Each fragment of your mind wants to become the most powerful one. There is constant inner politics. You cannot find bliss in this constant inner war.
The mind is a chooser – it always chooses something against something else. It creates opposition, it creates contradiction in life. It creates extremes, and through extremes there is a constant inner war, a civil war. Don't choose, remain choiceless.
If you repress sex you will be in a constant war, and you can never win. Failure is absolutely certain because the more you fight with sex, the more you give energy to it. The same is the case with anger, jealousy, greed. Fighting is not the way of wisdom; it is the fool's path. The stupid and the mediocre fight. The intelligent ones transform; they absorb.
It is man's freedom to choose. We can live an integrated life, we can become an organic unity – that's the whole purpose of meditation. Or we can remain a crowd – many minds, many fragments, no unity. When there are many minds there is conflict, discord, a constant civil war. When you are at war within yourself you are at war with existence too; as within, so without.
Deep down you are one person, pretending on the surface to be somebody else. There is a constant conflict between the real and the false. The false is appreciated by society, valued, respected, and the real is condemned. You have to learn ways to be two persons; you have to be constantly on guard. That creates hypocrisy, and you cannot forgive yourself; you feel guilty.
I don't want the peace of the cemetery. All the graves are silent – no fight, no struggle, no quarrel. I want the peace of a garden in the early morning when birds are singing, flowers are opening, the sun is rising. There is music in it; it is not without sound. There are sounds, but the sounds and the silences together create peace.
Rejection is suppressive; it is cutting your intrinsic parts. It leaves you bleeding; it leaves you half-alive; it leaves you lukewarm. It takes all your energy away from you, and it creates a conflict and inner war.
My understanding about peacefulness is that it is not a question of being peaceful with anybody. The basic question is being at peace with yourself. Out of that, peace arises for everybody.
Where is the devil? It is some condemned part of you. You cannot cut it out because it is so deeply a part of you that there is no possibility of separating it from your self. You can go on fighting, but you will never win. You cannot fight against the devil, you can only play with him. That's what I am teaching you here: be playful, non-serious.
Man has been conditioned always to be in conflict: the body is fighting with the mind, the mind is fighting with the body. The whole past of humanity has been a constant conditioning to make man a split personality; and it has succeeded.
Peace is not a political strategy. Two parties peaceful in themselves cannot create any hostility. There is no question of being peaceful with somebody. The basic question is being peaceful.
Society is violent, politics is violent, nations are violent. The state is violent, the church is violent, because they are political games. Even religion is political. Every religion is trying to defeat other religions. There is a constant struggle going on, a cold war. How long can you go on fighting a cold war? Sooner or later it becomes heated, then a hot war erupts.
Society needs soldiers, violent people, murderous people; and a blissful person cannot be that. He would rather die himself than kill anybody. He would be ready to die willingly because he has tasted something of immortality, so he does not care about death. But he will not destroy anything.
Man has been going through three kinds of wars. One is with nature, another is with other people, and the third is with himself. The first war has become science: the war with nature. The second war has become politics: the war with other people. And the third war, unfortunately, has become religion: the war with yourself.
Friday, June 27, 2008
On Belonging
last summer I met two new friends, and we spent many afternoons enjoying the views from a large deck that overlooked the mountains that surrounded the valley. They were from Germany and had met and fallen in love while staying at an ashram in India. The Guru was famous and was attracting young people from all over the world. Of course I knew of him, but never met him or had any interest in his ashram or teaching.
The guru is now dead but his ashram is bigger than ever and still attracting people who come to experience and practise his teachings. Both of my friends had Indian names that were given to them by their guru . Still, after all these years they continued to use their spiritual names as if they had some special power or meaning for them. I ask them what did they do after their guru died and did they feel still part of his following?
They both looked at each other to see some sign as to which one would answer my question. He said they travelled around India visiting a number of teachers but never settled on one, because after knowing their guru it was hard to take anyone very seriously. They still felt they had a close relationship with their teacher. He was still very much alive in their thoughts and most of their friends were still members, holding on to the teachings and running a centre that taught the guru’s teachings.
I wonder why we feel the need for someone to guide us and why we never see the importance of being free from believing in some form of authority other than our own understanding. We belong to the family, to property and beliefs that shape our thoughts and feelings. We all live in the past and feel unable to change anything including our desires, wants and fears that make up what we call our life. Oh yes, we know that, he answered, that is why we need some help to change our condition. We are lost and need help in finding our way. Yes, but why do you feel you need to be shown the way home, as it were. Are you so sure you need help and what is it you want to know? That’s why we are here to know the answer or to be realised, enlightened, they said.
Are you sure that is what you want, or do you want to find another teacher, some new yoga to practice and lose yourself in some form of hope? You know that hope is born out of the desire to change yourself or change the world you live in. You are not happy all the time, your girlfriend gets on your nerves, and even when you are along you want some experience to fill the space within. We try to fill the emptiness in our lives - that is why we like to belong, if not to some religious practice or follow some guru or we try our luck in some other field, like making money, they are all the same. Inside we are dull and full of empty words and hopes of finding some relief from our misery. I am afraid we are just second-hand people who want to follow in the footsteps of another who we think can help us in our search.
We continue to fill our lives with all the different forms of sensation one after the other, we become addicted to music, movies, sex and all the other ways man has cultivated as ways to distract himself form his fear of being alone and unprotected. Of course, we adapt and get used to almost any condition and find that that brings us some form of comfort. Belonging to some belief, no matter what it is, only adds to the dullness of our mind. We are overburdened with thoughts and they destroy the natural state of our being, until we realise that we are after all just an animal, nothing more. We invented God, some supreme being who created the universe; or some intelligence that we imagine we can pray or communicate with to help us in some way, by letting us have more money, love, happiness or something else we might fancy.
We are brainwashed by culture and the laws that are enforced by the political structure we have created to protect our interests. We go round and round, never able to free ourselves from the wheel that we have created in our attempts to be free. We follow whoever offers a way to be off the wheel, but nothing ever happens; we are stuck and there is nothing we can do. That is the problem that we do not want to face, we escape into some religious answer, or some belief in the future dreams which are the products of our hopes. We are not able to see the folly of our condition so we continue to repeat the same words and play the same music that man has been playing down through the centuries.
My friends were silent - perhaps they saw the implications of what we were discussing. Slowly the mind gets trapped in its ways, and one can see what the problem is, what can we do, asked my friend? Is there anything one can do, he asked? Yes, I said you can begin with that name you call yourself, the old cherished ideas you have accepted as spiritual - and see that you have perhaps taken the wrong path. But is there a path, he asked? There is a path but you have to make your own way and not depend on another. You may fall but all that you can do is pick yourself up and continue. There is no one to help you or better yet, you do not need the help of another. They will only mislead you, take advantage of you and steal your money, and promise you that there is a path to follow, a goal to be realized in the future. You just have to have the guts to question everything in your life. Push all the books and sacred texts off the dusty self, throw them out, they are only the hopes of dreamers who want to be in some state described by others who think they are enlightened because of some experience they describe as bliss or the highest realization or oneness with the absolute.
Life is the only teacher and it pushes this way and that, you have to look very hard at what life is presenting to you. Life is your guru; you need not belong to anyone or any idea that promises a direct line to the truth. You are not separate from life; and trying to become selfless, to bridge the space between yourself and life that is not separate from you is your problem. We only aim at keeping the knowledge we have accumulated during our life and what has been passed down to us from our culture - and that is strangling our consciousness; full of fears and hopes we belong to some idea of a brighter future where we can live in contentment and that is our interest. That must go, then there is no problem of belonging, and everything else drops away without us doing anything.
The guru is now dead but his ashram is bigger than ever and still attracting people who come to experience and practise his teachings. Both of my friends had Indian names that were given to them by their guru . Still, after all these years they continued to use their spiritual names as if they had some special power or meaning for them. I ask them what did they do after their guru died and did they feel still part of his following?
They both looked at each other to see some sign as to which one would answer my question. He said they travelled around India visiting a number of teachers but never settled on one, because after knowing their guru it was hard to take anyone very seriously. They still felt they had a close relationship with their teacher. He was still very much alive in their thoughts and most of their friends were still members, holding on to the teachings and running a centre that taught the guru’s teachings.
I wonder why we feel the need for someone to guide us and why we never see the importance of being free from believing in some form of authority other than our own understanding. We belong to the family, to property and beliefs that shape our thoughts and feelings. We all live in the past and feel unable to change anything including our desires, wants and fears that make up what we call our life. Oh yes, we know that, he answered, that is why we need some help to change our condition. We are lost and need help in finding our way. Yes, but why do you feel you need to be shown the way home, as it were. Are you so sure you need help and what is it you want to know? That’s why we are here to know the answer or to be realised, enlightened, they said.
Are you sure that is what you want, or do you want to find another teacher, some new yoga to practice and lose yourself in some form of hope? You know that hope is born out of the desire to change yourself or change the world you live in. You are not happy all the time, your girlfriend gets on your nerves, and even when you are along you want some experience to fill the space within. We try to fill the emptiness in our lives - that is why we like to belong, if not to some religious practice or follow some guru or we try our luck in some other field, like making money, they are all the same. Inside we are dull and full of empty words and hopes of finding some relief from our misery. I am afraid we are just second-hand people who want to follow in the footsteps of another who we think can help us in our search.
We continue to fill our lives with all the different forms of sensation one after the other, we become addicted to music, movies, sex and all the other ways man has cultivated as ways to distract himself form his fear of being alone and unprotected. Of course, we adapt and get used to almost any condition and find that that brings us some form of comfort. Belonging to some belief, no matter what it is, only adds to the dullness of our mind. We are overburdened with thoughts and they destroy the natural state of our being, until we realise that we are after all just an animal, nothing more. We invented God, some supreme being who created the universe; or some intelligence that we imagine we can pray or communicate with to help us in some way, by letting us have more money, love, happiness or something else we might fancy.
We are brainwashed by culture and the laws that are enforced by the political structure we have created to protect our interests. We go round and round, never able to free ourselves from the wheel that we have created in our attempts to be free. We follow whoever offers a way to be off the wheel, but nothing ever happens; we are stuck and there is nothing we can do. That is the problem that we do not want to face, we escape into some religious answer, or some belief in the future dreams which are the products of our hopes. We are not able to see the folly of our condition so we continue to repeat the same words and play the same music that man has been playing down through the centuries.
My friends were silent - perhaps they saw the implications of what we were discussing. Slowly the mind gets trapped in its ways, and one can see what the problem is, what can we do, asked my friend? Is there anything one can do, he asked? Yes, I said you can begin with that name you call yourself, the old cherished ideas you have accepted as spiritual - and see that you have perhaps taken the wrong path. But is there a path, he asked? There is a path but you have to make your own way and not depend on another. You may fall but all that you can do is pick yourself up and continue. There is no one to help you or better yet, you do not need the help of another. They will only mislead you, take advantage of you and steal your money, and promise you that there is a path to follow, a goal to be realized in the future. You just have to have the guts to question everything in your life. Push all the books and sacred texts off the dusty self, throw them out, they are only the hopes of dreamers who want to be in some state described by others who think they are enlightened because of some experience they describe as bliss or the highest realization or oneness with the absolute.
Life is the only teacher and it pushes this way and that, you have to look very hard at what life is presenting to you. Life is your guru; you need not belong to anyone or any idea that promises a direct line to the truth. You are not separate from life; and trying to become selfless, to bridge the space between yourself and life that is not separate from you is your problem. We only aim at keeping the knowledge we have accumulated during our life and what has been passed down to us from our culture - and that is strangling our consciousness; full of fears and hopes we belong to some idea of a brighter future where we can live in contentment and that is our interest. That must go, then there is no problem of belonging, and everything else drops away without us doing anything.
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