No-Mind Awareness – In Gita Verse 10.33 Of letters I am the letter A, and among compound words I am the dual compound. I am also an inexhaustible time, and of creators I am Brahmā.
From this verse Krishna’s guidance is Change. Life is constantly Changing. Life is a Change. There is only one thing permanent, and that is Change.
Change: Misery arises because we don’t allow change to happen. We cling, we want things to be static. If you love a woman you want her tomorrow too, the same way as she is yours today. That’s how misery arises. Nobody can be certain about the next moment – what to say about tomorrow?
All your agreements, all your disagreements, are just finding ways to remain the way you are, not to change. People’s whole lives are devoted to one work: how not to change. They go on saying, “I don’t want to be miserable,” and they go on doing things which make them miserable. They go on saying, “I want to change,” but I look deep down in them and they don’t want to change. In fact this express desire that they want to change is again a trick not to change, so they can say to the world, “I am trying to change and I am saying loudly and shouting loudly that I want to change, and still if nothing is happening what can I do?”
You cannot change. I would like to say: you cannot change, you can only allow change to happen. Trying to change, you will never change. Who is trying? The old is. Look at the inner logic of it: you are trying to change yourself. It is almost like pulling yourself up by your own shoe-strings. What can happen out of it? Nothing is possible. You cannot change yourself because who is this one who is trying to change? It is your past. It is you.
You can allow a change to happen. What can you do to allow it? Please don’t agree and disagree.
But only through non-thinking can you inquire. This seems contradictory, because whenever we inquire we use thinking. Our ordinary method of inquiry means thinking and more thinking. But this inquiry, the inquiry of religion, is not thinking. The inquiry of religion can be done only when you are alert and non-thinking.
Remember this: non-thinking alertness because in non-thinking you may go to sleep if you are not alert. Then it is of no use. You are alert when you are thinking but that is of no use, because thinking creates the clouds. Or, you can be non-thinking and asleep. That too is of no use because the sky is there but you are asleep so you cannot see it. So two things are needed: non-thinking and alertness. No-thought consciousness. No-mind awareness. If you can create this phenomenon within you (no mind on the one hand and awareness on the other hand), this is what meditation is; this is what dhyana is.
In this situation, the truth becomes revealed. And that truth is one, the most inner one. It is not yours. That center is the center of the whole existence.
You exist only on the periphery, the circumference. The more inward you move, the less and less you become. When you reach the innermost center, you are no more. In a sense, you are no more; the old man is dead. But in another sense, for the first time you are, because now the innermost reality is revealed to you, the eternal is revealed to you. Now you have reached that which never changes.
Krishna says a man of awareness knows that life is constantly changing. Life is a change. There is only one thing permanent, and that is change. Except change, everything else changes. To accept this nature of life, to accept this changing existence with all its seasons and moods, this constant flow that never stops for a single moment, is to be blissful. Then nobody can disturb your bliss. It is your hankering for permanency that creates troubles for you. If you want to live in a life with no change – you are asking the impossible.
A man of awareness becomes courageous enough to accept the changing phenomena. In that very acceptance is bliss. Then all is good. Then you are never frustrated.
Tags: No-Mind Awareness
