VBT – Week’s Meditation 8
Become Neutral
Try this. In any way become neutral, indifferent – suddenly the mind has no function. If you are for, you can think; if you are against, you can think. If you are neither for nor against, what is left to think? Buddha says that indifference is the basis of the middle path. upeksha indifference – be indifferent to the extremes. Just try one thing: be indifferent to the extremes. A balancing happens.
This balancing will give you a new dimension of feeling where you are both the knower and the known, the world and the other world, this and that, the body and the mind. You are both, and simultaneously neither – above both. A triangle has come into existence.
You may have seen that many occult, secret societies have used the triangle as their symbol. The triangle is one of the oldest occult symbols just because of this – because the triangle has three angles. Ordinarily you have only two angles, the third is missing. It is not there yet, it has not evolved. The third angle is beyond both. Both belong to it, they are part of it, and still it is beyond and higher than both.
If you do this experiment you will help to create a triangle within yourself. The third angle will arise by and by, and when it comes then you cannot be in misery. Once you can witness, you cannot be in misery. Misery means getting identified with something.
But one subtle point has to be remembered – then you will not even get identified with bliss. That’s why Buddha says, ‘I can say only this much – that there will be no misery. In samadhi, in ecstasy, there will be no misery. I cannot say that there will be bliss.’ Buddha says, ‘I cannot say that. I can simply say there will be no misery.’
And he is right, because bliss means when there is no identification of any type – not even with bliss. This is very subtle. If you feel that you are blissful, sooner or later you will be in misery again. If you feel you are blissful, you are preparing to be miserable again. You are still getting identified with a mood.
You feel happy: now you get identified with happiness. The moment you get identified with happiness, unhappiness has started. Now you will cling to it, now you will become afraid of the opposite, now you will expect it to remain with you constantly. You have created all that is needed for misery to be there and then misery will enter, and when you get identified with happiness, you will get identified with misery. Identification is the disease.
At the third point you are not identified with anything: whatsoever comes and passes, comes and passes; you remain a witness, just a spectator – neutral, indifferent, unidentified.
The morning comes and the sun rises and you witness it. You don’t say, ‘I am the morning.’ Then when noon comes, you don’t say, ‘I have become noon.’ You witness it. And when the sun sets and darkness comes and the night, you don’t say, ‘I am the darkness and the night.’ You witness it. You say, ‘There was morning, then there was noon, then there was evening and now there is night. And again there will be morning and the circle will go on and I am just an onlooker. I will keep on witnessing.’
If the same becomes possible with your moods – moods of the morning and moods of the noon and moods of the evening and the night, and they have their own circle, they go on moving – you become a witness. You say, ‘Now happiness has come – just like a morning. And now night will come – misery. The moods will go on changing around me, and I will remain centered in myself. I will not get attached to any mood. I will not cling to any mood. I will not hope for anything and I will not feel frustrated. I will simply witness. Whatsoever happens, I will see it. When it comes, I will see; when it goes, I will see.’
Buddha uses this many times. He says again and again that when a thought arises, look at it. A thought of misery, a thought of happiness arises – look at it. It comes to a climax – look at it. Then it starts falling down – look at it. Then it disappears – look at it. Arising, existing, dying, and you remain just a witness; go on looking at it. This third point makes you a witness, sakshi, and to be a witness is the highest possibility of consciousness.
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