Seeking Nirvana, everywhere, all at once

There’s a reason why no one calls old people hopeful. As you grow old, the precious experience you gain has one rather unfortunate consequence – it beats the hope out of you.

Thus, hope is best reserved for the ‘young hopefuls’. One kid, almost thirty, trudges into her open balcony for the first time in a week. She plonks down on a little mat, and takes a deep determined breath. There’re 5 apps on her phone that do a hella good job of distraction, but that’s not what she’s here for. Today, the one for meditation wins the attention pot. Closing her eyes and slowing down is a task. ‘Treat your thoughts like they are buses passing by’, the serene voice commands gently, but the thoughts feel more like buses hurtling one after another, eager for a pileup at the intersection. Nonetheless, she endures.

Another kid picks up a self-help book, determined to change the habits that do not work for him anymore. Going to the gym seems like misery at first, and confronting his fear of failure by trying at things that do not come easy to him frighten him to tears, but he sustains. The muscles labor under the yoke of iron, and he feels a hundred eyes on him even though he knows, no one is looking. Nonetheless, he endures. He knows that something good awaits on the other side of the wall of old habits.

You might see more wherever you go, anxiously searching therapists online, skeptically perusing adult coloring books, sipping a cup of tea in the evening sun or mulling over quitting their job to find satisfaction. Maybe you see them in the mirror, outwardly unchanged, a storm of rapid transformations brewing within.

They’re all seeking something, something elusive and aspirational that isn’t attained with a right swipe or an ‘add to cart’ – they’re seeking Nirvana.

Nirvana is freedom from worldly troubles – no sickness, no disease, no fear of death. For millennials that translates into no EMI payments, no shitty exes, no work deadlines, no insecurities, no body image issues, no depression. An embargo from the world, from footsteps trodden by many before, from sadness, perhaps even from the highs of fleeting bliss. The blur of alcohol or the taste of the big bucks beckons but doesn’t sustain, and we’re back again, seeking.

There was a definitive image of the ‘Nirvana seeker’ that seemed to form in our imagination as a child – a bald man with closed eyes and serene smile, wrapped in faded orange vests, sitting under the shade of a tree meditating on life, beyond the daily issues that make us say ‘life is complicated’. I imagined this particular bald gentleman surrounded by blue birds, curious deer and the trees all sort of leaning into him, much like they do with Disney princesses. Think Belle from ‘Beauty and the Beast’, with more open space and lesser kitchen cutlery.

Maybe this image has come out of reality – at one point, ascetics and sages were the ones who sought Nirvana, the only kinds of persons who hovered a little beyond reality, so exhausted of the chaos they devoted themselves to finding divine peace.

Today, Nirvana seekers are a dime a dozen (Maybe it’s a good thing?).

You can find them if you know what to look for, eyes closed, breathing deep and taking a moment for themselves in a traffic jam that tests the limits of patience, or in the ten-minute sliver of time between Zoom meetings. They may not have the luxury of disappearing into the mountains for eternity, but they do take off into the quiet thickets of their mind, shutting out the noise, dropping the weight of responsibilities, all but one, that they have promised themselves that they will seek Nirvana.

Some days those ten minutes will prove fruitful. The seeker might see a glimmer of peace, immersing into themselves, unaware of their mental chatter, no past or future, just the present, a steady breath, and a steady heartbeat. Other days may not be as effective – this is the hunt for Nirvana is a world that looks like a purgatory of distractions, notifications and beeping horns, unfiltered information and the Kardashians.

This doesn’t mean the fruit is rotten; it’s just not ripe for the plucking yet.

There’s no sugar coating it – some days, it is too hard. The map to Nirvana crumbles beneath the worst thoughts of yourself, thoughts that roll around like an entangled ball through the corridors of your mind, or drowns in the swamp of sad. You indulge in the hell scape of chaos instead of the valiant little trip to Nirvana you so yearned for.

No one said this would be easy.

There’s little room for absolutes left in our world today – we exist in all of our different states at once. If this wasn’t complicated enough, there are harsh questions to be asked too, and they will call all our carefully-pretended dynamics into question –When we’re seeking that ultimate connection with the divine, who pays the rent? Can women go off seeking Nirvana too like men used to, leaving her household to the lurch? Can you live a life of no expectations when capitalism tells you that everything you fancy can be bought? Do we fight for feminism or trans rights, or do we simply walk away seeking peace and lose hope with the waking world?

What good is fighting tooth and nail to improve the waking world when we want no part of it?

We may not have all the answers. How can we, when we sit stiff in an ergonomic chair, no curious deer but a nosy colleague looking at us as we close our eyes to the encouragement of a gentle, accented man telling us to observe our thoughts, not dwell on them? Perhaps I want to be Gautam Buddha, meditate for years and have the forest consume me, vines growing over my body and skin changing to the color of dirt, not worrying about SPF 50 and things like that. Or perhaps I just want a glimpse, but then come back to the Matrix.

Ultimately, I am not sure what our generation will be recognized by – the Nirvana we do find, or our hopeful, maybe even endless, search for it. But in this lifetime (or perhaps a previous one), if you’ve waited for a slice of cheesy margarita, you can wait for Nirvana too. All good things take time.