Learn Patient

Grey Wolf attended meetings sporadically, and when she came she usually sat silent during the question period.

However, she came to hear Brown Bear and spoke up, saying, “We dedicate our sutras to the enlightenment of bushes and grasses. This doesn’t seem so likely somehow.” 

Brown Bear chuckled and said, “They are very patient.”

Be Watcher

Like Grey Wolf, we want someone to guide us. We want to become followers. And remember that the master can give you the hint. When the sutra says that – the enlightenment of bushes and grasses – it simply says that learn the patient. It says learn to observe, be watchful.

The journey of our life seems to be a very strange journey, which begins in deep unconsciousness as a new born child who does not know why the birth has happened. For his existence and his survival, the child is utterly dependent on the people who look after him and teach him to live their own particular way. The child himself does not know what is the right way. What is being taught to him, becomes the right way of living. Society around him does not allow his own intelligence to unfold or grow and he becomes fully burdened with a certain conditioning imposed by the people surrounding him. This becomes a long journey of social conditioning, an imitation and a borrowed life.

It is the role of an enlightened master, a Sadguru, if we are fortunate to come across in our life, to guide us to awaken our inner intelligence and remind us of our true self. With him it becomes a new journey of awakening, realising our potential on the path of meditation. Ordinarily, within us we have two currents – one is of thoughts, which is very dominant. The other current, which we rarely feel, is the current of watchfulness. The enlightened master tells us the distinction. An ordinary man has one current of thought within him, the watcher is asleep; the meditator has two parallel currents within him, thought and watching. Within an enlightened person only one current remains, that is watching. Thinking has died. But because you have to learn watching from a state of thinking, you will have to meditate on thought and watching side by side. If we have to move from thought to watching, we will have to meditate on thought and watching simultaneously – right-observation or right-remembrance. Mahavira has called it ‘wakeful intelligence’; mindfulness and wakeful intelligence. The one who is watching the thoughts is your wakeful intelligence. It is very easy to find thinkers, but it is difficult to find someone whose intelligence is awake. Awaken your intelligence. I have told you how to awaken it – by watching your thoughts with awareness. If you watch the actions of the body, the body will disappear; if you watch your racing thoughts, the thought process, then the thoughts will disappear; and if you observe your emotions closely, then the emotions will disappear. I have said that for the purification of emotions, allow love to come in place of hatred and friendship in place of enmity. Now I tell you to also be aware of this truth: there is a dimension behind the one who is loving and the one who is hating, which is just awareness – which neither love nor hate. It is simply a witness. It sometimes watches hatred and sometimes watches love happening, but it is simply watching.

Learning from the Story Learn Patient: Be Watcher

Experience Learning

The Only Meditation There Is: Watching

Not “keeping the mind still,” but mindlessness.

There has been a long misunderstanding about these two things: keeping the mind still and mindlessness. There have been many people who have thought that they are synonymous. They appear to be synonymous, but in reality they are as far apart as two things can be, and there is no way to bridge them.

The difference is very delicate. A man who is keeping his mind still and a man who has no mind will look exactly alike from the outside, because the man who is keeping his mind still is also silent. Underneath his silence there is great turmoil, but he is not allowing it to surface. He is in great control.

The man with no mind, or mindlessness, has nothing to control. He is just pure silence with nothing repressed, with nothing disciplined – just a pure empty sky.

The process of controlling and repressing and disciplining is taught by all the religions, and because of their fallacious teaching humanity has not moved a single inch – it remains barbarous. Any moment people start killing each other. It does not take a single moment to lose themselves; they forget completely that they are human beings, and something much more, something better is expected of them. There have been very few people who have been able to avoid this deception of controlling their mind and believing that they have attained mindlessness.

To attain mindlessness a totally different process is involved: I call it the ultimate alchemy. It consists only of a single element – that of watchfulness.

Gautam Buddha is passing through a town when a fly comes and sits on his forehead. He is talking to his companion, Ananda, and he just goes on talking and moves his hand to throw off the fly. Then suddenly he recognizes that his movement of the hand has been unconscious, mechanical. Because he was talking consciously to Ananda, the hand moved the fly mechanically. He stops and although now there is no fly, he moves his hand again consciously.

Ananda says, “What are you doing? The fly has gone away…”

Gautam Buddha says, “The fly has gone away…. but I have committed a sin, because I did it in unconsciousness.”

The English word “sin” is used only by Gautam Buddha in its right meaning. The word “sin” originates in the roots which mean forgetfulness, unawareness, un-watchfulness, doing things mechanically – and our whole life is almost mechanical. We go on doing things from morning to evening, from evening to morning, like robots.

A man who wants to enter into the world of mindlessness has to learn only one thing – a single step and the journey is over. That single step is to do everything watchfully. You move your hand watchfully; you open your eyes watchfully; you walk, you take your steps alert, aware; you eat, you drink, but never allow mechanicalness to take possession over you. This is the only alchemical secret of transformation.

A man who can do everything fully consciously becomes a luminous phenomenon. He is all light, and his whole life is full of fragrance and flowers. The mechanical man lives in dark holes, dirty holes. He does not know the world of light; he is like a blind man. The man of watchfulness is really the man who has eyes.