self through the point of Dharma- which means Hinduism for me had been quite ‘Effective’ on the R.E.S.T. scale, but I had been lacking on the ‘Self-Reflective’, of how these aspects were helping me. 

Through continued meditation and bhakti, as mentioned in the Gita, I was able to come into a headspace of the discipline and frequent introspection I needed- the gym, the continuous study, the maintenance of relations are all rituals to enhance your life, the Nishkama Karma as mentioned by the Bhagavad Gita. The six-packs, the good grades, the charm you get may simply be by-products to keep you motivated, they are not the end goal. 

‘You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of the work’– Krishna, Gita.

The week of Utilitarianism really gave me an ‘aha’ moment. As we started off the tutorial with a discussion on Hedonism– the maximising of pleasure while minimizing pain, as a Stoic, I was quick to dismiss it. My philosophy of maintaining discipline seemed to be at odds with maximizing pleasure. But in discussion with my tutor and friend, I realised that both small pleasures and small pains add up. If you interact with a person whose company you don’t enjoy, the Hindu/Stoic framework I had at the time suggested that this is simply something you must endure. But look at it another way- a tooth doesn’t get knocked out easily, but every dentist tells you if you fidget with your tooth everyday, in a few months it will easily be dislodged. It is better to avoid some personalities that only cause a negative drain in your energy. Similarly, the joy you get from going on a walk in the Sun and talking to your friends everyday would increase your happiness levels more than enough that you do not struggle against the vices of apathy and loneliness.

Professor Chua’s well loved concept of the Daoist flatulence also means that you should let the universe or the Dao let you engage in simple pleasures without trying to control every aspect of your life, which made me realize I had to loosen control a little bit.

On further study, I realized both Hinduism and Stoicism also account for this. The Stoics frame it as you are a dog tied to a cart. ‘You can either struggle about the entire journey, sleep peacefully on the cart, or run along alongside exploring the view- but the cart will always end up at Athens’– Zeno of Citium.

This makes sense even from the perspective of considering karma as a complex equation, if you could fix up the small variables and constants- daily meditation, sunlight, good food, wouldn’t it have to make a positive impact in the final answer? This seems a satisfactory answer for me, that I have autonomy in my actions, even if not in my final destination.

The true issue for me wasn’t that I only perceived others’ negative actions, it was that I simply didn’t see enough. As I crossed every step in my journey towards figuring out my own life worth living, it was as if a blindfold was pulled lower and lower down my face, and I could slowly see farther into the beautiful horizon. As Professor Chua mentioned– “the Mind must open, to close on a good idea.”

My way forward is a project I call the ‘Recursive Karma Log’. To work in principle with all this pondering, I am moving from social optimization to internal calibration.

For the next year, I am tracking the constants of my life: meditation, acts of Dharma, and intentional joy, against my levels of internal entropy- how did I feel about it. Unlike my previous experiments, which sought to maximize external 'success rates,' this project seeks to stabilize the 'Self' as a Bridge, while working towards the goal of finding my Satya (truth), as a person. Every day begins and ends with ten minutes of meditation, and at least one activity that brings joy- walking in the park, reading a good book, lifting heavy in the gym or running across the harbour. To track it I’ve got a pen, paper and a stress test in my watch. I might very well find out that meditation does not affect my stress levels at all over the long run, but I have seen positive results for now. 

After all these dangerous questions faced in this course, week-by-week I gained confidence in my framework of Stoicism-Hinduism. I can always work harder, think more, do more– but the key is to maintain good rituals, which can serve me well further. I am no longer trying to solve the equation of my life, I am simply ensuring the derivation is written with integrity– allowing the universe to help me on my journey.