Nirvana Dropout

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if all your goals in your life are achieved?
Imagine that your goal is to climb Mountain peak, which you feel will bring to you the utmost satisfaction, glory or money in life and provide you with the happiness that you so rightfully deserve. You make all the preparation for your hard, tough and stressful journey to climb the mountain, which obviously includes first learning mountain climbing, then buying the right gear and sacrificing a lot of your regular life, in your zeal to achieve your goal.
You start climbing with a lot of enthusiasm and find that as you reach each milestone, you know that you are on the right path and you push yourself forward with more dedication. You find many other climbers on the way, few of them struggling and few join with you for a short duration, till you find out that they are slowing you down. You again sacrifice the comfort and safety of a companion and continue your march, quite correctly your goal is very important to you.
After a lot of struggles, sacrifices, pains and bruises, you find yourself half-way through and you can clearly see the peak that is in front of you. You can also have the liberty to look down the path you’ve taken. You are now in a much better position to understand your own self and can predict your future with a certain amount of confidence.
You start reminiscing and feel a certain loss for not slowing down for your fellow companions. You can now clearly weigh in the losses viz a viz the gain in your life and you don’t feel mighty happy about it. Your goal is still there, right in front of you, but you know the path now and the mystery is almost solved, the unknowns are now part of your experiences.
The mountain peak doesn’t look so imposing now, it has become assailable and you know how to reach the peak. The challenge of reaching the summit is no longer challenging enough, you find that the goal that you had set before the start of your climb is not tempting enough, do you still foolishly continue your climb, knowing very well the futility of it all or stop?
Stop and do what? You can’t climb down and throw away all your past experiences and struggles, neither can you find yourself aligning yourself with another goal. Any other goal seems as preposterous as the first one and you know it’s not worth the efforts. You sure can write a book, sharing your learning and probably guide the other climbers, but it won’t sell if you tell them not to climb in the first place and the futility of all their efforts.
You come to peace with yourself, find happiness in the knowledge gained and stop all your struggles towards life. Life does not require any struggle, it’s as easy as breathing and you know it all.
You have become, what I call a Nirvana Dropout. A person who understands the futility of walking on any path that you know for sure will only lead to loss of time and ageing.
All the goals in your life and the paths that lead to them are all very similar for everyone and as long as you keep running till the end of your life, never stopping and thinking or taking any break from it, you’ll be just fine. Ignorance is a bliss and your problem commences when you find yourself enlightened. Knowing is a curse, you really can’t go back to your blissful and happy days back again, you know for sure that it is not worth it, again you can’t really move on as you acknowledge its futility. You are stuck in between, you have become a Nirvana Dropout.

Leave a Reply
