Written Messages

Paris, France,

5 Nov. 2014

1 - Once a young man approached a Zen Master and pleaded with him for help. He said he was extremely unhappy in a network of mental ache, agony, anxiety, apprehensions and he could no longer endure all this. He requested the Master to bless him and to help him to bring an end to this intolerable situation. Otherwise, he may have to commit suicide.

The Zen Master took a glass of water and dissolved a handful of salt in it and asked the young man to drink it! He then asked : “How do you feel?” The young man said: “Oh, very very salty; intolerable” and started vomitting out.

Then the Master took another handful of salt and asked the young man to follow him. Soon they reached a big lake with clear and sweet water. Master dissolved the salt in the lake and asked the young man to drink the water from the lake. He enquired: “How does it taste now, is it salty?” The young man said: “No, not at all; on the contrary it is so sweet and refreshing.”

Then the master said with utmost affection: “Oh, my dear son, find out if it is possible to be available to the lake of life, love and lore of the core of comprehension, to the energy of being, the ‘Is-ness’ and the understanding. Then the salt of separative psyche --- the self-centered activities, the ‘me’, ‘me’, ‘me’ with all its pursuits and paradoxes will vanish giving rise to the sweetness of vitality, virtue & veracity of Life.“

And the master continued: “But you are stubborn in your conditioning to drink from the shoddy little glass of glorification, grandisment and gratification of the silly selfish-ness (salt), of ‘I-ness’, of mental undertakings, of all the entanglements with ‘becoming’ alongwith its guilts and gullibilities. Naturally, the ‘salt’ chokes you and you vomit all the vulgarities of a petty mind!”

2 - Sage Patanjali went to a farmer’s house and asked for donation of rice for his Gurukul (a few resident students of Yoga-sutras). The farmer suggested that the Sage should take up farming instead of asking for donation. The Sage said: “He too is a farmer. But seed in his land is called ‘Swadhyay’, his plough is called ‘Tapas’ and he gets the crop called ‘Ishwar Pranidhan’ --- the  perception of the bliss & enormity of Existence. The farmer did not understand, yet he donated bags of rice for the Gurukul with tears in his eyes.

3 - In response to a question on ‘seeking happiness’, the following response emerged:

“Why do we seek happiness? Why this incessant pursuit of happiness, to become something or somebody. If we can understand this, we may then know what happiness is, without seeking it!”

What does it mean to be happy ? The man who drinks wine is ‘happy’. The man who drops an atom bomb killing enormous number of people feels elated and ‘happy’ claiming ‘God’ was with him! Momentary sensations, which disappear subsequently, give a sense of being ‘happy’. Repudiation (not rejection or repetition by mind), by virtue of Energy of Understanding, of all psychological connections with organised religious beliefs and their intoxicating ideologies is the beginning of the benediction of absolute and unconditional freedom from the stranglehold of the mind; of the separative psyche ‘I’! Happiness is in this freedom --- it is not in the mind and its fragmentations. Then ‘I’ may still exist, but merely as a distinctive entity for technical purposes --- not as a divisive phenomenon creating havoc in human relationships.

Sensation or excitement or gratification is one thing, but happiness is quite another. Sensation is always seeking further sensation, ever in wider and wider circles. Sensation and dissatisfaction are inseparable, because desire for more binds them together. ‘Desire’ for more, is also ‘desire’ for less! Renunciation in order to gain ‘enlightenment’ is no renunciation! ‘I’ is desire! ‘I’ cannot know happiness. No-’I’, the Insight, is happiness. Happiness is not sensation, it is not experience. It is the Existence Vital!

4 - Gnyanam Nirgrantham - Upanishad. Bookish knowledge is not knowing, not perception, not wisdom. It is still the wicked activity of mind --- the material phenomenon.

5 - Be available to adequate response from life, not to agonised reactions from the mind. 

6 - Ego is enemy of Energy of Understanding. ‘I’ is enemy of Insight. ‘Mind’ is enemy of Life.

Jai Insight - Understanding - Life