Zen Mind

Flowing Life

A man of awareness never repents. There is no point in repenting because the more awareness goes deep, he can stop a process even before it has begun. What is the point of repenting? Not that he tries to stop it ? That’s the beauty of it. He simply looks at it. When you look at a mood, a situation, an emotion, feeling, thought, and when you bring the quality of looking – the looking is like light and darkness disappears.

There is a vast difference between introspection and self-remembering. I am not in favor of introspection. In fact introspection is a little pathological; it is playing with your own wound. It won’t help. It won’t help the wound to heal. In fact it will do just the reverse. If you go on fingering your wound, you keep it fresh. Introspection is not good. Introspective people are always morbid, ill. They think too much. Introspective people are closed. They just go on playing with their wounds and their anguish and their anxiety. Their whole life seems too much of a problem, it cannot be solved. Everything looks like a problem for an introspective man. Whatever happens becomes a problem.

He is inside too much, he cannot move out. The balance is lost. Introspective people escape from life and go to the Himalayas. They are morbid, ill, pathological. A healthy person has a healthy swing. He can move in, he can move out. For him there is no problem with in and out. In fact he doesn’t divide the inner life and the outer life. He has a free flow, a free swing. Whenever it is needed, he simply moves in and whenever it is needed he simply moves out. He is not against the outside world, he is not for the inside world. In and out should be just like breathing in and breathing out. Both are needed.

Introspectives become too brooding, too inside. They become afraid to go out because whenever they go out, there are problems, so they close up. They become monads with no windows. And then problems and problems; the mind goes on creating problems and they go on trying to solve them.

An introspective person is more prone to go mad. Introverts go mad more than extroverts. If you go to the madhouses, you will find ninety-nine per cent of the people there are introverts, introspective, with only one per cent, at the most, being extroverts. Extroverts don’t bother about the inner side of things. They go on living on the surface. They don’t think that there are problems. They think there is only life to be enjoyed. Eat, drink, be merry is their whole religion, nothing else.

You will always find extroverts healthier than introverts because at least they are in contact with the whole. The introvert loses all contact with the whole. He lives in his dreams. He has no outgoing breath. Just think – if you don’t allow the breath to go out, you will become ill because the breath that has gone in will not always remain fresh. Within seconds it will become stale, within seconds it will lose oxygen, life, and within seconds it is finished. You are living in stale air, dead. You have to go out to seek new sources of life, to seek fresh air. You have to be continuously moving.

To me, if you want to choose between the extrovert and introvert, I will say to you, “Choose the extrovert.” He is less ill; he lives on the surface and can never come to know the truth, but at least he never goes mad. The introvert can come to know the truth, but that is one possibility out of a hundred. The possibility of his going mad is ninety-nine per cent.

I am in favor of a flowing life. Life should be a rhythm. You go out, you go in, and don’t cling to anything. Just remain alert. Remember. Go on remembering. When you are in the world, then too remember and when you are inside yourself, then too remember. Always keep awareness alert, burning, alive. The flame of awareness should not be lost, that’s all. Live in the market or live in the monastery and you will never be a loser in life. You will attain the profoundest depth that life can give. That profoundest depth is God. God is a swinger, out and in, both introvert and extrovert, but aware.