VBT – Meditation 28.5
Mind Is A Link
The very nature of the mind is such, so we will have to understand what is this nature.
Mind is a link between the body and the no-body which is within you. It is a link between the material and the non-material within you. It is one of the most mysterious bridges. It bridges two quite contradictory things – matter and spirit.
If you can, conceive the paradox. Usually you make a bridge over a river where both the banks are material. In this case, the mind is the bridge between one bank which is material and the other which is non-material… between the visible and the invisible, between the dying and the non-dying, between life and death, between body and spirit – or whatsoever you name these two banks. Because the mind bridges such contradictory things, it is bound to remain tense; it cannot be at ease.
It is always moving from the visible to the invisible, from the invisible to the visible. Every moment the mind is in deep tension. It has to bridge two things which cannot be bridged. That is the tension, that is the anxiety. You are every moment in anxiety.
I am not talking about your financial anxiety or other such anxieties – they are boundary anxieties, frame anxieties. The real anxiety is not that, the real anxiety is that of the buddha. You are also in that anxiety, but you are so much burdened by your day-to-day anxieties, you cannot discover your basic anxiety. Once you find your basic anxiety, you will become religious.
Religion is a concern for the basic anxiety. Buddha became anxious in a different way. He was not worried about finance, he was not worried about a beautiful wife, he was not worried about anything.
There was no worry; ordinary worries were not there. He was secure, safe, the son of a great king, the husband of a very beautiful wife, and everything was available. The moment he desired anything he would get it. All that was possible for him.
But suddenly he became anxiety-ridden – and that anxiety was a basic anxiety, a primary anxiety.
He saw a dead man being carried away, and he asked his chariot driver what had happened to this man. The driver said, “This man is dead now. He has died.” This was Buddha’s first encounter with death, so he asked immediately, “Is everyone prone to death? Am I also going to die?”
Look at the question. You may not have asked it. You may have asked who has died, why he has died, or you might have said that he looks too young and this is not the age to die. Those anxieties are not basic; they are not concerned with you. You may have felt sympathetic, you may have felt sad, but still that is just on the circumference – and you will have forgotten within a few moments.
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