As Hari walked home after school one day, he suddenly felt faint with hunger and knew his mother would not have any food ready for him at home. He grew desperate and went from house to house asking for food. Finally, a girl gave him a tall glass of milk. When he tried to pay her she refused and sent him on his way. Years later, the girl, now a grown woman, fell very sick and could not find anyone who could cure her. Finally, she went to a large hospital with the city’s greatest doctor. The doctor spent months treating the woman until she was finally cured. The woman was happy but was also afraid she could not pay the bill. When the hospital handed the bill to her, she opened it to read, ‘Paid in full, with a glass of milk’.
Turning In
All our act is nothing but expression of our inner being.
The Inner Rhythm Of Being:
You are searching for the inner rhythm – sometimes in money, sometimes in power, sometimes in prestige, sometimes in so many kinds of relationships. You go on begging. You want to know something of the transcendental, you are thirsty for the transcendental.
Once in a while, even in ordinary life, it happens. You have those few moments when suddenly one day you wake up in the morning and everything seems to fit perfectly. The birds are singing, the air is fragrant, the sun is rising, and suddenly you feel that all is quiet. You are no longer separate for a moment…you feel a great joy arising in you for no reason at all. You suddenly feel vibrant, utterly rejuvenated, at home. Maybe the night’s deep sleep and rest, maybe the beautiful morning, the song of the birds, the fresh air, the dewdrops on the grass leaves shining in the early sun – all this created the context. Not by your effort, but just by accident you fell in harmony with yourself and with existence.
And remember, it happens always together: whenever you fall in harmony with yourself, you fall in harmony with existence too.
Harmony has two sides: the individual and the universal. If the individual is in harmony, then there is no reason why he should not be in harmony with the whole. If inside you all conflict has disappeared, even for a single moment, in that moment you are part of the whole, you are no longer an island, you are no longer separate. All walls have suddenly disappeared; you are no longer imprisoned.
If you look back you can remember a few moments…and those will be the moments when you were relaxed, those will be the moments when there was no particular desire in your mind, when you were not worried, when you were not tense, when somehow you simply were.
Watch these sudden accidental moments minutely, because there is the secret key. If it happens in a relaxed state, when you are very loose, non-tense, then you can create the context!
Learning from the story A Glass of Milk: Turning In
Experience Learning
Turning inwards is not a turning at all. Going inwards is not a going at all. Turning inwards simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration. That each desire brings misery, that there is no fulfillment through desire. That you never reach anywhere, that contentment is impossible. Seeing this truth, that running after desires takes you nowhere, you stop. Not that you make any effort to stop. If you make any effort to stop it is again running, in a subtle way. You are still desiring – maybe now it is desirelessness that you desire.
If you are making an effort to go in, you are still going out. Any effort can only take you out, outwards. All journeys are outward journeys, there is no inward journey. How can you journey inwards? You are already there, there is no point in going. When going stops, journeying disappears, when desiring is no more clouding your mind, you are in. This is called turning in. But it is not a turning at all, it is simply not going out.
You always remain here. Here and now is the only reality, there is no other. But desire can create a dream. And in desire you go on moving outwards.
Now, what does it mean to turn inwards? Tao’s question is significant, it is very relevant. What does it mean to turn inwards? It means seeing the futility of desire, seeing the futility of dreaming, seeing the illusoriness of dreaming. In that very seeing, desire disappears. In that clarity, desire cannot exist. And when you are with no desire, you are in. Not that you have to turn in. Not that first you have to stop desiring, then you have to turn in. The cessation of desire is the turning, the transformation – what Jesus calls ‘metanoia’, the conversion. Suddenly another gestalt opens. It was there, but you were not aware of it because you were too much obsessed with the desire. The desire for money, the desire for power, the desire for prestige, does not allow your meditation to bloom. Because the whole energy goes down the drain in desires.
Once the energy is not moving anywhere… Remember, turning in is not moving in. When the energy is not moving at all, when there is no movement, when everything is still, when all has stopped – because seeing the futility of desire you cannot move anywhere, there is nowhere to go – stillness descends. The world stops. That’s what is meant by ‘turning in’. Suddenly you are in. You have always been there, now you are awake. The night is over, the morning has come, you are awake. This is what is meant by Buddhahood – to become aware, awake, of that which is already the case.
