Fr. Anthony De Mello was a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist from Bombay, India. Awareness essentially is a transcript from a series of lectures Fr. De Mello gave at Fordham University in the mid 1980’s, shortly before his death.
Fr. De Mello experienced a transformation following an encounter he had with a rickshaw driver in Calcutta. Ramchandra suffered from tuberculosis, had no hope for the future, and struggled every day to make enough money to feed his wife and children. To make additional money, Ramchandra had sold his skeleton (in advance, of course!) on the black market. Yet his attitude was always positive, always upbeat, always grateful for the present moment. After speaking with Ramchandra, wrote Fr. De Mello, “I realized that I was in the presence of a mystic. He was alive; I was dead.”
That realization led De Mello to re-examine his entire approach to life. As he went deeper, he came to understand the profound wisdom of Ramchandra: that happiness and psychological freedom are intrinsically tied together; that no thing and no person has the power to make us happy or miserable; and that our unhappiness is caused solely by our conditioned, false beliefs that we must have things, people, and circumstances to be happy. As he said so well: “Life is easy. Life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.”
Just as the Buddha taught, Fr. De Mello said that the uprooting of sorrow and unhappiness was possible through a ceaseless awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and reactions, which would enable us to become aware of the programming that led to those habitual thoughts, feelings, and reactions. With the programming exposed in the light of awareness, we would see the absurdity of our conditioned beliefs and drop them, thereby enabling us to experience the fullness of life.
Awareness impacts The 3 Life Questions™ in a subtle but important way. The journey to answering “Yes!” to The 3 Life Questions involves a willingness to take a long, hard look inside. One must be willing to explore one’s beliefs about the meaning of success, self-worth, and the nature of authentic, lasting relationships. This voyage may feel perilous at times, but the results absolutely are worth it. After all, as Socrates is supposed to have said at his trial, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Chris Kenny, The 3 Life Questions™
