How to (re)remain content in a modern society that is drowning in more and more material things? And what do love and wealth have in common, and who can become the king of modern society, no matter how much he has under his finger?

“A satisfied person is never disappointed. He who knows how to stop is never exhausted, and has a long life ahead of him.” So wrote the great Lao Tse, which loosely translates as ‘wise old man’, who appeared in China in the sixth century BC, and was admired by Confucius himself (from the Tao Te Jing).

“Satisfaction is quite enough. Indeed, the blessing of eternity is hidden in your contentment.” This is also the thought bequeathed to us by the wise old man, Miroslav Tičar, who has translated his verses into Slovenian and prepared the wonderful accompanying notes to Lao Tse’s verses, and the contentment of which the verses speak is written, among other things: “The highest level of satisfaction is bliss. Joy that can be felt. /…/ I think we all want to achieve this, but we are often limited by our personality. Our unprocessed, unhealed traumas. Our conditioning by our culture, our environment, our perception of the world. Let us be aware of this moment from which everything comes.”

Starting points for self-questioning

But do we, modern people, even stop and think if we are satisfied? Satisfied with where we are and what we are? Do we know who we are? Is knowing who we are – and I am not talking about roles such as that of mother, that of daughter, that of partner, that of employee, that of colleague or, ultimately, that of consumer – a prerequisite for satisfaction in life?

My intention is not to answer these questions, but only to invite you to think about them or. I would like to invite you to think about them, and especially to think about possible answers. Everyone has his own answer, his own truth, and each truth may be right for the individual. My truth is not necessarily the same as my husband’s truth or my sister’s truth. What do I want to say? Just an example: if I see myself as a kind person, it is not necessarily that I will be perceived as kind by those around me. Or if I see myself as, say, too round, it is not necessarily the case that my husband will perceive me as round. He might perceive my body as – quite the opposite – very erect. But the main question here is, am I ready to accept my truth and be at peace with it and be content (with it or by it)?

And if I’ve already ‘crawled’ into the physical or. material side of our lives (if we recognise the body as a framework that gives space to our energy, our soul, our being), let me also lean on the Buddha, who is said to have said that it is lame to compare ourselves physically with others, when every body is unique (and created by the creation of our own consciousness). How true, isn’t it?

What (or who) is poisoning us?

The Buddha is also referred to in the Book of the Way (Tao Te Jing), when he says that when the Buddha was asked what poison was, he said that “Too much of anything is poison. And anything we accumulate too much of poisons us. It steals our peace. In appropriate quantities, certain foods are beneficial and desirable. Even a cake is too much. Therefore, the Way (Tao) is the way of balance and contentment.”

This brings us back to the material, which so obviously (and literally) shapes the world as we know it. Let’s just look around us at how much of something is accumulating. The accumulation of things. (Even Aristotle, walking among the stalls in the middle of ancient Athens, was scolded by the overabundance of ‘stuff’.) Not just things like cars – if we had one per family when I was growing up, nowadays every member of the family has one – but almost unlimited amounts of knick-knacks like cheap rags and costume jewellery, not to mention the various blinking electronic trinkets that a huge number of (bored) consumers order from the (sub-)continents to the east of us. Because it’s cheap. And because it’s within reach. Never mind that the price does not reflect the real cost, which should also include social and environmental externalities. (How horrified Aristotle would be only today!)

Who sewed our shirt, under what conditions and for what price, we ask ourselves? Do we ask ourselves how many living beings have suffered the damage caused by just that one tanker that transported that shirt (and a bunch of other stuff) from far away lands in the East? If we do not ask ourselves that, then we probably do not even ask ourselves whether we really need this and that, and if we do, whether it is possible to buy it closer. Or we might think that we can buy a shirt from the hands of a local seamstress, not only to turn our backs on the increasingly savage globalisation that has, unfortunately, done nothing to reduce social disparities in the world, but also to support a local artist in a concrete way. And that can be the case with all the things we really need. Including cosmetics, of course (if we’re already on the website of a natural cosmetics line 😀 ). And perhaps most importantly – because we consume it directly, because it is our life fuel! – this also applies to food.

As already recalled in one of the ‘Nanu blogs‘, everything we put into ourselves is ultimately transformed into our consciousness and ultimately into our thoughts, our actions. A healthy diet and, more broadly, a (truly) healthy lifestyle and thus (our) actions are thus unconditionally reflected in our appearance (one of my Ayurvedic teachers, for example, looks, without exaggeration, at least a decade younger than her birth certificate records! 😀 ), and therefore also on our skin. But since everything in this world is connected, you have to start somewhere. We can start by thinking about contentment, which leads us to (increasingly) deliberate moves and choices, which lead to (more) conscious living, which leads us to an actual sense of contentment. From this, peace, harmony and happiness are born, as the Indian guru Goenka beautifully enumerated in his meditations.

Love, wealth and the king of modern society

Perhaps, after all, we will realise – as the ‘wise old man’ Lao Tse also said – that “love is the fruit of renunciation, and wealth is the fruit of generosity”. What does this mean? Miroslav Tičar explains the verse by saying that “true love is not about giving what we don’t need. Love is in giving what we love most. And that is true wealth. Because nothing is really ours. We are only temporary possessors of things. What is truly ours is our attention and our time. We should manage it economically. That is how our contentment is born. Because it gives us the feeling that our time is being put to good use, and because we see that we know how to give attention to everyone who is worthy of it. In this way we do not waste our energy and we can live well and long. This can be a utopia for many, because we are taught that we have to adapt to the system, to the environment. It may be really good to adapt, but not to deny ourselves. Let us be soft as water. Even if it adapts to the terrain, it will find its way.”

In the end, then, instead of mindlessly buying and hoarding, we can choose to give and buy for the one who really needs what we buy. For example: a middle-class person who is living quite well, although not living in material excess himself, can give a part of his income each month to, say, a charity, or to a home for unaccompanied children, or to a safe house for victims of violence, or to a godparent for a homeless animal, or, at the moment, to, say, aid to Ukraine… or…. wherever it feels it wants to contribute. Or, instead of money, he gives his (precious!) time to a good cause, to volunteering. Believe it or not, such an individual will not feel at all middle-class at heart, and perhaps not even upper-class. No, such an individual may feel like a king of the society in which he or she resides. Such a person is truly inwardly infinitely rich. But words are not enough to describe this feeling; it has to be experienced. Satisfaction, as a feeling, is not and cannot be transferable. It can only be experienced.

The purpose of this post, in which I have tried to connect the thoughts of sages, to whom it is worth turning with the big questions that our legendary (now sadly deceased) professor of philosophy Tonči Kuzmanić put on our hearts as PhD students at the Faculty of Management in Primorje – questions such as, for example, probably the most intimate question, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I , who am I , who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I, who am I? (all the wise men of this world, of course, only help us to find the answers within ourselves) – is to awaken in the reader at least a hint of the desire for self-questioning. A self-questioning that will possibly lead to a longer (perhaps even lifelong) dialogue with oneself. Because only a quality inner dialogue can lead to the change we want to see in the world.

At this point, however, I leave it to the reader to find the sage who is partly quoted in the conclusion. 😁

p.s.: By the way, if the water analogy in between reminded you of the great Bruce Lee, you must watch (and if you’ve seen it, watch it again! 😀 ) one of his most inspiring clips: