True Wealth
Right-mindfulness Is Not a Goal
If “right-mindfulness.” If not a goal or something to practice, what is it?
‘Right-mindfulness’ is a strange word. First: there is no mind in it – hence it is called ‘right-mindfulness.’ Secondly, there is nothing right and wrong in it – hence it is called right-mindfulness. This is a Buddhist way of saying things.
It can’t be a goal, because when there is a goal you are always in the wrong. Why are you in the wrong when there is a goal? Because when there is a goal there is desire, when there is desire you are unhappy, discontented. When there is desire, there is anxiety – whether you will be able to make it or not? Will it be possible or not?
When there is desire there is future, and with the future anxiety enters into your being. With the desire you have lost contact with the present.
Right-mindfulness is not a goal, cannot be a goal – because when all desires disappear and all goals disappear and you are here now…that is the moment of right-mindfulness.
Why is it called ‘right’? It is called right because it knows no division between right and wrong. Nothing is wrong! and nothing is right. All judgments have disappeared. One is utterly innocent.
When you see a rose flower, does the idea arise in you: ‘It is right, it is wrong’? When you see the morning star disappearing, does the idea arise in you: ‘Is it right or is it wrong?’ When you start looking at life with no judgment, with no prejudice, then you are in the state of right-mindfulness.
What Will You Take with You?
Tomorrow is death. You are like the yellow leaf. The next moment is death: What will you take with you? Have you earned anything that you can take with you? If you have not earned anything, then your life has been a sheer waste. You may have accumulated much wealth, you may have become very famous, but all that is futile. You cannot take it with you. Your degrees, your titles, your awards; all will be left behind. You will be going utterly alone. Is there something which you can take with you?
There is only one thing which you can take with you, and that is true wealth. Buddha calls it meditation, awareness, watchfulness, mindfulness, consciousness. If you become more and more conscious, you can take that consciousness with you. But you are living a very, very unconscious life. Your whole life is mechanical, you simply go on repeating. You are not really living, you are being lived by unconscious desires.
Buddha says: ‘Meditation is the only wealth,’ because you can take it beyond death. In fact he says this is the criterion: if something can be taken beyond death it is true wealth. If it cannot be taken beyond death, it is untrue wealth, it is a deception. And not only are you deceiving others, you are deceiving yourself. And when death will knock at your door, you will weep, you will cry, but then nothing can be done.
Tags: Awareness And Relaxation Awareness Is Simple Both Are Single-Arrowed Right Mindfulness Self-Remembering True Wealth
