The Pilgrims Of Love
Why is there always such a rush? Kabir asks. He is asking his own mind. He says: Why are you continuously rushing somewhere, somewhere else? The mind is always going somewhere else; the mind is never here, never for a single moment. Try to understand this: the moment the mind is here, the mind disappears. In the present, the state of no-mind blooms. Mind can only exist either in the past or in the future; it cannot exist in the present. Hence it is always running.
And these are the two possibilities to run. Either it goes backwards to the past, either you start dreaming about the past – you stir memories, nostalgia, wounds, hurts, pleasures, you go into the past and you start remembering them – or you start planning for the future: desires, imaginations, projects. With these two, mind is perfectly happy; mind has space to rush, run, to go from one place to another place.
The present has no space in it for the mind, the mind cannot move in it. You can be in the present, but mind cannot be. Mind is a monkey – it jumps from one branch to another, it goes on jumping. It cannot stay in any place, it cannot remain patient, there is always a hurry.
Kabir says:
Are man dhiraj kahe na dhare.
Oh my mind, why can’t you be patient? Why can’t you wait? Why can’t you be herenow? Why are you in a constant rush? Why are you always hurrying? for what? Where are you going?
I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
Try to understand the mechanism of the mind. The mind can only live either out of past or out of future. The mind feeds on that which is not, the mind lives through that which is not – the past is no more, the future is not yet, both are non-existential. And the mind feeds on the non-existential. Hence those who have come to see their mind say that the mind is non-existential. Because it lives on the non-existent, it cannot be existent itself. It is a shadow; it is not reality. One has to stop rushing and running. That’s what meditation is all about: stopping the mind herenow, bringing it to the present. And you will be surprised, the moment you bring it to the present it melts and disappears. It is as if you take a candle into your dark room and darkness disappears. The darkness cannot face the candle. If the candle is not there, the darkness is there – bring the light in and the darkness is no longer there. The darkness was only the absence of light; it was an absence. It had no existence of its own, it was shadowy, non-existential.
Excerpted From The Revolution CH: 5
