What’s “The Cup of Life”?

 

In the new age of short-lived Reels and Shorts, articles like the one below might find very few audiences. But for those who do visit this page today, please spare a few minutes to read.

Buddhism has a very unique way of understanding the life and one aspect of their life lessons is how we learn from our surroundings. The very pillars of life on earth are centered on the mantra of – Learn, Grow, Teach and Repeat. This is how creatures have evolved and have adopted to their surroundings in this vast luring earth.

The Cup of Life” denotes the very nature of life to understand and nurture the knowledge from the surroundings. All human beings are flawed and that’s how we learn and grow. But in the long run some of the characters and attributes like ego, self-esteem, shyness, anger and carelessness can create a barricade in attracting knowledge towards us. This is where emptying our cup comes into play – we should wear off our ill-senses before we try to learn something new from someone. So once our cup of knowledge is empty without any ill-desires then everything we listen and learn will start getting incorporated into our life. This is what we call “Filling the Cup”.

So once we have filled our cup, is everything finished? Have we learnt everything at once? Never….

Asking ourselves a question once a while about what is the meaning of life shouldn’t actually offend us even in front of everyone. Why should we be hesitant to talk about our own lives when we know that, everything we do is to feed our mouths and run this life? So, understanding what’s the purpose of life could actually take lots of time which usually we people don’t have now-a-days. The sprinting world has got less time to understand the life, then what has it got the time for???

You take birth in a remote place, you learn from your parents, you start to grab every bit of knowledge from the surroundings and you keep growing. You learn tirelessly, you achieve great wonders and you become successful with a better life than what you had previously. One day you die even without any sound around. What do you think might happen next? Your family, the ones who have inherited your fortune would lavishly enjoy and barely remember you for your work, your tireless hours and your growth from no-one. What do you think is missing in this???

He learnt, he grew and he repeated but he failed to teach them to his surroundings. Does it really have any impact on our lives? Yes, it does…

Either you become a superhero and shower down blessings on everyone or you gradually try to create an impact on others lives. To do so is to create a value in the people and not just in your own. The value you create in the people will surely return you with compounded value throughout your life. We need to pour the cup before we can learn a new thing again. And to repeat the mantra of evolution, we need to teach others and help them in filling their cups.

Gratitude is always welcomed and a person who knows to thank the people who have impacted in his life will surely know to create a value in others. One of my friends once gave me a great advice, “We could always thank one or the other person for every good thing we do and for every single step we grow. By doing so, we neither develop the ego of being better than others nor we boast ourselves for the success we have got.”

I call this the “Passing of Baton”. By thanking and inculcating the habit of gratitude we actually pass the luxury of fame to the person who taught us it well.

Learn from everyone – Most of the experienced and the well-established people in the world throw us a hint of how to behave. The best way I have heard is to “Be the Sponge”. Most of the times we fail to learn only because we hate them, we don’t talk to them or we hesitate to talk with them. I think most of us can agree with this issue. Most of the intellect gets wasted out in badly understand the relationships and the friendships. So, I would like to propose you a method wherein we all start adopting a habit called “No masking” – not the physical N-95 masks. We could go out there to the people we hate, to the people we feel angry about, to the people we never cared and just sit for sometime without any ill-thoughts in mind. The day we start listening and learning things from everyone of those is the day we are free from such ill-desires and bad thoughts.

Never judge anyone. Every person has one or the other reason which might have felt otherwise to you. The prejudgment could actually cost heavy on us in the long run. Whatever you listen, however you feel at first and whosoever undermines you – never judge a person. Every person in this world is a gem and we should know how to value them.

When we try to be a sponge we actually take in every criticism, every suggestion and every new thing to learn. Keeping it, preserving it or following it, is what is left to the individual but the most important would be to show the flexibility in learning and adopting to the new changes that come by every single day in this journey of life.

There are more people among us who fail to open up and communicate with the ideas and knowledge that they have, including me. This understanding of “The Cup of Life” has become a new start in my life to learn how to educate ourselves and pass on the baton. It has given me the strength to accept myself and empty my cup to a whole new group of people. I feel this could mobilize a whole new level of knowledge among us. Many of them have been doing this for a long time and let us try to be one among them.

Let us implement this mantra – “Learn, Grow, Teach and Repeat” …

If you have found this note-worthy and have felt true then do follow the third mantra – “Teach”. And to teach you need to share this article with as many people as possible. Let us be a part of this new evolving world…

- Abhishek Hirewodeyar

abhihirewodeyar98@gmail.com