No Roots
The clouds that wander through the sky have no roots, no home… And the same is true for your thoughts, and the same is true for your inner sky. Your thoughts have no roots, they have no home; they wander just like clouds. So you need not fight them, you need not be against them, you need not even try to stop thought.
This should become a deep understanding in you, because whenever a person becomes interested in meditation he starts trying to stop thinking. And if you try to stop thoughts they will never be stopped, because the very effort to stop is a thought, the very effort to meditate is a thought, the very effort to attain buddhahood is a thought. And how can you stop a thought by another thought? How can you stop mind by creating another mind? Then you will be clinging to the other. And this will go on and on, ad nauseam; then there is no end to it.
Don’t fight – because who will fight? Who are you? Just a thought, so don’t make yourself a battleground of one thought fighting another. Rather, be a witness, you just watch thoughts floating. They stop, but not by your stopping. They stop by your becoming more aware, not by any effort on your part to stop them. No, they never stop, they resist. Try and you will find: try to stop a thought and the thought will persist. Thoughts are very stubborn, adamant; they are hatha yogis, they persist. You throw them away and they will come back a million and one times. You will get tired, but they will not get tired.
It happened that one man came to Tilopa. The man wanted to attain buddhahood and he had heard that this Tilopa has attained. And Tilopa was staying in a temple somewhere in Tibet. The man came; Tilopa was sitting, and the man said: “I would like to stop my thoughts.”
Tilopa said: “It is very easy. I will give you a device, a technique. You follow this: just sit down and don’t think of monkeys. This will do.”
The man said: “So easy? Just not thinking of monkeys? But I have never been thinking about them.”
Tilopa said: “Now you do it, and tomorrow morning you report.”
You can understand what happened to that poor man…monkeys and monkeys all around. In the night he couldn’t get any sleep, not a wink. He would open his eyes and they were sitting there, or he would close his eyes and they were sitting there, and they were making faces…. He was simply surprised. “Why has this man given me this technique, because if monkeys are the problem, then I have never been bothered by them. This is happening for the first time!” And he tried, in the morning again he tried. He took a bath, sat, but nothing doing: the monkeys wouldn’t leave him.
He came back by the evening almost mad – because the monkeys were following him and he was talking to them. He came and he said: “Save me somehow. I don’t want this, I was okay, I don’t want any meditation. And I don’t want your enlightenment – but save me from these monkeys!”
If you think of monkeys, it may be that they may not come to you. But if you want not to…if you want them not to come to you, then they will follow you. They have their egos and they cannot leave you so easily. And what do you think of yourself: trying not to think of monkeys? The monkeys get irritated, this cannot be allowed.
This happens to people. Tilopa was joking, he was saying that if you try to stop a thought, you cannot. On the contrary, the very effort to stop it gives it energy, the very effort to avoid it becomes attention. So, whenever you want to avoid something you are paying too much attention to it. If you want not to think a thought, you are already thinking about it.
