A farmer requested a Tendai priest to recite sutras for his wife, who had died. After the recitation was over the farmer asked: “Do you think my wife will gain merit from this?”
“Not only your wife, but all sentient beings will benefit from the recitation of sutras,” answered the priest.
“If you say all sentient beings will benefit,” said the farmer, “my wife may be very weak and others will take advantage of her, getting the benefit she should have. So please recite sutras just for her.”
The priest explained that it was the desire of a Buddhist to offer blessings and wish merit for every living being.
“That is a fine teaching,” concluded the farmer, “but please make one exception. I have a neighbor who is rough and mean to me. Just exclude him from all those sentient beings.”
Follow Silence
Our misery has nothing to do with any circumstances. Our misery is because of our comparison, desire and condition. Looking at the farmer whose wife had died he went for some rituals. There was no pain of losing his wife but he was talking to the priest that the blessing should not go to his neighbor.
This is our life also. We have lost our sensitivity. We live in our mind.
We are educated to understand language and all its complexities. Nobody helps us to go beyond language, to go beyond words, to reach the wordless space within us.
Society is against it, because if you can hear silence you will not be a part of the crowd mind, of the collective mind. You will become an individual immediately. And an individual is a danger to the state, to the church, to the society. An individual is always dangerous, because an individual is nothing but rebellion. His very presence is a risk for all the vested interests, for the establishment. The establishment wants you to be obedient: he wants you to understand the orders. The establishment wants you to be slaves, servants – efficient, of course, but not too intelligent; just intellectual, not intelligent.
Silence is the explosion of intelligence. Silence means: inside you, you are just spaciousness, uncluttered spaciousness. Silence means you have put aside the whole furniture of the mind – the thoughts, the desires, the memories, the fantasies, the dreams, you have all pushed aside. You are just looking into existence directly, immediately. You are in contact with existence without anything in between you and existence. That is silence.
And to be in tune with existence even for a single moment – is enough to make you aware of many things. One is that you are deathless, and the person who is deathless cannot be forced to be a slave. He would rather like to die than to become a slave. He would rather like to risk everything than to risk his freedom because death means nothing to him….
The moment you understand that you are eternal, all fear disappears. And the society exists through exploiting your fear; hence, it teaches you from the school to the university, it devotes almost one-third of your life in learning words, language, logic. It is not concerned at all that you should understand silence. That’s the function of a Master: to undo all that the society has done to you, to help you to go beyond words.
And you can experience it happening here – you can hear the silence. And when you hear it, there is immediate understanding. Understanding comes like a shadow following silence.
Learning from the story Our Conditions: Follow Silence
Experience Learning
To understand words and to hear words is very simple. Anybody can do it; just a little education about language is needed, nothing much. But a tremendous transformation is needed to hear silence and to understand silence…. Silence is the basic requirement of understanding God, the basic requirement to know truth….
Silence can be profane too. Silence can be sacred too. Silence has as many nuances, as many dimensions as your being has. It is multidimensional, and it is tremendously pregnant.
In silence, all dualities disappear.
For example, day and night are very clear dualities, but they are not two. There are animals who see in the night. Their eyes are more sensitive, capable of seeing in darkness. For them, there is no darkness. Those animals cannot open their eyes in the day, because their eyes are so delicate that the sun hurts. So while it is day for you, for those animals it is night; the eyes are closed, all is darkness. When it is night for you, it is day for them. The whole day they sleep, the whole night they are awake.
And if you ask a scientist and a logician, you will see the difference. If you ask the logician, “What is day?” he will say, “That which is not night.” And what is not night? It is a circular game. If you ask, “What is night?” The logician is going to say, “What is not day.”
You need day to define night, you need night to define day. Strange duality, strange opposition…. If there is no day, can you think of night? If there is no night, can you think of day? It is impossible.
Ask the scientist, who is closer to reality than the logician. For the scientist darkness is less light, light is less darkness. Now it is one phenomenon, just like a thermometer. Somebody has a temperature of 110 degrees, just ready to move out of the house. Somebody has a temperature of 98 degrees, the normal temperature for human beings, but somebody falls below 96 degrees, again ready for a move.
Your existence is not very big, just between 96 and 110 degrees. Sixteen degrees … below is death, above is death; just a small slit in between, a small window of life. If we could have a thermometer for light and darkness, the situation would be the same, just as it is between heat and cold — the same thermometer will do for both. The cold is less hot and the hot is less cold, but it is one phenomenon; there is no duality. It is the same with darkness and light.
And the same is true about all oppositions that mind creates. Openness, witnessing … if you think intellectually, they look very different. They seem to be unrelated, how can they be one? But in experience they are one.
Tags: Adwaita Authentic Religion Experience Of Silence Follow Silence Inner Tension World Is Dual
