What is seriousness?
Seriousness is nothing but paying undue importance to something, at the cost of everything else. It stems from the inability to see that all of life is just a drama that is unfolding every minute. Seriousness is the result of over-expectation from life.
A small story:
Two boys were building sand castles on the beach.
They suddenly had a quarrel and one of the boys got angry and kicked the sand castle.
The other boy went and complained to the king about his serious problem.
The king began to laugh at him for making so much out of just sand castles.
But the king’s advisor, a Zen monk, started laughing at the king.
He asked, “When you can fight battles and lose your sleep over stone castles, why do you laugh at these boys for fighting over sand castles?”
All our seriousness is just about sandcastles! Understand that. For the child, at that young age, sand castles seem precious, whereas for us at our age, stone castles seem precious, that’s all. Whether it is a sand castle or stone castle, the seriousness behind it is the same; just the object of seriousness is different. So don’t laugh when children fight over sand castles.
Seriousness closes your mind to the openness and freedom of life. It makes you dull and dead. It curbs your thinking and makes you stick to the familiar patterns that you know all the time.
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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.
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