VBT – Meditation 100.4
You Get Attracted
For centuries meditators have been closing their eyes. Why? It is only symbolic that the world has disappeared, that there is nothing to look at, that nothing is worth anything, even to look at.
You will have to remember continuously that whenever desire arises, you have moved out of your subjectivity. This is the world, this movement. Regain, move back, get centered again! You will be able to do it: the capacity is there with everyone. No one ever loses the inner potential, it is always there. You can move. If you can move out, you can move in. If I can go out of my house, why can I not come back within it? The same route is to be traveled; the same legs are to be used. If I can go out, I can come in. Every moment you are moving out, but whenever you move out, remember – and suddenly come back. Be centered. If you feel it difficult in the beginning then take a deep breath, exhale, and stop. In that moment look at the thing which was attracting you. Really, nothing was attracting you, YOU were attracted. That diamond lying there on the road in the lonely forest was not attracting anybody, it was simply lying there being itself. The diamond was not aware that Bharthruhari had been attracted, that someone had moved from his meditation, from his subjectivity, had come back into the world. The diamond was not aware that two persons had fought for it and lost their lives.
So nothing is attracting you – YOU get attracted. Be alert and the bridge will be broken and you will regain balance inside. Go on doing it more and more. The more you do, the better. And a moment will come when you will not need to do it because the inner power will give you such a strength that the attraction of things will be lost. It is your weakness which has attracted you. Be more powerful and nothing will attract you. Only then for the first time are you master of your own being.
That will give you real freedom. No political freedom, no economic freedom, no social freedom, can be of much help. Not that they are not desirable, they are good, good in themselves, but they will not give you the things which the innermost core of your being is longing for – the freedom from things, from objects, the freedom to be oneself without any possibility of being possessed by anything or anybody.
Freedom from Oneself Is the Ultimate Freedom
Buddha is the only man who said, ‘If there is no God and there is no ego, the self is also arbitrary, artificial.’ As you go deeper in your interiority, you suddenly find yourself disappearing into the oceanic consciousness. There is no self as such. You are no longer, only existence is.
Hence, I call Zen essentially freedom from oneself. You have heard about other freedoms, but freedom from oneself is the ultimate freedom – not to be, and allow the existence to express itself in all its spontaneity and grandeur. But it is existence, not you, not me. It is life itself dancing, not you, not me.
That is the Zen Manifesto: freedom from oneself.
And only Zen has refined, in these twenty-five centuries, methods, devices to make you aware that you are not, that you are only arbitrary, just an idea.
As you go beyond the mind, even the idea of ‘I am’ disappears. When the ‘I’ also disappears and you start feeling a deep involvement in existence, with no boundaries, only then has Zen blossomed in you. In fact, that is the state, the space of the awakened consciousness. But it has no ‘I’ at the center, no atman, no self.
To make it clear to you: Socrates says, ‘Know thyself.’ Gautam Buddha says, ‘Know – just know, and you will not find, thyself.’ Enter deeper into your awareness, and the deeper you go, your self starts melting. Perhaps that is the reason why none of the religions except Zen have tried meditation – because meditation will destroy God, will destroy the ego, will destroy the self. It will leave you in absolute nothingness. It is just the mind which makes you afraid of nothingness.
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