VBT – Meditation 59.3

VBT – Meditation 59.3

Totally Frustrated

Religion starts when you become frustrated, totally frustrated, with the world of name and form and when the whole thing looks meaningless. It is! Ultimately it IS meaningless. This feeling of meaninglessness of the world that is created around name and form makes you uneasy. That uneasiness is the beginning of a religious search. You become uneasy because with this label you cannot become totally identified. The label remains a label; you remain what you are. This label covers you a little, but it cannot become your totality. And sooner or later you become fed up with this label. You want to know who you really are. And the moment you ask sincerely, “Who am I?” You are on a different journey; you are transcending.

This identification is natural. There is another reason why it is so easy to become identified. This is a room. If I say to you, “Look at the room,” where will you look? You will look at the walls. The walls are not the room: the room is just “roominess”; it is not the walls, the walls are just the boundaries of the space that we call “room.” But if I tell you to look at the room, you will look at the walls because the “roominess” cannot be looked at.

You are just inner space; your name and form are the walls. They give you a boundary, they give you a definition, they give you a definite place. You can be identified with that definiteness; otherwise you are just a zero, SHUNYA – a nothingness. That nothingness is there, that inner space is there.

Look at it in this way. You breathe in, you breathe out. If you breathe in and breathe out silently and there is no thinking in the mind, if you are simply sitting under a tree breathing in and breathing out, what will you feel? You will feel that there is outer space, there is inner space. The breath comes into the inner space, the breath moves out to the outer space, but where are you? There are simply two spaces. Your throat is just a door, a swinging door. When the breath comes in, the breath forces the door and moves in. When the breath goes out, it again forces the door and goes out. Your throat is just a swinging door, and there are two spaces – the outer and the inner. And if this door is broken, then there are not even two spaces – just one space.

You will become afraid if you feel nothingness within. You want to be something definable, definite.

There is no one who is definite inside; the outer space is infinite and the inner space is also infinite.

That is why Buddha insisted that there is no soul, no ATMAN. You are just a vacant space – infinite.

It is difficult to feel oneself as this infinite space unless you make an arduous effort. One becomes identified with the boundaries. It is easier to feel oneself that way – with the boundaries. Your name is just a boundary, your body is just a boundary, your thoughts are just a boundary. For outer utility, for your own convenience also, you become identified. Then, once you become identified, accumulation goes on and on and on, and with accumulation you feel a fulfillment of the ego. You are identified with your riches, then you go on accumulating. You have a feeling you are growing greater, bigger. You have a big house, then a bigger house, then a still bigger house, so you feel that you are getting bigger and bigger, and that is how greed is born.

Greed is nothing but an expansion, an effort to expand the ego. But howsoever great you become in your ego, you can never become infinite, and you ARE infinite within. If you can look into the nothingness you are infinite within. That is why ego is never satisfied. Ultimately it is frustrating. It cannot become infinite; it will remain finite.