Die To The Future
Sthitpragya is a very beautiful word. Its meaning is: one whose wisdom has become stable in himself, one whose wisdom has become self-contained, one whose consciousness does not leave him and move anywhere else, one whose consciousness has become stabilized. Such a seeker, such a sannyasin, ever attains to bliss.
All dualities are created by the mind: happiness and unhappiness, peace and peacelessness, good and bad, birth and death. The moment mind recedes there is nonduality, bliss. There is no opposite word for bliss; it is beyond duality. And the seeker who is beyond duality ever attains to bliss.
We have a great problem: our problem is that we want to attain bliss very much, and hearing this kind of thing our greed is stirred up. If perpetual bliss can be had, then we too want to have it; if somebody can show us the way, we certainly want to have eternal bliss. But remember, this definition is only indicative of a certain state. If it gives birth to desire in you, you will never be able to attain to this state. Try to understand the difference well.
A friend came to me saying, “I want liberation soon; I want to have deep meditation, samadhi, soon.” I told him that the more haste you create the more delayed you will be, because a hasty mind cannot become peaceful. It is the haste itself which is the restlessness. And we all know what sort of problems arise when we are in a hurry.
We have to catch a train and so we are in a hurry. Now those things which usually could have been done in two minutes take five minutes. The buttons on the coat get wrongly done up. You undo them again, you do them up again. You pick up your spectacles, they slip out of your hands and break. You are trying to lock your suitcase, the key keeps missing the keyhole. It’s the hurry.. Haste always makes waste, because in haste your mind is very much topsy-turvy and you are bound to make mistakes. And if haste creates delay in small matters, it will create enormous delays in matters pertaining to the journey to the ultimate.
I told that friend, “Do not be in a hurry, otherwise things will be delayed. In this area, if you stay with the attitude that whenever it may happen you are willing, there is no hurry – then probably it will happen early.”
He said, “Oh, is it so? So if I am ready to wait forever, that will make it happen earlier?”
If you are ready to wait it will happen fast, but that fastness is the outcome of a waiting mind. If you say you will wait so that it can happen quickly, it means you are not waiting at all, and it will never happen quickly. How can an awaiting emanate from the desire for haste?
Excerpted From Finger Pointing To The Moon CH: 12
