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The third sutra:
Even though you are distracted, if you can do it, it is still
mind training.
Yes, sometimes you will be distracted. You are not yet
all buddhas -- there will be times when you will be distracted,
there will be times when you will be dragged down by the
negative, sucked in by the old habit. And by the time you know,
it has already happened; you are miserable. The shadow has
fallen on you, that sunlit peak has disappeared, you have fallen
into the dark valley.
Then what to do in those moments? Atisha says:
Even
though you are distracted, if you can do it, it is still mind
training.What does he mean
by "if you can do it?" This is of great importance. If you can
be attentive to your inattention, if you can be aware that you
have fallen into the trap of the negative, it is still
meditation, it is still mind training, you are still growing.
Yes, many times you will fall, it is natural. And many times you
will forget, it is natural. And many times you will be trapped
and it will take time for you to remember.
But the moment you remember, remember TOTALLY. Wake up totally
and say, "I have fallen." And see the difference. If you ask the
ordinary religious person he will say, "Repent -- punish
yourself." But Atisha is saying: If you are attentive, that's
enough. Be attentive to your inattention, be aware that you have
not been aware, that's all. No repentance is needed. Don't feel
guilty; it is natural, it is human. To fall many times is not
something to feel guilty about. To commit errors, to go astray,
is part of our human frailty and limitations.
So there is no need to repent. Repentance is ugly. It is like playing with
your wound, fingering your wound. It is unnecessary, and not
only unnecessary but harmful -- the wound may become septic, and
fingering your wound is not going to help it heal either. If you
have fallen, just know that you have fallen, with no guilt, with
no repentance. There is no need to go anywhere to confess it,
just knowing it is enough. And knowing it, you are helping your
awareness to grow. Less and less will you fall, because knowing
will become more and more strong in you.
The fourth sutra:
Always observe the three general points.
What are the three general points? The
first is regularity of meditativeness. Remember, it is
very difficult to create meditation, it is very easy to lose it.
Anything higher takes much arduous effort to create, but it can
disappear within a moment. To lose contact with it is very easy.
That is one of the qualities of the higher. It is like growing a
roseflower -- just a little hard wind and the rose has withered
and the petals have fallen, or some animal has entered the
garden and the rose is eaten. It is very easy to lose it, and it
was so long a journey to create it.
And whenever there is a conflict between
the higher and the lower, always remember, the lower wins
easily. If you clash a roseflower with a rock, the
roseflower is going to die, not the rock. The rock may not even
become aware that there has been a clash, that it has killed
something beautiful. Your whole past is full of rocks, and when
you start growing a rose of awareness in you, there are a
thousand and one possibilities of it being destroyed by your old
rocks -- habits, mechanical habits. You will have to be very
watchful and careful.
You will have to walk like a woman who is pregnant. Hence the
man of awareness walks carefully, lives carefully.
And this has to be a regular phenomenon. It is not that one day
you do a little meditation, then for a few days you forget about
it, and then one day you do it again. It has to be as regular as
sleep, as food, as exercise, as breathing. Only then will the
infinite glory of God open its doors to you. So the first
general point is: be regular. The second general point is: don't
waste your time with the nonessential. Don't fool around.
Millions of people are wasting their time with the nonessential,
and the irony is that they know that it is nonessential. But
they say, "What else to do?" They are not aware of anything more
significant. People are playing cards, and if you ask them,
"What are you doing?" they say they are killing time. Killing
time? Time is life! So you are really killing life. And the time
that you are killing cannot be recaptured again; once gone, it
is gone forever.
The man who wants to become a buddha has to drop the
nonessential more and more, so that more energy is available for
the essential. Take a look at your life, how many nonessential
things you are doing -- and for what? And how long you have done
them -- and what have you gained? Are you going to repeat the
same stupid pattern your whole life? Enough is enough! Take a
look, meditate over it. Say only that which is essential, do
only that which is essential, read only that which is essential.
And so much time is saved and so much energy is saved, and all
that energy and time can easily be channeled towards meditation,
towards inner growth, towards witnessing. I have never seen a
man who is so poor that he cannot meditate. But people are
engaged in foolish things, utterly foolish. They don't look
foolish, because everybody else is also doing the same.
But the seeker has to be watchful.
Take more note of what you are doing, what you are doing with
your life -- because to grow roses of awareness much energy will
be needed, a reservoir of energy will be needed. All that is
great comes only when you have extra energy. If your whole
energy is wasted on the mundane, then the sacred will never be
contacted.
And the third general point is: don't
rationalize your errors and mistakes. The mind tends to
rationalize. If you commit some mistake, the mind says, "It had
to be so, there were reasons for it. I am not responsible, the
very situation made this happen." And the mind is very clever at
rationalizing everything. Avoid rationalizing your own errors
and mistakes, because if you rationalize you protect them. Then
they will be repeated. Avoid rationalizing your errors. Stop
rationalization completely. Reasoning is one thing,
rationalization is totally another.
Reasoning can be used for some positive purposes, but
rationalization can never be used for any positive purpose.
And you will be able to find when you are rationalizing, you can
deceive others but you cannot deceive yourself. You know that
you have fallen. Rather than wasting time in rationalizing and
convincing yourself that nothing has gone wrong, put the whole
energy into being aware. All these general points are to help
you so that you can block the leaks of your energy. Otherwise
God goes on pouring energy into you, and you have so many
leakages that you are never full. Energy comes, but leaks out.
The fifth sutra:
Change your inclination and then maintain it.
Change your inclination
from the mind to the heart. That is the first change. Think
less, feel more. Intellectualize less, intuit more. Thinking is
a very deceptive process, it makes you feel that you are doing
great things. But you are simply making castles in the air.
Thoughts are nothing but castles in the air. Feelings are more
material, more substantial. They transform you. Thinking about
love is not going to help, but feeling love is bound to change
you. Thinking is very much loved by the ego, because the ego
feeds on fictions.
The ego cannot digest any reality, and thinking is a fictitious
process. It is a kind of dreaming, a sophisticated dreaming.
Dreams are pictorial and thinking is conceptual, but the process
is the same. Dreaming is a primitive kind of thinking, and
thinking is a civilized kind of dreaming. Change from the mind
to the heart, from thinking to feeling, from logic to love. And
the second change is from the heart to the being -- because
there is a still deeper layer in you where even feelings cannot
reach.
Remember these three words: mind, heart,
being. The being is your pure nature. Surrounding the
being is feeling, and surrounding feeling is thinking. Thinking
is far away from being but feeling is a little closer; it
reflects some glory of the being. It is just as in the sunset
the sun is reflected by the clouds and the clouds start having
beautiful colors. They themselves are not the sun, but they are
reflecting the light of the sun. Feelings are close to being, so
they reflect something of the being. But one has to go beyond
feelings too.
Then what is being? It is neither thinking nor feeling, it is
pure am-ness. One simply is. Thinking is very selfish and
egoistic. Feeling is more altruistic, less egoistic. Being is
no-ego, egolessness -- neither selfishness nor altruism but a
spontaneity, a moment-to-moment responsiveness. One does not
live according to oneself, one lives according to God, according
to the whole. Feeling is half, and no half can ever satisfy you.
Thinking and feeling are both halves and you will remain
divided. Being is total, and only the total can bring
contentment.
And the ultimate, the fourth change, is from being to non-being.
That is nirvana, enlightenment; one simply disappears, one
simply is not. God is, enlightenment is. Light is, delight is,
but there is nobody who is delighted. Neti neti: neither this
nor that, neither existence nor nonexistence -- this is the
ultimate state. Atisha is slowly slowly taking his disciples
towards it. Let me repeat: from thinking to feeling, from
feeling to being, from being to non-being, and one has arrived.
One has disappeared and one has arrived. One is no more, for the
first time. And for the first time one really is.
The sixth sutra: Do not Discuss Defects.
The mind tends to discuss the defects of others. It helps
the ego to feel good. Everybody is such a sinner; when everybody
is such a sinner, comparatively one feels like a saint. When
everybody is doing wrong, it feels good that "At least I am not
doing that much wrong."
Hence people talk about others' defects; not only do they talk
about them, they go on magnifying them. That's why there is so
much joy in gossiping. When the gossip passes from one hand to
another hand, it becomes richer. And when it passes back again,
something will be added to it. By the evening, if you come to
know the gossip that you started in the morning, you will be
surprised. In the morning it was just a molehill, now it is a
mountain. People are very creative, really creative and
inventive.
Why are people so interested in gossiping about others, in
finding fault with others, in looking into others' loopholes and
defects? Why are people continuously trying to look through
others' keyholes? The reason is, this helps to give them a
better feeling about themselves. They become Peeping Toms, just
to have a good feeling, "I am far better." There is a
motivation. It is not just to help others -- it is not,
whatsoever they say, notwithstanding what they say. The basic
reason is, "If others are very ugly, then I am beautiful."
They are following Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was staying in a hotel. A telegram
had arrived from home and he was in a hurry to catch the train.
He rushed. But when he reached downstairs and looked at his
luggage the umbrella was missing. He had to go up to the room
again and by the time he reached the fourteenth floor the room
had already been given to somebody else -- a newlywed couple.
Although he was in a hurry and he might miss the train if he
lingered there a little longer, the temptation was great. So he
looked through the keyhole to see what was happening. A newlywed
couple -- they were also in a hurry, they had already waited too
long; the marriage ceremony and the church and the guests and
all that -- somehow they had got rid of all of them and they
were lying naked on the bed, talking sweet nothings. And the
young man was saying to the woman, "You have such beautiful
eyes. I have never seen such beautiful eyes! To whom do these
eyes belong?"
And the woman said, "To you! To you, and only to you!"
And so on, the list went on. "These beautiful hands, these
beautiful breasts," and this and that -- this went on and on.
And Mulla had completely forgotten about the train and the taxi
waiting downstairs. But then suddenly he remembered his
umbrella. When the list was about to be completed, he said,
"Wait! When you come to the yellow umbrella, that belongs to
me."
People are unconsciously doing many things. If they become
conscious these things will drop. Atisha says: Don't ponder over
others' defects, it is none of your business. Don't interfere in
others' lives, it is none of your business.
But there are great moralists whose whole work is to see who is
doing wrong. Their whole life is wasted; they are like police
dogs sniffing here and there. Their whole life's work is to know
who is doing wrong.
Atisha says: That is an ugly trait and a sheer wastage of time
and energy. Not only is it a wastage but it strengthens and
gratifies the ego. And an ego more gratified becomes more of a
barrier. And remember, it is not only a question of not
discussing others' defects. Don't even be too much concerned
about your own defects. Take note, be aware, and let the matter
be settled then and there. There are a few other people who brag
about their own defects....
It is suspected by psychologists that Saint Augustine's
autobiography, his confessions, are not true. He bragged about
his defects. He was not that bad a person. But man is really
unbelievable. If you start bragging about your qualities, then
too, you go to extremes. If you start bragging about sins, then
too, you go to the extreme. But in both ways you do only one
thing. What Saint Augustine is doing is simple. By bragging
about his defects and sins and all kinds of ugly things, he is
preparing a context. Out of such a hell he rose and became a
great saint.
Now his saintliness looks far more significant than it would
have looked if he had been simply a good person from the very
beginning. And the same is the case with Mahatma Gandhi in
India. In his autobiography he simply exaggerates about his
defects and goes on talking about them. It helps him in a very
vicarious way. He was so low, he was in such a seventh hell, and
from there he started rising and became a great mahatma, a great
saint.
The journey was very arduous. This is very ego-fulfilling. Don't
discuss others' defects, don't discuss your own defects. Take
note, and that is that. Atisha says awareness is enough, nothing
else is needed. If you are fully aware of anything, the fire of
awareness burns it. There is no need for any other remedy.
Dont think about anything that concerns
others.
And that's what you go on thinking. Ninety-nine percent
of the things that you think about concern others. Drop them --
drop them immediately! Your life is short, and your life is
slipping out of your fingers. Each moment you are less, each day
you are less, and each day you are less alive and more dead!
Each birthday is a death day; one more year is gone from your
hands. Be a little more intelligent.
Dont think about anything that concerns
others. Train First against the defilement that is Greatest. Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples -- the first thing, the
very very first thing, "Find out what your greatest
characteristic is, your greatest undoing, your central
characteristic of unconsciousness." Each one's is different.
Somebody is sex-obsessed. In a country like India, where for
centuries sex has been repressed, that
has become almost a universal characteristic; everybody is
obsessed with sex. Somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody
else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your
basic obsession.
So first find the main characteristic upon which your whole ego
edifice rests. And then be constantly aware of it, because it
can exist only if you are unaware. It is burnt in the fire of
awareness automatically. And remember, remember always, that you
are not to cultivate the opposite of it. Otherwise, what happens
is a person becomes aware that "My obsession is anger, so what
should I do? I should cultivate compassion." "My obsession is
sex, so what should I do? I should practice brahmacharya,
celibacy."
People move from one thing to the opposite. That is not the way
of transformation. It is the same pendulum, moving from left to
right, from right to left. And that's how your life has been
moving for centuries; it is the same pendulum. The pendulum has
to be stopped in the middle. And that's the miracle of
awareness. Just be aware that "This is my chief pitfall, this is
the place where I stumble again and again, this is the root of
my unconsciousness." Don't try to cultivate the opposite of it,
but pour your whole awareness into it.
Create a great bonfire of awareness, and it will be burned. And
then the pendulum stops in the middle.
And with the stopping of the pendulum, time stops. You suddenly
enter into the world of timelessness, deathlessness, eternity.
And the last sutra: Abandon all hopes of
results.
The ego is result-oriented, the mind always hankers for
results. The mind is never interested in the act itself, its
interest is in the result. "What am I going to gain out of it?"
If the mind can manage to gain, without going through any
action, then it will choose the shortcut. That's why educated
people become very cunning, because they are able to find
shortcuts. If you earn money through a legal way, it may take
your whole life.
But you can earn money by smuggling, by gambling or by something
else -- by becoming a political leader, a prime minister, a
president -- then you have all the shortcuts available to you.
The educated person becomes cunning. He does not become wise, he
simply becomes clever. He becomes so cunning that he wants to
have everything without doing anything for it. The mind, the
ego, are all result-oriented. The being is not result-oriented.
And how can the non-being ever be result-oriented? It is not
there at all in the first place.
Meditation happens only to those who are not result-oriented.
There is an ancient story:
A man was very much interested in self-knowledge, in
self-realization. His whole search had been to find a master who
could teach him meditation. He went from one master to another,
but nothing was happening. Years went by, he was tired,
exhausted. Then someone told him, "If you really want to find a
master you will have to go to the Himalayas. He lives in some
unknown parts of the Himalayas; you will have to search for him.
One thing is certain, he is there. Nobody knows exactly where,
because whenever somebody comes to know of him he moves from
that place and goes even deeper into the Himalayan ranges." The
man was getting old, but he gathered courage. For two years he
had to work to earn money for the journey, then he made the
journey. It is an old story. He had to ride on camels and horses
and then go on foot, and then he reached the Himalayas.
People said, "Yes, we have heard about the old man, very ancient
he is, one cannot say how old -- maybe three hundred years old,
or even five hundred years old; nobody knows. He lives
somewhere, but the location cannot be given to you. Nobody is
aware of where exactly you will find him, but he is there. If
you search hard you are bound to find him."
The man searched and searched and searched. For two years he was
roaming in the Himalayas -- tired, exhausted, dead exhausted,
living only on wild fruits, leaves and grass. He had lost much
weight. But he was intent that he had to find this man; even if
it took his life, it would be worth it.
And can you imagine? One day he saw a small hut, a grass hut. He
was so tired that he was not even able to walk, so he crawled.
He reached the hut. There was no door; he looked in, there was
nobody inside. And not only was there nobody inside, but there
was every sign that for years there had been nobody inside.
You can think what would have happened to that man. He fell on
the ground. Out of sheer tiredness he said, "I give up." He was
lying there under the sun in the cool breeze of the Himalayas,
and for the first time he started feeling so blissful, he had
never tasted such bliss! Suddenly he started feeling full of
light. Suddenly all thoughts disappeared, suddenly he was
transported -- and for no reason at all, because he had not done
anything.
And then he became aware that somebody was leaning over him. He
opened his eyes. A very ancient man was there. And the old man,
smiling, said, "So you have come. Have you something to ask me?"
And the man said, "No."
And the old man laughed, a great belly laugh which was echoed by
the valleys. And he said, "So now you know what meditation is?"
And the man said, "Yes."
What had happened? That assertion which came from his deepest
core of being -- "I give up" -- in that very giving up, all
goal-oriented mind efforts and endeavors disappeared. "I give
up." In that very moment he was no more the same person. And
bliss showered on him. He was silent, he was a nobody, and he
touched the ultimate stratum of non-being. Then he knew what
meditation is.
Meditation is a non-goal-oriented state of mind.
This last sutra is tremendously significant: Abandon all hopes
of results.
And then there is no need to go anywhere, God will come to you.
Deep down say, "I give up." And silence descends, benediction
showers. Meditate over these sutras, they are meant only for
meditators. Atisha is not a philosopher, he is a siddha, a
buddha. What he is saying is not some speculation. These are
clear-cut instructions given only to those who are ready to
travel, to go on the pilgrimage into the unknown.Enough for today.
Source: from book "the book of
wisdom" by Osho
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