Silencing the mind chapter 5🔗

To be with the Master means to just be playful. The moment you become serious, you have missed it. The Master is there to simply take away this seriousness and show you the way to enjoy.

A visitor tells swamiji that he wants to be close to him but feels there is a wall between them. He asks the Master why he feels so restricted to come near him.

ctually, this barrier that you are feeling is just a wall which your ego has created. And initially, this is the way everyone feels. Everyone feels there is something stopping them from coming near me. Initially it is alright because if all of you pounce on me with no understanding, what will I do?

All that I am doing is trying to make you a child again - filled with innocence. I am trying to make you dance with the wind and sway with the leaves. But you go on resisting. Your personality will resist. I am trying to awaken your individuality because if I tell you to dance with the wind, you will simply think that I am mad! You will feel foolish if I tell you to do all these things.

Alright, feel foolish - what is wrong with that? The only way to drop your personality is to simply feel foolish for some time. Even if you feel foolish while you are dancing, continue! If you simply continue without bothering about what others think, you will be able to just let go suddenly. And then you won't feel foolish at all! Then, the people around you will also find you beautiful because when you lose yourself, you automatically become beautiful.

When you come to the Master, he gives you a new birth. So you can forget about your childhood and the past. You will be reborn with innocence and openness that will never leave you; it will be with you always. You will stay with the moment that is presently there.

Until now, you have had the script of your life written by society and you were simply playing along. Now, the Master will write the script and you will not play along, but you will be totally there in every word of it, enjoying it!

There is a beautiful story:

A Zen Master was meditating in a cave deep in the mountains. When he opened his eyes, he saw a visitor sitting in front of him. He was a monk of a well known monastery. 'What is it you seek?' asked the Master.

The monk began telling the Master what had happened. At one time his monastery had been famous throughout the Western world. Its rooms were filled with young seekers and its temple echoed with the chants of its monks. But now, things were different. People no longer came to seek guidance, and the temple was so quiet. There were only a few monks remaining who did their duty with heavy hearts.

After telling the Master all this, the monk asked, 'Is it because we did something wrong that the monastery has become like this?'

'Yes,' said the Master, 'Ignorance.'

'What do you mean by this?' asked the monk.

'One of your monks is Buddha in disguise and you are ignorant of this.' After saying this, the Master simply closed his eyes and returned to his meditation.

Throughout the journey back to his monastery, the monk's heart beat fast as he thought about what the Master had said. Buddha himself had returned to Earth and was right here in the monastery? How is it that they had failed to recognize him? And who was it? Dofuku? Soji? Doiku? Eka? No, it cannot be; they have too many defects. But the Master said he was in disguise. Could those defects be one of his disguises? But everyone in the monastery had some defect. And one of them had to be Buddha!

After returning to the monastery, he gathered all the monks and told them what the Master had said. They looked at one another in disbelief. Buddha? Here? Incredible! But he was supposed to be here in disguise. What if it were that monk there? Or the other one over there? Or ...

One thing was for sure: if Buddha was there in disguise, they probably wouldn't recognize him. So they began to treat everyone with respect and consideration. 'You never know,' they said to themselves when they spoke to one another. 'Maybe this is the one.'

The atmosphere in the monastery became vibrant with joy with just the thought that Buddha was there. Soon dozens of seekers came to learn of the wisdom of the monastery. And once again the temple echoed with the holy and joyful chants of monks who were filled with the spirit of love!

The more silent your mind becomes, the clearer things become. And you will be shocked to see the beauty of the things around you. You will not be able to believe that you missed the beauty of the world around you in the name of having already seen it.

Once you become aware of the beauty, you begin to feel the laughter of Existence. When you become aware of the laughter outside, you come to know the laughter within. You will understand the simplicity of everything that you once took seriously.

Laughing at yourself is the greatest blessing. because when you can laugh at yourself, you can never be hard on others.

Love is not a serious energy at all. It is total nonseriousness. Only a person who is playful can love. And my guys should become playful. They should live with music instead of mathematics. They should live in poetry instead of philosophy. They should live in playfulness instead of seriousness.

And I do not want any one of you to renounce life; I want you all to rejoice in it.

If you rejoice in it, you are bound to love!

- Silencing The Mind -

- Silencing the mind -

The moment you move into acceptance, you also move into a different dimension; you can call it the Divine or whatever you want to call it. The possibility to move into the Divine is always there. The moment you drop your problems, you are already there.

You go on asking me questions and I in turn go on dissolving them. But actually, you have no questions. It is only your mind that is playing with you.

You ask me a question and I give you an answer. You have a problem and I tell you a solution. It is like a game. As long as you play the game, I will simply play along. As time goes by, you become aware of the game which you are playing. Once you understand what you are doing, the questions will automatically drop. Then you will simply drop everything and dance!

Instead of wasting your time thinking, you will sing. Thinking is the only thing that prevents you from reaching the Divine. There are actually many ways of reaching the Divine, but the moment you start your inner chatter, you miss it.

See, when you have a problem, there are two things you can do. You can either forget about it or carry on with it. So you decide. Do you want to waste your time pondering over it or do you want to move on?

The quality of your life has to do with the way you live your life inside you. There are some people who will look at a rose bush and count the number of thorns in it. They will not even notice the roses. Then why should thev call it a rose bush; it should be called a thorn-bush! They only notice the thorns. They start abusing the thorns and miss the roses!

It is not that the thorns are more noticeable than the roses - no! It is your mental make-up that makes all the difference.

So instead of seeing the thorns, see the roses which have grown around the thorns. The fact that a rose is growing around thorns is the greatest miracle! And once you have become aware of these miracles, you have shifted from the mind to the heart. You no longer become affected by the logic games of the mind. You no longer become affected by anything. You have dropped logic and entered into innocence.

And then the whole world around you becomes like the rose which grows around the thorn.