VBT – Meditation 17.0
UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE – UNTIL.
Do Not Choose, Keep In The Middle
Only this much is the sutra. Just like any scientific sutra it is short, but even these few words can transform your life totally. UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE – UNTIL.
KEEP IN THE MIDDLE… Buddha developed his whole technique of meditation on this sutra. His path is known as MAJJHIM NIKAYA – the middle path. Buddha says, “Remain always in the middle – in everything.”
One Prince Shrown took initiation, Buddha initiated him into sannyas. That prince was a rare man, and when he took sannyas, when he was initiated, his whole kingdom was just amazed.
The kingdom couldn’t believe it, the people couldn’t believe that Prince Shrown could become a sannyasin. No one had ever even imagined it, as he was a man of this world – indulging in everything, indulging to the extreme. Wine and women were his whole milieu.
Then suddenly Buddha came to the town, and the prince went to see him for a DARSHAN – A spiritual encounter. He fell at Buddha’s feet and he said, “Initiate me. I will leave this world.” Those who had come with him were not even aware… This was so sudden. So they asked Buddha, “What is happening? This is a miracle. Shrown is not that type of man, and he has lived very luxuriously. Up to now we couldn’t even imagine that Shrown is going to take sannyas, so what has happened? You have done something.”
Buddha said, “I have not done anything. Mind can move easily from one extreme to the other. That is the way of the mind – to move from one extreme to another. So Shrown is not doing something new. It is to be expected. Because you do not know the law of the mind, that is why you are so much taken aback.”
The mind moves from one extreme to another, that is the way of the mind. So it happens every day: a person who was mad after wealth renounces everything, becomes a naked fakir. We think, “What a miracle!” But it is nothing – just the ordinary law. A person who was not mad after wealth cannot be expected to renounce, because only from one extreme can you move to another – just like a pendulum, from one extreme to the other.
So a person who was after wealth, mad after wealth, will become mad against it, but the madness will remain – that is the mind. A man who lived just for sex may become a celibate, may move into isolation, but the madness will remain. Before he was living only for sex, now he will be living only against sex – but the attitude, the approach, remains the same.
So a BRAHMACHARI, a celibate, is not really beyond sex; his whole mind is sex-oriented. He is against, but not beyond. The way of beyond is always in the middle, it is never at the extreme. So Buddha says, “This could have been expected. No miracle has happened. This is how the mind works.”
Tags: Do Not Choose Keep In The Middle
