MinD iS AlwayS AbsenT

Says Rinzai, “When I eat, I only eat, and when I sleep, I only sleep.”
Somebody said, “But nothing is special in that, everybody is doing it.”
Rinzai laughed and said, “If everybody is doing it, everybody is a Buddha, everybody is enlightened then.”

Eating – simply eat, be with it. Walking – simply walk, be there. Don’t go ahead, don’t jump here and there. Mind always goes ahead or lags behind. Remain with the moment.

In the beginning it will be very difficult to remain with the moment. And sometimes the moment may not be very happy. You are angry, then the mind starts thinking of repentance or tries to do something so that the anger never happens again. Sometimes you are sad; you put on the radio or the TV, you start reading a book, because you would not like to be sad. You want to divert the mind.

And because miserable moments are more than happy moments it becomes a constant habit. And when it is fixed, even when happiness comes, you are not found at home. You are somewhere else.

Make it a point: whatsoever – sadness, anger – whatsoever – depression, unhappiness – be with it.

And you will suddenly become surprised that if you remain with sadness, sadness changes into a beautiful thing, sadness becomes a depth. If you remain with anger, not thinking about, just being with, anger is transformed; it becomes forgiveness. If you remain with sex, sex takes on a different quality; it becomes love.

If you start living with the moment you will see your being with is a miracle, it has a magic to it.

Happiness will become deeper. Ordinarily your happiness is just on the surface. Deep down you carry millions of things; just on the surface it is. If you remain with it, it will become deeper and deeper and deeper. If you start living with, everything is transformed because you bring a new quality of being, of awareness, of witnessing. Don’t fight against sadness and don’t hanker for happiness, because that is going away, astray.

Have you observed? – If you go for a holiday to the Himalayas or to Switzerland, for months you plan to arrive there, and the moment you arrive your mind has started already to plan when to depart, how to go back home. Look! For months you plan how to arrive and when you arrive – or even before you arrive, just on the way – your mind has started to go back: How to depart?

Your every arrival is just the beginning of a departure. And you are never there because you cannot be there. Again back home you will start thinking. Back home you will start thinking about what happened in the Himalayas, what beautiful experiences you went through – and you were never there. It is as if you have read about them it is as if somebody else has told you. You look at the memory as if the memory functions on its own; it takes photographs and becomes an album. Back home you will open the album and see, and you will say to friends, “Beautiful!” And you will start planning – again next year you are going to the Himalayas.

Mind is never where you are: awareness is always there where you are. Drop more and more mind, and minding, and become more and more aware and alert. Bring yourself together in the moment.

Difficult in the beginning. Mind, because of the old habit, will go away again and again. Bring it back. No need to fight! Simply call it back: “Come.” Again it will go… within seconds it will not be there. Call it back again.

And by and by, when you start enjoying THIS moment – the eternal now, the only time that there is, the only existence that there is, the only life that there is – when you start enjoying it, more and more the mind will be coming to it. Less and less it will be going.

Then a tuning happens. Suddenly you are here, at home, and the reality is revealed. The reality was always there, YOU were not there. It is not the truth which has to be sought, it is you who have to be brought home.

ReligioN

Religion is a very simple phenomenon. Theology has nothing to do with religion. It makes things unnecessarily complex. Religion is a simple awareness of whatever you are doing, wherever you are. And when this awareness surrounds you always like a luminous aura you for the first time become aware of the universe – - its beauties, its music, its eternal song. And to me that is the religious experience. In religious experience you don’t encounter a God. There is nobody there, just this pure existence. But it is all alive — these flowers, these birds on the wing, these stars — everything is alive, but because you are asleep you cannot experience the aliveness that surrounds you.

And we are not islands. No man is an island. We are part of this whole living, infinite continent. Those flowers are part of us just as we are part of them. Those faraway stars are within us as we are within the universe. That experience of unity, of at-onement, is liberation.

So my teaching is very simple: meditation is the key, becoming totally aware is the result. Experiencing oneness with the whole is the reward. ”You are three, we are three, have mercy on us.”

This is my trinity: meditation, awareness,  oneness.

OnenesS, ThE ExperiencE of SilencE

Mind always creates duality; otherwise, to be open or to be witnessing are not two things.

If you are open, you will be witnessing.

Without being a witness, you cannot be open; or if you are a witness, you will be open—because being a witness and yet remaining closed is impossible. So those are only two words.

You can either start with witnessing—then opening will come on its own accord; or you can start by opening your heart, all windows, all doors—then witnessing will be found, coming on its own. But if you are simply thinking, without doing anything, then they look separate.

Mind cannot think without duality. Duality is the way of thinking.

In silence, all dualities disappear.

Oneness is the experience of silence.

For example, day and night are very clear dualities, but they are not two. There are animals who see in the night. Their eyes are more sensitive, capable of seeing in darkness. For them, there is no darkness. Those animals cannot open their eyes in the day, because their eyes are so delicate that the sun hurts. So while it is day for you, for those animals it is night; the eyes are closed, all is darkness. When it is night for you, it is day for them. The whole day they sleep, the whole night they are awake.

And if you ask a scientist and a logician, you will see the difference. If you ask the logician, “What is day?” he will say, “That which is not night.” And what is not night? It is a circular game. If you ask, “What is night?” the logician is going to say, “What is not day.”

You need day to define night, you need night to define day. Strange duality, strange opposition…. If there is no day, can you think of night? If there is no night, can you think of day? It is impossible.

Ask the scientist, who is closer to reality than the logician. For the scientist darkness is less light, light is less darkness. Now it is one phenomenon, just like a thermometer. Somebody has a temperature of 110 degrees, just ready to move out of the house. Somebody has a temperature of 98 degrees, the normal temperature for human beings, but somebody falls below 96 degrees, again ready for a move.

And the same is true about all oppositions that mind creates. Openness, witnessing … if you think intellectually, they look very different. They seem to be unrelated, how can they be one? But in experience they are one.

FivE CategorieS Of TeacherS

In India we have five categories of teachers. The first category is called the Arihanta; he’s a teacher and also a master. Being a master means that he has realized what he says. For example, Jesus will be called an Arihanta because whatsoever he says is his own realization. He says, “It is on my own authority.”

The second category is called the Siddha. The Siddha is only a master. He has realized but he’s incapable of communicating it. He cannot say what he has realized; in a way he is dumb. And there have been many saints in the world who have not spoken because they cannot manage to bring the beyond within the words. That too is called a Buddha, a teacher.

The third category is called an Acharya – who is only a teacher but not a master. He knows exactly what he’s teaching, but not on his own authority. The Pope is an Acharya. If Jesus is an Arihanta, then the Pope is an Acharya. He is speaking on the authority of the Bible, not on his own authority.

The fourth category is called Ubadhyay – one who is not even certain of what he says. Perhaps fragments are true. P.D. Ouspensky has written a book on Gurdjieff: In Search of the Miraculous. Its subtitle is “Fragments of an Unknown Teaching”, and he’s very true in writing the subtitle – only fragments, because he could understand only parts of it; parts were beyond him. He’s also called a teacher.

And the fifth is called a Sadhu. A Sadhu is one who has not achieved but is trying sincerely to achieve. He may be just one foot ahead of you, but he can teach that much. He cannot claim the achievement; he cannot say with certainty that this is so.