We often think the problem lies in “fixing” our mental model of the world, as though if we could just polish it enough, we’d finally align with reality. But what if the problem isn’t in fixing at all? What if it’s in building the model in the first place? What if reality never asked us to fit it into a model—and our insistence on doing so is what gives rise to suffering?
We don’t stop acting just because we stop modeling. The world goes on. Life flows. Yet, when we cling to our models—underfitted or overfitted—we step not into the garden of reality, but into the prison of suffering.
The Two Arrows: Clean Pain vs. Suffering 🏹
Buddhist philosophy captures this distinction beautifully in the metaphor of the two arrows.
- The First Arrow (Clean Pain): Life’s raw experiences. A headache, heartbreak, hunger pangs, the loss of someone you love. These hurts are unavoidable—residual pains of existence.
- The Second Arrow (Suffering): The arrow we shoot ourselves with afterward. “Why me?” “This will never end.” “This proves I’m worthless.” The second arrow is the narrative born from our mental model. It is not the pain itself, but the amplification, the echo chamber of thought that turns sensation into suffering.
Let us take the example of a Combiflam tablet. The pill dulls the first arrow, muting pain signals in the brain. But the second arrow—our inner commentary—remains untouched. No pill can cure that because we are the ones firing it.
The Compulsion to Build: Why We Do This
Our brains evolved to build models for survival. Fire is hot, cliffs are dangerous, tigers can end you—this predictive machinery is what kept our ancestors alive.
But somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, that machinery got hijacked. We started building models not just of the external world, but of ourselves. We built the story of “me.” A self-referential model obsessed with fitting every event into its narrative: “Is this good for me? Bad for me? What does it say about me?”
This self-story is the factory that manufactures second arrows. It doesn’t just predict; it judges, resists, and clings.
Acting Without a Script
Here’s the liberating truth: action doesn’t require the model. You won’t stop moving if you stop narrating. In fact, the most graceful actions happen when the model quiets down.
Think of a dancer in flow, a musician lost in improvisation, or a child at play. These are moments when action emerges directly from the present—unmediated, unscripted, alive. This is life beyond the compulsion to constantly model and judge.
The Trap of Hope
And here let us shift shift the conversation to hope—a word celebrated in proverbs like “ummeed par duniya kayam hai” (“the world survives on hope”). But what if hope itself is another arrow? Another model-building trick that keeps us dissatisfied with the present?
Hope always points forward, toward a “better” future. By implication, the present becomes deficient, something to endure until we arrive elsewhere. Like staring at a glossy travel brochure, the act of hoping makes the room you’re in feel small and inadequate.
Paradoxically, this means hope breeds hopelessness. Because by living in hope, we live in the shadow of lack. The world never feels enough, because our happiness is always “not yet.”
The World Without Hope
So what happens when we drop hope? Do we collapse into despair? Not at all. Without hope, the world doesn’t become hopeless—it becomes astoundingly beautiful.
To live without hope is to live without the filter of “what I wish this was.” It is to see things as they are, raw and vivid. A tree is just a tree, not a stepping-stone to a future promise. A moment is complete in itself, not a placeholder for something better. This is presence—the direct experience of “what is.”
Presence, Suffering, and Beyond
There are three states of being Presence, Suffering and Source. Let us map them with clarity:
● Presence clings to the factual world. It is mindfulness, attention to “what is.” Stable, clear, but still a kind of clinging.
● Suffering clings to the counterfactual world. It is entanglement in “what ifs” and “if onlys.” The self lost in maps of desire and regret.
● Beyond both lies the source. Neither presence nor suffering, but the collapse of the duality altogether. This is the domain of non-dual awareness—where there is no self clinging to a world at all.
This is the state of being the dance itself, not watching it, not wishing it were different.
Facts, Acts, and the Stillness of Vitthala
After all this, we can clearly see that facts and acts are not separate. A fact is simply an act completed—its root meaning is “a thing done.” Acts create facts; facts condition acts. It is a self-creating loop, the wheel of becoming, the cycle of karma.
But Lord Vitthala, to me, is the stillness beyond the wheel. He is not a witness—because witnessing still implies activity and duality. He simply is: unmoving, prior to facts and acts, the silent ground from which both arise.
If the world of “facts and acts” is the domain of mastery—the endless game of prediction and correction—then Vitthala is the domain of mystery. He is Being before doing, silence before song, the territory itself before any maps are drawn.
In summary: We can see the Suffering as the product of compulsive modeling, Presence as direct contact with the factual world, and Transcendence as the silent ground beyond both.
Reinvent The Self! 