VBT – Meditation 60.3
Acceptance Is The Key
Acceptance Is The Key To All Change:
Many times we feel – Acceptance of a situation may merely be a consolation. With this thought question arises – How can I know when I have accepted something or when I have only consoled or distracted myself from the pain?
It is simple. Consolation is out of thinking, explanations, theories; acceptance is out of understanding. When you explain yourself, you console. When you understand, then there is acceptance. Consolation has to be brought in; acceptance comes on its own. Acceptance is happening; consolation is a doing.
You are miserable; then you seek some theory to explain it – past life karmas; somewhere you try to find a shelter. Or maybe God is putting you in misery so that you can grow: it is a challenge to grow – a consolation. Or it is the nature of life; you philosophize, you say, ‘Everybody is in misery, and I cannot be the exception. Buddha says that all of life is misery – so it is. One has to accept it, what else can one do? One has to accept it.’ Then it is consolation. Then you try hard to create a buffer around yourself.
Acceptance is out of understanding – it has no explanation.
The misery is there. You look into the misery, and you don’t bring any theory, and you don’t bring any explanation; you simply look into the fact of misery, and looking into the fact of misery, suddenly, you find there is arising an acceptance. If somebody asks, ‘Why?’ you will not be able to answer because there is no why. You will not be able to show the cause. You will simply say, ‘It has happened.’
Acceptance is like love – all that is really beautiful is always like love. When you fall in love with a woman or a man and somebody asks, ‘Why?’ Can you really answer it? You try sometimes, but all your answers are absurd. You say, ‘Because the woman is beautiful,’ but there are millions of people, and they have not fallen in love with that woman. If she were beautiful she would not have been available to you – somebody else would have grabbed her before you. But nobody else thinks she is beautiful, so in fact, you are putting things upside down.
You say, ‘I have fallen in love because she is beautiful.’ The real thing is just the opposite: she looks beautiful because you have fallen in love. One day, when love will disappear, the same woman will not look beautiful to you; she may even start looking ugly and horrible. Right now, you cannot leave her for a single moment. One day, when love has disappeared, you will not be able to tolerate her presence for a single moment.
You cannot do anything about love. When it comes, it comes; when it goes, it goes.
It is like a breeze: it comes, and it is gone. Acceptance is like love; it is happening. When you are true, authentically with the reality of the moment, you don’t look to the past to find an explanation, you don’t look to the future to find an explanation; you simply look into the fact. You don’t ask Buddha, you don’t ask Krishna, you don’t ask Lao Tzu, you don’t ask anybody; you simply look into the facticity of the misery. You simply live in the pain, you simply go into it. Alone, holding nobody’s hand – Buddha’s, Krishna’s, Christ’s – you simply go into it. All those hands would become consolations; all those people would become explanations.
You will say, ‘Jesus says this, Buddha says this, that’s why I have to accept.’ But that acceptance is pseudo: it has not arisen out of your own experience. Go into the pain of a situation single-handed, alone. Face the situation as it is, with no mind to explain it away. Just look into it without any thought interfering, and then there will be acceptance. It will not be a consolation; there will be great contentment. Suddenly you will see that you can accept, but there is no cause to it.
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