Willingly sacrifice the imperfect to the perfect and there will be no more talk about good and evil.
...............
The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen.
Nis. Maharaj
Two things avert our spiritual life. One is desire and another is misery or fear. Both are the inevitable aspects of our mind. The mind thrives on them. Either it shows a way out in future filled with expectations or shows us fearsome stories of misery. As saints have told us , desire is memory of pleasure while fear is memory of pain. Between these two, our life flows . Misery and desire are not two things actually. They both stem from a feeling of inadequacy and ignorance. But as long as our minds are there, they form an inevitable part of our thought system.
If we look at pleasure and pain we would see a common theme. It is based on acceptance or lack of it. If a situation is acceptable , it is pleasurable and painful if it is not. But most of the time we are not aware of this mental process. We feel only the end result . It is either happiness or sadness. But the root cause comes from an acceptance or lack of it. What triggers our acceptance?. You can see that it is knowledge. Jyana turns all situations into acceptable ones.This explains why happiness is always experienced by a true saint whatever be the external situation. To him no life situation is unacceptable. He is aware of the mind all the time. Even in pain , he is always with it. He tries to alleviate what can be , for the rest there is total acceptance.
If you need to develop this sense of acceptance, we need to be with ourselves. We need to become ourselves all the time. This may seem contradictory. Am i not with myself all the time?. No. You are not with yourself. You are always with your mind all the time!!!. We are always lost in our mind's idiosyncrasies and we think we are with ourselves when we do that. This is because of the mistaken identity that we are nothing but the body-mind complex. As a result of this closeness of our own minds, we loose the process of the mind which disagrees with what is happening. We also loose the sense of acceptance when that happens. If on the other hand if we were aware of our mind doing this , we would easily know that desire or pain are only projections by the mind of what is happening now.
The fact that pleasure or pain is totally a mental illusion would not be accepted by many. They would always find fault in external causes for it, and mind to be just perceiving the pleasure or pain. This is where ignorance is. Ignorance is multidimensional. It mistakes a part of a process to be complete. A situation that is unfolding now is not just happening for us. It is a grand scheme of the universe. Many many factors , many many happenings precede it. If it is so, how can we change it?. Can you control precisely all the causes and effects of the present unpleasant happening?.No. On the other hand, see even a painful situation as an inevitable happening which you need to be with. Be with it , embrace it and become familiar with it. This acceptance of all with knowledge is what makes saints smiling at all . Pleasure and pain are the same to them. They don't see the happenings as seen by the mind. They have removed the mind from the filtering of the events by being with themselves.
One of the main teachings in the law of karma is to be detached from our actions. This detachment comes from total acceptance of what is happening now. When our actions are guided by desire or fear, it is attached. It is attached to the consequences. It is attached to success and failure. It is attached to our mind projections. Karma or pure action should come from us when we are with ourselves and free from our mind's usual interpretations. When we give a small favor to someone, are we attached to the results ?. Are we expecting something?. You can see that if we accept him as part of us totally you are not giving anything. You are just accepting the situation of his need as part of you, not the need of the other person. You can't give, You can only accept.
Now you might argue that with pain it is not possible to accept. Pain is something that needs to be avoided. But you can see that the root cause of pain and sorrow is not the physical sensation alone,but the psychological enhancement of it. We attribute the cause of the pain to be something out there in the external world. We resist. We cry and we make lot of thoughts. All these contribute to the enhancement. If we try to see that no happening is isolated , but is part of a whole, acceptance comes . With acceptance comes our detachment.
There is a tao story regarding causes. If you are travelling in a boat, if an empty boat comes and strikes your boat, you would not be angry. This is because you know the boat on its own cannot have acted to trouble you. But if there was a driver in the boat you would easily be angry. You don't understand and accept that the driver is compulsively being pulled by different causes and he is a victim of so many causes to have produced the collision. How many drivers of cars have you cursed ?. How many signals have you sworn at?. Understand that just as you are now uncontrollably thinking and ruminating so are so many people in this world lost in their own world of their minds. Just as an empty boat that rams into us isn’t targeting us, so too people who act unkindly are driven along by the unconscious force of their own wounding and pain.
Be with yourselves and observe what is going on in everything. See acceptance and resistance as they arise. Tune yourselves towards acceptance with knowledge. By living in meditation our mind starts becoming flexible, It molds to situations more readily. We move away from flight and fright responses. A soft heart is the road to freedom.
...............
The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen.
Nis. Maharaj
Two things avert our spiritual life. One is desire and another is misery or fear. Both are the inevitable aspects of our mind. The mind thrives on them. Either it shows a way out in future filled with expectations or shows us fearsome stories of misery. As saints have told us , desire is memory of pleasure while fear is memory of pain. Between these two, our life flows . Misery and desire are not two things actually. They both stem from a feeling of inadequacy and ignorance. But as long as our minds are there, they form an inevitable part of our thought system.
If we look at pleasure and pain we would see a common theme. It is based on acceptance or lack of it. If a situation is acceptable , it is pleasurable and painful if it is not. But most of the time we are not aware of this mental process. We feel only the end result . It is either happiness or sadness. But the root cause comes from an acceptance or lack of it. What triggers our acceptance?. You can see that it is knowledge. Jyana turns all situations into acceptable ones.This explains why happiness is always experienced by a true saint whatever be the external situation. To him no life situation is unacceptable. He is aware of the mind all the time. Even in pain , he is always with it. He tries to alleviate what can be , for the rest there is total acceptance.
If you need to develop this sense of acceptance, we need to be with ourselves. We need to become ourselves all the time. This may seem contradictory. Am i not with myself all the time?. No. You are not with yourself. You are always with your mind all the time!!!. We are always lost in our mind's idiosyncrasies and we think we are with ourselves when we do that. This is because of the mistaken identity that we are nothing but the body-mind complex. As a result of this closeness of our own minds, we loose the process of the mind which disagrees with what is happening. We also loose the sense of acceptance when that happens. If on the other hand if we were aware of our mind doing this , we would easily know that desire or pain are only projections by the mind of what is happening now.
The fact that pleasure or pain is totally a mental illusion would not be accepted by many. They would always find fault in external causes for it, and mind to be just perceiving the pleasure or pain. This is where ignorance is. Ignorance is multidimensional. It mistakes a part of a process to be complete. A situation that is unfolding now is not just happening for us. It is a grand scheme of the universe. Many many factors , many many happenings precede it. If it is so, how can we change it?. Can you control precisely all the causes and effects of the present unpleasant happening?.No. On the other hand, see even a painful situation as an inevitable happening which you need to be with. Be with it , embrace it and become familiar with it. This acceptance of all with knowledge is what makes saints smiling at all . Pleasure and pain are the same to them. They don't see the happenings as seen by the mind. They have removed the mind from the filtering of the events by being with themselves.
One of the main teachings in the law of karma is to be detached from our actions. This detachment comes from total acceptance of what is happening now. When our actions are guided by desire or fear, it is attached. It is attached to the consequences. It is attached to success and failure. It is attached to our mind projections. Karma or pure action should come from us when we are with ourselves and free from our mind's usual interpretations. When we give a small favor to someone, are we attached to the results ?. Are we expecting something?. You can see that if we accept him as part of us totally you are not giving anything. You are just accepting the situation of his need as part of you, not the need of the other person. You can't give, You can only accept.
Now you might argue that with pain it is not possible to accept. Pain is something that needs to be avoided. But you can see that the root cause of pain and sorrow is not the physical sensation alone,but the psychological enhancement of it. We attribute the cause of the pain to be something out there in the external world. We resist. We cry and we make lot of thoughts. All these contribute to the enhancement. If we try to see that no happening is isolated , but is part of a whole, acceptance comes . With acceptance comes our detachment.
There is a tao story regarding causes. If you are travelling in a boat, if an empty boat comes and strikes your boat, you would not be angry. This is because you know the boat on its own cannot have acted to trouble you. But if there was a driver in the boat you would easily be angry. You don't understand and accept that the driver is compulsively being pulled by different causes and he is a victim of so many causes to have produced the collision. How many drivers of cars have you cursed ?. How many signals have you sworn at?. Understand that just as you are now uncontrollably thinking and ruminating so are so many people in this world lost in their own world of their minds. Just as an empty boat that rams into us isn’t targeting us, so too people who act unkindly are driven along by the unconscious force of their own wounding and pain.
Be with yourselves and observe what is going on in everything. See acceptance and resistance as they arise. Tune yourselves towards acceptance with knowledge. By living in meditation our mind starts becoming flexible, It molds to situations more readily. We move away from flight and fright responses. A soft heart is the road to freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment