VBT – Week’s Meditation 86
To Be Such
The animal is the past and the divine is the future, and past and future are opposed.
Tantra is in the present. It is neither past nor future. Just this very moment, don’t belong to the past and don’t hanker for the future. Don’t long for the future and don’t be conditioned by the past. Don’t allow the past to become a hangover and don’t create any projections in the future. Remain true to this very moment, here and now, and you transcend. Then you are neither animal nor divine.
For tantra, to be such is to be God. To be such, in this suchness of the moment, where the past is unrelated and the future is not created, you are free, you are a freedom.
This technique is not religious in this sense, because religion is always opposed to the animal.
Religion creates a conflict. So if you are really religious you will become schizophrenic, you will be split. All religious civilizations are split civilizations. They create neurosis, because they create inner conflict. They divide you into two, and one part of your being becomes the enemy. Then your whole energy is dissipated fighting with yourself.
Tantra is not religious in that sense, because tantra doesn’t believe in any conflict, in any violence.
And tantra says don’t fight with yourself. Just be aware. Don’t be aggressive and violent with yourself. Just be a witness, a watcher. In the moment of witnessing you are neither; both the faces disappear. In that moment of witnessing you are not human. You simply are. You exist without any label. You exist without any name. You exist without any category. You are without being anyone in particular – a simple amness, a pure being. These techniques are for that pure being.
For tantra there is no division between animal and divine. Tantra is non-dualistic. This is the world, and that is Brahma. This is the mundane, the material, and that is consciousness, the spiritual. For tantra there is no distinction like this. THIS is all – THAT is included in it. This very world is divine.
And tantra makes no distinction and no categorization of higher and lower: THIS means the lower, and THAT means the higher; THIS means that which you can see and touch and know, and THAT means the invisible that you cannot see and cannot touch, you can only infer. For tantra there is no distinction of higher and lower, of visible and invisible, of matter and mind, of life and death, of world and Brahma – no distinction.
Tantra says THIS IS THIS, and THAT is included in it. But the emphasis on THIS is beautiful. It says here and now, whatsoever is, this is all. And everything is in it; nothing is excluded. The near, the intimate, the ordinary, is all.
It is a very well known saying of Zen mysticism that if you can become just ordinary, you have become extraordinary. Only the person who is at ease with his ordinariness is extraordinary.
Because everyone hankers to be extraordinary, so the desire to be extraordinary is very ordinary.
Everyone – you cannot find a person who is not trying to be extraordinary in some way, so the desire, the lust to be extraordinary, is a part, a basic part of the ordinary mind. Zen masters say, ‘So to be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world. To be just ordinary. It is rare. Very rarely it happens that someone is simply ordinary.’
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