VBT – Meditation 62.5
Total Desirelessness
Unless you drop even this idea of surrendering, unless you drop even this idea of empty hands, it is not surrender. One has to drop even emptiness in the hand. It is easy to understand the dropping of things… but then the hands were empty and Buddha said, “Drop it! Don’t even cling to this emptiness!” When you do meditation, you have to drop thoughts. When thoughts are dropped, a thought remains and the thought is, “Now I have become thoughtless.” There is a subtle feeling, a thought that “Now I have achieved and now there is no thought. Now the mind is vacant. Now I am empty.”
But this emptiness is filled with this thought. And whether thoughts are there or a thought is there makes no difference. Drop the thought also. And why are you waiting – for the buddha-nature? YOU cannot wait because you will not be there. You will never meet Buddha; when Buddha happens you will not be there, so your hopes are futile. You are wasting time, you will not be there.
Kabir has said, “When I was you were not. Now you are, and where has Kabir gone? When I was seeking and seeking and desiring and hungering for you, you were not. I was there. Now you are there, and please tell me where Kabir has gone? Where is that seeker who was seeking and seeking and hungering and weeping and crying for you? Where has that Kabir gone?”
You will not be there when Buddha happens. So don’t wait, don’t desire, because your desire of “When will Buddha happen to me?” and “When will I become a buddha-nature? When will I become enlightened?” – This very desire will create a barrier, the last barrier. For the achieving of total freedom, the desire for freedom is the last barrier. To be enlightened, even this desire for enlightenment has to be thrown, has to be cast away.
One of the great Zen masters, Lin-Chi, used to say, “If you meet Buddha anywhere, kill him immediately! If you meet Buddha anywhere in your meditation, kill him immediately!” He means it. This desire to be a buddha, to be enlightened, if you meet it anywhere, kill it immediately. Only then does it happen. Total desirelessness is needed, and when I say, “total desirelessness,” I mean that even the desire for total desirelessness must be dropped. You are, without any desire. You are, without any thought, not even aware that there is no thought, that there is no desire. Then it happens.
We have seen in our life people around us – With growing desirelessness, sometimes the person becomes outwardly inactive. Is it lethargy and dullness? Why does it happen?
Many things are possible, and it will depend. Certainly many desires will drop and many actions also. Those actions which were just caused by desires will drop. If I was running for a particular desire, how can I run if the desire has dropped? My running will stop. At least the same running on the same route will stop. So when a person becomes desireless, at least for an interim period, for an interval – and how long it will be will depend on the individual – he will become inactive. The desires will have dropped – and all the actions that he had been doing were concerned with desires, so how can he continue? They will drop.
But by dropping desires and actions, energy will be accumulated – and now energy will begin to move. When it moves, how it moves will vary from individual to individual, but now it will move. There will be a gap, an interim period, an interval. This is a pregnancy period. The seed is born, but now it will gestate for at least nine months. And it may seem strange, but it happens. This nine month period is meaningful. Near about this, eight months or ten months, will be the interim period, and you will just become inactive. This inactivity will also vary. Someone may become so inactive that people may think that he has just gone into a coma. Everything stops.
For Meher Baba it happened like that. For one year he was just in a coma. He couldn’t even move his limbs. Action was far off; he couldn’t stand up because even the desire to stand had gone. He couldn’t eat; he had to be forced. He couldn’t do anything! For one year continuously he became just helpless – a helpless child. This was a pregnancy period, and then, suddenly, a different man was born. The man who became inactive was no more: a new energy – energy accumulated.
Tags: Total Desirelessness
