VBT – Meditation 94.1
Just Mind
One of the greatest books ever written is the Buddhist scripture, ‘Lankavatara Sutra’. Buddha says again and again to his disciple Mahamati, he goes on saying again and again, “Mahamati, this is only the mind. Hell is mind. Heaven is mind. The world is mind. Enlightenment is mind.” Mahamati asks again and again, “Just mind? Just mind? Even nirvana, enlightenment, just mind?” And Buddha says, “Just mind, Mahamati.”
When you understand that everything is just mind, you are freed. Then there is no bondage, then there is no desire. In ‘Lankavatara Sutra’, Buddha says that the whole world is just like a magical world, a city of Gandharva, as if a magician has created a world. Everything appears to be there, but it is there only because of the thought form.
But don’t start with outer reality, that is too far. That too is mind, but it is very far away from you. Start from the very near, you own moods; and you will be the master if you can feel and know that they are your own creation.
Whenever you start thinking in terms of sadness, you become sad, and you become receptive to all the sadness around you. Then everybody helps you to be sad. Everybody helps, the whole world is always ready to help you, whatsoever you do. When you want to be sad, the whole world is helpful, cooperative. You have become receptive. Really, you fall to a certain wave-length where only sadness can be received. So even if someone comes to cheer you up, he will make you more sad. He will not look friendly, he will not look understanding; you will feel that he is insulting you because you are so sad and he is trying to cheer you up. He thinks your sadness is superficial. He is not taking you seriously.
And when you are ready to be happy, you are on a different wave-length. Now you are attuned to all the happiness that this world can give, now everywhere flowers start flowering, now every sound and noise becomes musical – and nothing has happened. The whole world remains the same, but you are different. You have a different pattern of looking, a different attitude, a different perspective; through that perspective a different world comes to you.
But start with sadness because you are an expert in that. I was reading a sentence of some old Hassid mystic – I liked it very much. He says there are certain people, who, if their whole life becomes a bed of roses, will not be happy until they develop some allergy towards the roses. Roses cannot make them happy… Only when they become allergic will they start feeling alive. They can be attuned only to sadness, to illness, to disease, they cannot be aware of anything else. They go on finding sadness. They are searchers after wrong – something wrong, something sad, depressed, dark.
They are death-oriented.
I have been meeting hundreds and hundreds of people deeply, intimately, and closely. When they start talking about their sadness I have to be serious – otherwise they will not feel that I am sympathetic, they will not feel good about it. Then they will never turn to me again. I have to be sad with their sadness and serious with their seriousness to help bring them out of it.. and this is their own creation, and they are making every effort to create it. And if I try to bring them out, they create every type of barrier – not knowingly of course, because no one will do it knowingly.
This is what the Upanishads call ignorance. Unknowingly you go on disturbing your own life, you go on creating more problems and anxieties, and whatsoever happens will not make any difference because you have a pattern – whatsoever happens. There are; persons who come to me and say, “We are lonely.” So they are unhappy. And the next moment someone comes and says he cannot find a place where he can be lonely. So he is unhappy. Then there are; persons who have too much work on their minds, so they are unhappy, and there are; persons who have no work, so they are unhappy. A person who is married is unhappy, a person who is not married, he is unhappy. It seems it is impossible for man to be happy. That’s what I mean when I say you are experts – you are very efficient in finding ways and means to be unhappy. And you always succeed.
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