Who builds prisons?
Simply answer to this question is Governments and dictators. That is true, Governments build prisons to lock away the criminals form the normal society. Idea is to punish them or keep them away so they can do no harm to the anormal population who are otherwise loyal to the law. And our rules of law are used to pass judgments against such criminals in our justice system. Compared to dictators who are the creators of the rules and ultimate judges themselves. And it is obvious that these rules of dictators are not fair by all. Often dictators abuse their power to lock away all who oppose or threaten the dictatorship. And we are glad not be under the control of such dictators. However, there are enough and more examples from the past and in the world.
Let's look at features of a prison to understand what it means to be imprisoned.
Prison is a place with walls where you are not allowed to roam free in a society otherwise. There are grades of to these imprisonments. You may be totally blocked from interaction from other inmates, or you are allowed to some social function. Even when you are in good behavior for long time you may go out into the society under supervisor for some activities. In affluent countries prisons are so advanced even you may allowed with recreational activities, so you would not mentally be suffering, which is not the case with traditional prison. So, in modern world Prison means only physical confinement, not mentally you are suffering.
This gives idea of physical prisons and mental prisons.
Previously I have discussed about mental prisons. You can read more about this on the article here. However, I will expand more this mental prisons here as well. First of all, we will look at physical prisons.
Letters to daughter Jawaharlal Nehru.
For highly intellectuals' physical prisons doesn't affect their function. It seems it has the opposite effect. I can give you some examples.
When I was in school, we read letter written by Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter, when he was in prison. These were not ordinary letters. These were dreams of his vision about the great nation that India could become. These were letters about nature and world in a mind of a prisoner. So, did Nehru suffer in his imprisonment? I would not say completely. It seems a true prison is not a physical one only mental one cause us suffering if we are not allowed to think. But this leads us to think, who truly can make you suffer in that case. Who has the ability to control your way of thinking. It seems not obvious first, but it is only us have the ability to limit our own thinking.
So, if there is something called a true prison, I would say it is mental. And such a prison is only can be built by you. Have you made a prison for yourself? Let's look at this closely.
Mental prisons we build for ourselves
I see people build houses. And they live their whole lives in it afterwards. They are limited to the walls of the house. Occasionally they go out of their house only to come back and spend their rest of the time in the house. At the end of the life, they die in the same house. Can you see a similarity of a modern house to a prison? It doesn't matter how much big a garden is as long as you are attached to this and your mind cannot get away from the boundaries of your own house, I would say it is a prison.
I see people build careers. And they live their whole lives living in it afterwards. They are limited by the thinking which allowed in their career. Their friends there, behavior, their stress and happiness revolve around their careers. And without even knowing it they are at the edge of their lives when they retire. How unfortunate is that for a prison. And I can see some of them cry, and call it stress when the prison walls are too heavy for them to break out and fly.
I see people build families. Once they do that, they fail to see kids, as kids. They see my kids and other kids. They see my family against other families. They see everything related to their possession as mine. This gives us an important perspective how these mental prisons are made. A lot of suffering comes from these prisons.
It seems, everything has a prefix 'My' are of course adds to our list of mental prisons. How did this happen you may ask. I will give you yet another example.
Choices as means to build a prison
Imagine you are going to a bakery to buy some snack. Imagine suddenly a rack full of buns tip over and fall on the floor. Now these, edible newly formed buns falling all over, does it cause you any harm? No, it doesn't you would not be affected as long as you are physically away from it. You might enjoy this and even take a photo and post it on Instagram. But, in another hypothetical world, you select a bun for yourself and pay for it. Now, if you dropped this bun on the floor, it would affect your mood. What is the reason. It is the same bun which was on the rack. Was it in the bun there was the reason to affect you or was it in the thought that it is your bun. It seems so trivial. But it seems moment you choose something to be yours, it has enormous power over you. Even a tiny pin or a piece of rock, a flower has the ability to harm, when it is chosen for yourself.
Can there be a life without such attachment? How can you well spend your life? How can we learn to leave things as it is. I think the key is in mindfulness wisdom is the guide.
Thank you for reading mental prison building
You may also like to read: Living in a dream.
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