Seeking Fulfillment through Objects
First truth: whatever you may be seeking in your life, you are seeking fulfillment. Please understand, you may be thinking you are seeking money, you are seeking love, you are seeking relationships, you are seeking wealth, you are seeking health. Whatever you may be thinking, you are seeking fulfillment.
Whenever you want something, some outer world object like a sweet or some gadget, your mind is constantly running towards that object. The moment you put that sweet into your mouth or that object comes in contact with your senses, immediately the running stops. You come back to the present moment. You falling back into the present moment is what radiates joy and satisfaction.
But you start thinking that the joy is coming from that object. No! If the joy was coming from that sweet, then after ten sweets the joy should be more. But it is not! As you believe, if the joy is from that sweet, the more the number of sweets the joy should be more. But it is not. Why? It is because the joy is not from that sweet. The joy is because your mind falls back to yourself.
Ramana Maharishi gives a beautiful example:
A dog which got a dry bone kept biting it. The dry bone started poking its own gums and blood started flowing. The dog started enjoying that blood thinking that the blood was coming from the bone! How the dog was mistaking the blood from its own mouth as the blood from the bone and it was enjoying it, in the same way you attribute the joy you experience through the sense pleasures to the object when actually that joy comes out of your own self.
If the dog starts thinking the blood is coming from the bone, it will just bite the bone more strongly. In the same way when you think that the joy comes from sense objects, you catch that sense object more strongly. When you put the sweet in your tongue, it is not ready to rest. You don't experience any more joy because your mind is now accustomed to the sweet. Suddenly you will see the emptiness after say ten sweets. The mind continuously asks, 'What next? What next? What next?'
The mind does not relax, rest, into that satisfaction. One part of your mind says, 'There is no joy in the object; the same joy is not there in that sweet.' But another part of your mind says, 'No, no, no, you are wrong! Try once more, try a little more. You may get little more joy…'
You are not ready to believe there is no joy in the object because that is the only thing you have in your hand. In that also if there is no hope, what will happen? You will become completely hopeless. That is too much. So you try to hold on. You try to add juice to the object from your own being and you try to enjoy. You are not ready to believe that there is no joy from the sense, from the object. You are not ready to accept that the joy is from your inner space, that the peace is because you are relaxing, resting.