When you are listening to somebody speaking, the speaker’s very first sentence triggers off some conversation within you. You are constantly agreeing or disagreeing with the speaker. Have you ever wondered whether you can listen without any thoughts or pre-conceived notions in your mind?
Students listening to an hour-long lecture in a class are able to grasp only a part of it. Increasingly, even this attention span is reducing even more. But to be creative or understand something you need alertness, focus and presence of mind that can come only out of rest, and not through effort or activity.
When can you rest? Rest is possible only when all other activities cease. When you stop moving around, when you stop working, walking, thinking, talking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, when all these activities stop, then you get rest. When all voluntary activities come to a standstill, then you get rest or sleep. In sleep, you are left with only involuntary activities like breathing, food digestion, blood circulation etc. But even this is not ‘total rest.’ When the mind settles down, when the mind is calm and peaceful without any worries, tensions, only then ‘total rest’ happens. Total rest happens in meditation. Mind that has come back home, to the source, is meditation. Mind that becomes ‘no mind’ is meditation.
What keeps you from getting total rest? It is just the desire. When you are not happy in the present moment, then you desire for a bright future. Desire simply means that the present moment is not quite all right. This causes tension in the mind. Every desire causes feverishness. Then there is neither focus nor rest.
Lord Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, “You cannot get into Yoga (union with self) unless you drop the desires or hankerings in you”. As long as you hold onto some planning, your mind does not settle. Every desire or ambition is like a sand particle in the eyes! You cannot shut your eyes or keep them open with a sand particle inside, it is uncomfortable either way. Dispassion is removing this particle of dust or sand from the eye so that you can open them freely and shut them freely! The other way is to extend your desire or make it very big, then also it won’t bother you. It is a tiny sand particle that irritates your eyes, a big stone or a rock can never get into your eyes!
Desires come up, instead of holding on to them or daydreaming, you offer the desires; that is meditation. Look into your own life. You are bothered and restless despite having things that you wanted and you are bothered or restless if you don’t have them! ‘Liberation’ is that total freedom where in you are not bothered whether you have the things or not.
Every desire causes feverishness. In this state, meditation is far from happening. You may sit with eyes closed, but desires keep arising, thoughts keep arising; you fool yourself into thinking that you are meditating, but actually you are daydreaming. When you want to sit for meditation, let go of everything. The best way to do this is to feel, “the world is disappearing or dissolving…I am dead!” Unless you are dead, you cannot meditate!!!
What are you looking for? Are you looking for some great joy? Know that you are joy! I will give you an example. Have you seen dogs biting bones? You know why they bite bones? Biting the hard bone makes a wound inside their mouth. Its own blood comes out and the dog feels that the bone is very tasty! Poor dog spent the whole time chewing the bone getting nothing out of it! It is restless if the bone is taken away from it because it thinks that it is the bone that is giving it some joy. You need to understand that every joy you experience in life is from the depth of yourself. Real freedom is when you are happy in the present moment, only then you can desire for a bright future.
When the flight of the mind stops, you experience, total rest and complete alertness. It enriches the quality of your life.
