Have you ever wondered why it is people find it so difficult to get on? From the outside it seems we are rigged for war. There is conflict between husbands and wives, parents and children, teachers and pupils, bosses and employees, fellow workers. So much friction and so much unhappiness. Is there something innately wrong in people that they can’t learn to live happily with one another?

According to my past training, I would have gone along with the common orthodoxy which tells us that that the cause of this friction and unhappiness is that we are suffering from low self esteem, lack of love, deep psychological problems, mental illness or the absence of the right kind of drug which is supposed to restore our brain chemistry to right functioning.

Since being introduced to the teachings of Vedanta, however, I now see that the root cause is that we are suffering from a misguided UNDERSTANDING of what is important in living a happy and satisfying life with others. As a consequence we have insufficient PRACTICE in living in a WAY which, in itself, brings about a quality of mind which is happy and is directly the result of a certain way of associating with others. Below is an extract from a longer article of mine entitled ‘Living Rightly With Others’. Continue reading →