Be Nobody by Lama Marut Page B

are not free. We get a hankering for a new iPhone and the itch begins: If only I had the new iPhone! You know, the one with that little computer voice named Siri that talks to you? Then I’d be happy . Or one or another of the myriad versions of the itch: If only that girl would pay attention to me. If only I had a better job. If only I were rich, famous, popular .
    I , I , I and if only , if only —the repetitive call of incessant yearning and discontent, the “somebody self” always wanting more.
    And so we try scratching. We save our money for the iPhone, or try to get the phone number from the beautiful babe or stud-muffin dude, or apply for a different job, or try to be more (more wealthy, more famous, more popular, more attractive) of a somebody.
    And every time we scratch, it’s in the hope that there won’t be any more itches.
    We all know what happens next. It’s just like those pesky mosquito bites—the more you scratch them, the more irresistibly the itch returns. The relief is at best temporary, and then after a brief respite the desire comes roaring back, more demanding than ever.
    And so freedom, we could say, is nothing more than the exalted state of itchlessness —being satisfied with everything we have, with “nothing left to lose,” as Janis Joplin says in her famous song, and nothing more to gain.
    The liberation we seek with all our scratching consists of simply not being beset with new and improved itches all the time. This is called by another name: “contentment,” and it is what we hope to attain with every attempt to satisfy our desires. We hope that, by fulfilling this particular craving, we won’t want anything more. We hope that each scratch will be the last one; that finally, with this one last scrape, we’ll be satisfied.
    Maybe there’s more than just contentment at the end of our spiritual journey. Maybe there’s heaven or a Pure Land with all kinds of rainbows in the sky and unicorns bounding about. And maybe we’ll all be angels, blissfully flapping around with supernatural abilities and X-Men superpowers. I can’t, in all honesty, say with any certainty that there won’t be.
    But I do know this: If we shoot for contentment—the Great Itchlessness—it won’t matter one way or the other. Once we become content, it will be impossible to be discontented with our lives and ourselves—with or without streets paved with gold and divine bodies made of beautiful light. It’s win-win when it comes to contentment! If there’s more in addition to that, great; and if there’s not, well, that will be OK too, because we’ll be content !
    And, of course, all this itching and scratching is in the service of being somebody . We believe that status and personal fulfillment will come through scratching, through obtaining something we don’t already have or more (or less) of what we already possess.
    This would be far more understandable if we were lacking the necessities of life. But for readers of this book, I’ll wager, it’s not for want of proper food or shelter or clothing, nor for lack of education or opportunities to make a decent living, nor due to the absence of friends and loved ones that we remain discontented with our lives.
    We aren’t among the three billion people living on two dollars and fifty cents a day or less, nor are we among the 80 percent of the earth’s population subsisting on less than ten dollars a day, nor among the one billion fellow human beings dwelling in slums, nor among a similar number who remain illiterate. 1
    What we really desire is the freedom from endless desires, especially when we already have so much. It’s liberation from our incessant whining about how we don’t have enough or aren’t somebody enough. As for the first, when it comes to wealth, consumer goods, leisure time, access to education and information—the nuts and