Why does our Education need a Balanced Mind?
The Art of Staying in Balance
“Being and non-being produce each other. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short define each other. High and low oppose each other. Fore and aft follow each other,” says the Chinese enlightened mystic Lao Tzu describing the intrinsic harmony between polar opposites. There is no fight or struggle between them; they support each other.
This essential vision of Tao gave birth to the concept of Tai Chi, which means the ultimate law of life, the ultimate law of universe, the meeting and merging of all polarities of life, the merging of yin and yang into oneness. All opposites are complementary and meet in oneness which the Chinese call “Wu Chi”, meaning nothingness, from where everything arises.
The wise knows that life depends on opposites and creates its own balance. This dynamic balance is related to the complementary nature of opposites. China’s indigenous religion, Taoism, talks of this balance in terms of yin and yang, represented graphically as two intertwining fish – one black, one white. Everything in the universe is either yin (female) or yang (male) in nature. Yin and yang breathe meaning into each other, one cannot exist without the other. You cannot talk of light without its absence or opposite, darkness. Action takes off from repose.
Just being makes you lazy and just doing makes you hyper and a workaholic. The East became lazy and fatalistic, believing that everything happens by itself, like a child growing in the womb. The West became hyperactive and conquered nature. The whole world is suffering because of this aggression. The person who uses both these polarities to attain balance in his/her life is wise.
Once you know this secret alchemy of using the opposite, the contradictory, you are free. Otherwise you create inner imprisonments. There are people who say: ‘How can I do this? I have never done this.’
Unless we know how to stay in balance our education cannot help us to live a comfortable and peaceful life.
Today education and ethics are poles apart. In Spite of education there is a lack of ethics. This is due to a missing link that is balancing. Balancing will connect both for desired results.
We need to take action in an objective world with all our information and education plus a balanced mind will take us towards success.
Also remember balance cannot be taught but we need to learn through various practices. Education can be taught but how we apply makes a difference. Education is peripheral and Balance is centre.
Let me tell you one anecdote:
He was very weak, thin and feeble. Very lean, only bones and little muscles. Intimidated and bullied by his fellow mates. He used to get scared by any robust person or any animal. He thought to overcome his fears. He decided to learn the martial art.
There was a Tai Chi centre in his nearby locality. He went there and met the master trainer.
Master trainer welcomed him and said, first you have to learn to balance the body. Once you learn to balance the body then only I will teach you Tai Chi.
Boy asked how much time it will take to balance the body?
Master replied it depends on you. It may take 6 months to N numbers of years.
So he asked Why don’t you teach me directly?
Without balancing you cannot excel.
Sorry sir, I don’t have that much patience and time. He greeted the master and left.
He took an auto rickshaw to return home. After crossing the carfax, the road was blocked. There were a lot of people gathered. He got off from the auto to see what had happened. A speeding bike has lost its balance and collided with the bamboo of the ropewalker. Ropewalker lost his balance and fell on the ground and got injured and was bleeding.
With the help of the people he boarded the ropewalker in his auto and took him to the nearby hospital. Seeing the ropewalker’s condition, the doctor said, you have brought him timely. He is still in reversible shock. Listening to this he was perplexed. Seeing his reaction, the doctor explained reversible shock means physiology is in balance and organs are in coordination.
He was exhausted and hungry. He went to the canteen and ordered a masala dosa. Beside his table there was a family. While pouring sauce, the little boy pressed the bottle forcibly and sauce got spread on the table. His mother patted his back and said, next time use only that much force so that sauce doesn’t spread on the table. We need not use more force or less force.
He started eating dosa. It was very tasty and he praised the chef. Listening to the praise the chef humbly replied, Sir, it is due to the fine balance of all the spices. He was stunned.
He could now see the point that we need Balance. Balance to live our life of Joy and Growth, to be free of all our inner imprisonments.
He returned to the Tai Chi Center. He greeted the master and asked, “Why balancing?”
Master – “Visualize a mechanical weighing scale. When both plates have equal weight on them or when they are balanced, the scale’s needle comes in the center. Balancing is to find the center.”
“And why to find the center?” He asked.
“So that you can make beautiful periphery.”
Our world is our periphery. Today our periphery is ugly with double standards, poverty, exploitation and crime. We say honesty is the best policy but we are dishonest and cunning. We know smoking is injurious to our health still we smoke. We know anger is bad and still become angry. This is because we are not balanced.
The most difficult thing, the almost impossible thing for the mind, is to remain in the middle, to remain balanced. And to move from one thing to its opposite is the easiest. To move from one polarity to another is the nature of the mind.
It is difficult for the mind to come to the right diet, difficult for the mind to stay in the middle. It is just like a clock’s pendulum. The pendulum goes to the right, then it moves to the left, then again to the right, and again to the left; the clock’s working depends on this movement.
If the pendulum stays in the middle, the clock stops. And when the pendulum moves to the right, you think it is only going to the right, but at the same time it is gathering momentum to go to the left. The more it moves to the right, the more energy it gathers to move to the left, and vice versa.
Thinking means momentum. The mind starts arranging for the opposite. When you love a person you are gathering momentum to hate him. That’s why only friends can become enemies. You cannot suddenly become an enemy unless you have first become a friend.
Logic is superficial, life goes deeper, and in life all opposites are joined together, they exist together. Remember this, because then meditation becomes balancing.
Buddha taught eight disciplines, and with each discipline he used the word right. He said: Right effort, because it is very easy to move from action to inaction, from waking to sleep, but to remain in the middle is difficult.
When you are standing in the middle you are not gathering any momentum. And this is the beauty of it – a man who is not gathering any momentum to move anywhere, can be at ease with himself, can be at home.
Once a meditator came to see Osho and asked: “How can I do active meditation, because for many years I have been sitting silently?” He had chosen inactive meditation methods of vipassana and zazen, and he was not doing any active meditations, with pranayama or dancing. He could not do any active meditation because he had become identified with an inactive posture. He was feeling frozen, stiff and rigid.
Osho suggested some active meditations to him and said: “Become more of a movement. Be moving and allow life to flow. Once you know that between the opposites balance is possible, once you have a glimpse of it, then you know the art. Then everywhere in life, in every dimension of life, you can attain that balance very easily. Really, to say that you can attain is not good. Once you know the knack of it, whatsoever you do, the balance follows you like a shadow.”
Tags: Balanced Mind Staying in Balance
