Barks does a wonderful job with Rumi's poetry. Rumi's works are beautiful, and actually make a great spiritual practice for reflection and writing. One of my favorite songs, based on a Rumi poem is:
"Come, come, whoever you are. Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come."
I've heard that is what is written on his tomb in Turkey. I've always felt Rumi's words fit well with my Unitarian Universalist tradition. (Sufism is SO interesting.) Now I'm inspired again to revisit his work!
But your fear is understandable. You have been brought up with certain concepts, and perhaps you are afraid to lose them. Mind cannot be still. It needs continuous thinking, worrying. The mind functions like a bicycle; if you go on pedaling it, it continues. The moment you stop the pedaling, you are going to fall down. Mind is a two-wheeled vehicle just like a bicycle, and your thinking is a constant pedaling. Even sometimes if you are a little bit silent you immediately start worrying, “Why am I silent?” Anything will do to create worrying, thinking, because mind can exist only in one way — in running, always running after something or running from something, but always running. In the running is the mind. The moment you stop, the mind disappears.
Right now you are identified with the mind. You think you are it. From there comes the fear. If you are identified with the mind, naturally if mind stops you are finished, you are no more. And you don’t know anything beyond mind.
The reality is you are not mind, you are something beyond mind; hence it is absolutely necessary that the mind stops so that for the first time you can know that you are not mind, because you are still there. Mind is gone, you are still there...and with greater joy, greater glory, greater light, greater consciousness, greater being. Mind was pretending, and you had fallen into the trap.
What you have to understand is the process of identification...how one can get identified with something which one is not.
Your mind is not created by nature. Try to keep the distinction always: your brain is created by nature. Your brain is the mechanism that belongs to the body, but your mind is created by the society in which you live — by the religion, by the church, by the ideology that your parents followed, by the educational system that you were taught in, by all kinds of things. That’s why there is a Christian mind and a Hindu mind, a Mohammedan mind and a communist mind. Brains are natural, but minds are a created phenomenon. It depends on which flock of sheep you belong to. Was the flock of the sheep Hindu? Then naturally you will behave like a Hindu.
Meditation is the only method that can make you aware that you are not the mind; and that gives you a tremendous mastery. Then you can choose what is right with your mind and what is not right with your mind, because you are distant, an observer, a watcher. Then you are not so much attached to the mind, and that is your fear.
You have completely forgotten yourself; you have become the mind. The identification is complete. So when I say, “Be silent. Be still. Be alert and watchful of your thought processes,” you freak out, you become afraid. It looks like death. In a way you are right but it is not your death, it is the death of your conditionings. Combined they are called your mind.
Once you are capable of seeing the distinction clearly — that you are separate from the mind and the mind is separate from the brain — it immediately happens. Simultaneously, as you withdraw from the mind, you suddenly see that the mind is in the middle; on both sides there is brain and consciousness.
The brain is simply a mechanism. Whatever you want to do with it, you can do. Mind is the problem, because others make it for you. It is not you, it is not even your own; it is all borrowed.
The priests, the politicians, the people who are in power, the people who have vested interests, don’t want you to know that you are above mind, beyond mind. Their whole effort has been to keep you identified with the mind, because mind is managed by them, not by you. You are being deceived in such a subtle way. The managers of your mind are outside.
When the consciousness becomes identified with the mind, then the brain is helpless. The brain is simply mechanical. Whatever mind wants, the brain does. But if you are separate, then the mind loses its power; otherwise it is sovereign. And you are afraid of meditation because of that. I don’t belong to any political ideology, I don’t belong to any nation. I don’t have myself filled up with all kinds of nonsense I have simply pushed the mind aside. I use the brain directly; there is no need of any conditioning, there is no need of any mediator.
But your fear is understandable. You have been brought up with certain concepts, and perhaps you are afraid to lose them.
12:34 PM | 
Posted by
Michael Perkins
Labels:
4 comments:
Barks does a wonderful job with Rumi's poetry. Rumi's works are beautiful, and actually make a great spiritual practice for reflection and writing. One of my favorite songs, based on a Rumi poem is:
"Come, come, whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come."
I've heard that is what is written on his tomb in Turkey. I've always felt Rumi's words fit well with my Unitarian Universalist tradition. (Sufism is SO interesting.) Now I'm inspired again to revisit his work!
But your fear is understandable. You have been brought up with certain concepts, and perhaps you are afraid to lose them.
Mind cannot be still. It needs continuous thinking, worrying. The mind functions like a bicycle; if you go on pedaling it, it continues. The moment you stop the pedaling, you are going to fall down. Mind is a two-wheeled vehicle just like a bicycle, and your thinking is a constant pedaling. Even sometimes if you are a little bit silent you immediately start worrying, “Why am I silent?” Anything will do to create worrying, thinking, because mind can exist only in one way — in running, always running after something or running from something, but always running. In the running is the mind. The moment you stop, the mind disappears.
Right now you are identified with the mind. You think you are it. From there comes the fear. If you are identified with the mind, naturally if mind stops you are finished, you are no more. And you don’t know anything beyond mind.
The reality is you are not mind, you are something beyond mind; hence it is absolutely necessary that the mind stops so that for the first time you can know that you are not mind, because you are still there. Mind is gone, you are still there...and with greater joy, greater glory, greater light, greater consciousness, greater being. Mind was pretending, and you had fallen into the trap.
What you have to understand is the process of identification...how one can get identified with something which one is not.
Your mind is not created by nature. Try to keep the distinction always: your brain is created by nature. Your brain is the mechanism that belongs to the body, but your mind is created by the society in which you live — by the religion, by the church, by the ideology that your parents followed, by the educational system that you were taught in, by all kinds of things. That’s why there is a Christian mind and a Hindu mind, a Mohammedan mind and a communist mind. Brains are natural, but minds are a created phenomenon. It depends on which flock of sheep you belong to. Was the flock of the sheep Hindu? Then naturally you will behave like a Hindu.
Meditation is the only method that can make you aware that you are not the mind; and that gives you a tremendous mastery. Then you can choose what is right with your mind and what is not right with your mind, because you are distant, an observer, a watcher. Then you are not so much attached to the mind, and that is your fear.
You have completely forgotten yourself; you have become the mind. The identification is complete. So when I say, “Be silent. Be still. Be alert and watchful of your thought processes,” you freak out, you become afraid. It looks like death. In a way you are right but it is not your death, it is the death of your conditionings. Combined they are called your mind.
Once you are capable of seeing the distinction clearly — that you are separate from the mind and the mind is separate from the brain — it immediately happens. Simultaneously, as you withdraw from the mind, you suddenly see that the mind is in the middle; on both sides there is brain and consciousness.
The brain is simply a mechanism. Whatever you want to do with it, you can do. Mind is the problem, because others make it for you. It is not you, it is not even your own; it is all borrowed.
The priests, the politicians, the people who are in power, the people who have vested interests, don’t want you to know that you are above mind, beyond mind. Their whole effort has been to keep you identified with the mind, because mind is managed by them, not by you. You are being deceived in such a subtle way. The managers of your mind are outside.
When the consciousness becomes identified with the mind, then the brain is helpless. The brain is simply mechanical. Whatever mind wants, the brain does. But if you are separate, then the mind loses its power; otherwise it is sovereign. And you are afraid of meditation because of that.
I don’t belong to any political ideology, I don’t belong to any nation. I don’t have myself filled up with all kinds of nonsense I have simply pushed the mind aside. I use the brain directly; there is no need of any conditioning, there is no need of any mediator.
But your fear is understandable. You have been brought up with certain concepts, and perhaps you are afraid to lose them.
Osho,
The Path of the Mystic
Thank you both for sharing.
Post a Comment