GET UP AND DANCE!🔗

BE SPONTANEOUS

The famous Zen master Bankei, wandering in Japan, arrives in a new town.

(My stories are most often drawn from Zen, because no other religion has taken to life so beautifully, has met life with such reverence and courage and humour.

Zen is a love affair with life!)

When people hear that the Zen master is in their town, they come to see him, and say,

Beloved master, we have heard so much about you! We hear that simply by being in your presence, people feel immensely joyful. They get healed of diseases miraculously. They feel their wishes are coming true! What is the special meditation you practice to attain these powers?

The master replies simply, When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm sleepy, I sleep. That is my meditation.

Zen masters usually talk like this! And just as you are confused right now, the people who hear him are also confused. What could possibly be easier than eating and sleeping? All their lives, they have been eating and sleeping! And here was this great master, calling it a powerful meditation technique!

So they beg for an explanation.

And the master asks them, Do you really eat when you're hungry? Do you sleep when you're sleepy?

Do we?

When do we usually eat?

When lunch is ready; when we have the time; when the clock says so. Without even realizing it, we live our life within a set behavioural pattern. Even for such personal acts as eating and sleeping, we depend on a schedule that we've built up for ourselves! This pattern that controls our life is nothing but what we call habits.

There are so many people who simply can't start their day without a cup of tea or coffee! If they can't get their tea first thing in the morning, they develop a headache, they can't get through the day. All of us have our pet habits. We call them 'our habits', and think that we are in charge of them, but actually they are the ones in charge of us!

Carried to an insane extreme, an obsession with habit can ruin our lives. In psychiatry, this is known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). People who suffer from this disorder tend to continuously repeat the same act. It might be a simple act like washing their hands, or checking to see if a door has been properly locked, but they will do it again and again as if their life depended on it. Autistic people can become gravely disturbed if anything in their environment is even slightly changed; even if the furniture has been rearranged in a room, it is enough to set them off.

Don't laugh off this behaviour as madness!

Be very clear: between the so-called normal and disturbed people, it is only a difference of degree and a small one, at that!

Habits numb you to the changing reality of life. To act out of habit is to miss out on all the opportunities for change that life creates for us every moment.

Even at the most challenging moments of our life, we tend to function out of habit!

A small story:

A pickpocket died and went to Heaven. St. Peter, guarding the pearly gates, stopped him. He reminded the man that he'd been cheating people all his life, and deserved to go to Hell instead. But the pickpocket begged forgiveness and promised to transform himself into a new person.

At last St.Peter took pity on him. Alright, he told the man wearily, Go on in. But first, would you mind returning my purse?

***

In our 'civilized' society, we place a ridiculous value on consistency.

Usually, people are so proud of being consistent! They boast about having woken up at the same time for the past 30 years; they boast about how they have been communists or atheists or whatever, since their school days.

Consistent people are the most boring people! When someone is always consistent, it can mean only one of two things:

(a) He was born perfect, and doesn't need to change a single thing about himself throughout his life, or (b) He is clinging to his old ideas, out of pride or fear.

I don't think that anyone can claim to be already perfect? So the only other reason would be, the fear of change.

Habits represent the familiar, the accepted patterns of life. Habits symbolize security. That's why we cling to our habits for dear life! It requires great courage to live without habits, without beliefs. It means that you don't need an idea to tell you what is right, or what to do. But we are so afraid of making mistakes, that we destroy our spontaneity.

I ask you, even a baby is not afraid of taking new steps, so why are you? The joy of living is to open yourself to the ebb and flow of life. Life is insecurity! Learn to enjoy the insecurity of life, and you will never feel fear.

As we grow older, we tend to resist change more and more. We feel threatened by change, because it goes against our solid ideas of right and wrong, or what works and what doesn't work for us.

We forget that Life is essentially non-paradoxical. We find it paradoxical only when we compare today to what we learnt yesterday, or to what we plan for tomorrow. It is only when we try to confine a situation to our own expectations that we see contradictions.

A small story:

In a village, there lived two sadhus (holy men). One of them was very proud of his knowledge of the scriptures and logic. He was forever spouting philosophy. The other was a simple, happy man who mingled with the villagers and lived a life of peace.

One day, the two met on the road leading to the market.

Where are you headed? asked the first sadhu, hoping to start a philosophical debate.

Where my feet lead me! replied the other joyfully.

The first sadhu was stumped. What did he mean by that? Was he presenting him with a philosophical riddle? How to answer him? He went home and spent the whole day pondering the meaning of the sadhu's statement. With great trouble, he crafted an equally intelligent counter-statement.

The next day, he triumphantly approached the other sadhu on the same road.

Where are you headed? he repeated.

Where the wind takes me! replied the other sweetly.

This was too much! The first sadhu was dismayed. He had such a perfectly planned counter-argument, and now the other had changed his statement! So he went back home and prepared himself to face this new challenge.

The third day, he waylaid the other sadhu and repeated the question,

Where are you headed?

Oh, just to the market, to get some vegetables!, replied the other sadhu, laughing.

Such is life!

In life, the answers change everyday. When change is the only reality of life, how can you plan ahead?

In Chinese Taoism, life is symbolically represented by the yin-yang. Yin and yang represent the opposing principles of life - negative and positive, darkness and light, contraction and expansion. But the beautiful thing about the yin-yang is that the two aspects are continuously flowing into each other, changing every moment. There's always a little yin in yang, and vice-versa; just like life, which is always fluid, always changing.

In an experiment conducted by a behavioral psychologist, two groups of people were asked to listen to the same piece of music and respond in whatever way they felt like - by dancing, singing along, laughing, waving their arms about or just sitting. The only difference was, in the second group, all the people were blindfolded.

Needless to say, less than a fifth of the participants in the first group responded to the music in a truly spontaneous manner, while almost everybody in the second group let themselves go.

We have grown so afraid of looking foolish or out of place, of going against the current, that we have simply lost the capacity to respond to the moment without fear or prejudice.

The funny thing is, these days a lot of people are waking up to the importance of being spontaneous but by now we have forgotten how to 'do it'!

Everywhere you find teenagers wearing T-shirts saying Do your own thing, but in truth they are terrified of not doing the accepted thing, of not fitting in.

I tell you, you don't have to learn to be spontaneous! We were all born with an innate ability to enjoy life, moment to moment. Somewhere along the way, between personal habits and the rules of society, we lost that ability. And every generation does this to the next.

We have a great capacity for destroying the spontaneity of our children.

Don't sing now, papa is sleeping! Who asked you to draw on the wall? Go to bed RIGHT NOW! Is this the time to be playing outdoors?

We have no idea what a dangerous thing we are doing to them! Be very clear: to be spontaneous is not to live lawlessly. It is not the liberty to disrupt the basic laws of social living. Spontaneity is not anarchy, or self-indulgence. To be spontaneous is simply to drop your habits. Drop your prejudices. Drop your yesterday and your tomorrow. See today with a clear eye, with an unburdened mind. Respond to the rich unfolding of life, moment to moment. Embrace change - and life will embrace you!