Zen Mind

Self-Remembering

Western psychology insists on introspection, Eastern psychology insists on self-remembering. When you introspect, what do you do? For example, you are angry and you start thinking about anger – how it is caused. You start analyzing why it is caused. You start judging whether it is good or bad. You start rationalizing that you had been angry because the situation was such. You brood about anger, you analyze it, but the focus of attention is on the anger, not on the self. Your whole consciousness is focused on anger. You are watching, analyzing, associating, thinking about it; trying to figure out how to avoid it, how to get rid of it, how not to do it again. This is a thinking process. You will judge it “bad” because it is destructive. You will take a vow that “I will never commit the same mistake again.” You will try to control this anger through the will. That’s why Western psychology has become analytical – analysis, dissection.

The Eastern emphasis is not on anger. The Eastern emphasis is on the self. To be aware when you are angry, to be so aware… Not to think because thinking is a sleeping thing. You can think while you are fast asleep, there is no need for awareness. In fact you continuously think without being at all aware. Thinking goes on and on and on. Even when you are fast asleep at night, thinking continues. The mind continues its inner chatter. It is a mechanical thing.

Eastern psychology says, “Be aware. Don’t try to analyze anger. There is no need. Just look at it, but look with awareness. Don’t start thinking.” In fact if you start thinking, it will become a barrier to looking at anger. It will disguise it. Then thinking will be like a cloud surrounding it and the clarity will be lost. Don’t think at all. Be in a state of no-thought and look.

When there is not even a ripple of thinking between you and the anger, the anger is faced, encountered. You don’t dissect it. You don’t bother to go to its source because the source is in the past. You don’t judge it because the moment you judge, thinking starts. You don’t take any vow that “I will not do it” because that vow leads you into the future. In awareness you remain with the feeling of anger – exactly herenow. You are not interested in changing it, you are not interested in thinking about it. You are interested in looking at it directly, face-to-face, immediate. Then it is self-remembering.

This is the beauty of it. If you can look at anger, it disappears. It not only disappears in this moment, the very disappearance of it by your deep look gives you the key that there is no need to use will. There is no need to make any decision for the future, there is no need to go to the original source from where it comes. It is unnecessary. You have the key now. You look at anger and it disappears. This look is available forever. Whenever anger is there, you can look and this looking grows deeper.

There are three stages of the look. First, when the anger has already happened and gone. You look at the tail almost disappearing – the elephant has gone, only the tail is there – because when the anger was there, really, you were so deeply involved in it that you couldn’t be aware. When the anger has almost disappeared, ninety-nine per cent – only one per cent, the last part of it is going, disappearing into the farther horizon – then you become aware. This is the first state of awareness. Good, but not enough.

The second state is when the elephant is there, not the tail. When the situation is ripe and you are really at the peak of anger – boiling, burning – then you become aware.

There is still a third stage. The anger has not come yet, it is still coming, not the tail but the head. It is just entering your area of consciousness; you become aware and the elephant never materializes. You killed the animal before it was born. That is birth control. The phenomenon has not happened; it leaves no trace.

If you stop it in the middle, when half the head has happened, it will leave something on you – a trace, a load, a small wound. You will feel scratched. Even if you don’t allow it to have its full sway, it has entered. If you look at the tail, the whole thing has already happened. You can at the most repent. And repentance is thinking. Again you become a victim of the thinking mind.