Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness | Video on TED.com

I am trying real hard to make mention of the fact that I have to be patient with other people. My ability to render things sensible instead of senseless takes time. I today, realised that I am going to be a Buddha / Bodhisattva who remains on the earth and teaches from NOW ON. That only means that I WANT ENLIGHTENMENT IN IT'S RAWEST FORM. Let me explain. To reach the type of enlightenment that Shakyamuni Buddha, as the Japanese call Siddhartha Gautama (Gotama Buddha roughly around 500 years before our present A.D. calendar), one must reach a state of Nirvana, which allows us to understand the things that he taught automatically. HE SAID, if you understand these things, and we should since they are inherently INSIDE YOU ALREADY, then you will be in the state of enlightenment. My problem is that I can't help from being selfish, but I do have an answer for myself finally. I have to be patient with ME, also. It will take time.
I can't expect myself to find overnight what it took Siddhartha Gautama 50 years to attain, naturally, I will have to set my path now and look for answers along the way. As long as I keep chanting to praise and polish my mirror (Nichiren Buddhist analogy)and keep teaching what I learn then, I will be in line with what I think I know. I love people. Not all the time, and some people do things which really make me want to slap them real hard but I love people in general. Once I was in a car accident and in that moment before I died, there was no conscious thought and I felt the blood go out of my body and all I knew was consciousness. Professor Rao is the guy who explains it better than I can that, people are "hardwired" to be happy.
I was in a traffic accident in this lady's truck once. She took me to the lake that day. We had an argument as she was kind of what I realise now, was, a cougar. She was 32 and I was 18 but I was in love with her. She thought the only thing I cared about was sex. That was all she cared about concerning me, as it turned out. The truck flipped end over end five times coming down a mountain road. Some guy at a service station saw the wreck as it was happening and called 911 immediately, thank goodness. He told her later what he saw. I, for some reason, just before the impact, threw myself around her and when we were thrown through the back truck window and the front camper shell window, I took out all the glass. I was cut from the top of my head to the back of my ankles. I came to in the ambulance and for a little while was told that they had already lost me repeatedly. I do remember that once I lay still and realised that I thought I was already dying that nothing mattered anymore. I believed I was virtually dead already so that NOTHING MATTERED concerning me. Nothing mattered concerning my past, my future, nothing at all and the weird sensation was that I suddenly was stricken with happiness. I reached for her hand to tell her, "Everything is going to be alright." I meant that from the bottom of my being. I was going to be fine, she was going to be fine because I for that moment had accepted life in the universe for what it was instead of trying to alter my reality and strive to consciously make it better. I forgot about that feeling and didn't until recently understand completely that THAT was what happened.
Now listen to this and Professor Rao will describe what I mean: Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness | Video on TED.com