Today met Mingyur Rinpoche. It was great to meet sir as always. My younger daughter asked him a question. She said that she does not believe in God. Mingyur told her that it does not matter whether we believe in God or not. What matters is whether we live with love, compassion, awareness, and wisdom. We all realized the profoundness of the statement.
Probably, the first stage in the process is awareness. Rinpoche made us practice a small meditation. He asked us to close our eyes and observe the sound. The very process of observation of sound frees us of the thoughts we cling to. We can not observe and cling to at the same time. Either we may be in the river or outside the same. We can not be both in the river and out of the river at the same time. Similarly, the moment we observe, we are out of our thoughts. We may observe our breath, sensations, thoughts, sounds, and so many other things. When we close our eyes, some or other thought comes to our mind. That may be the thought of somebody we like or somebody we dislike, something that we crave for, or something we are averse to. For example, we may have thoughts of a friend or beloved, thoughts of an enemy, or thoughts about the lovely dinner we had or the apprehension of the results that are going to be declared a few hours from now.
The moment, we observe breath, these thoughts are gone. Our brain can not hold on to two things at the same time. However, soon we lose awareness of the breath and due to the old habit patterns, thoughts again come back. We are again lost in our thoughts. However, there is a faint remembrance of the breath and we somehow recall that we need to observe the breath. As we observe the breath, once again the thoughts disappear and we are again free. This process keeps happening. In the process, we gain awareness of both the thoughts and the breath. That awareness takes us out of the river.
Such an awareness does something beautiful for us. It makes us wise. It makes us realize that the water of the river is changing fast. It is not the same water that was there a few minutes back. Similarly, so many thoughts keep coming and going out of our minds. Just like the clouds in the sky. Clouds in the sky do not define the sky. The sky is always independent of the clouds. Similarly, our mind is capable of holding on to different thoughts. Just like different hard disks holding different data. That brings wisdom. We understand that whatever ideas, opinions, views, beliefs, and judgments we carry are relative. Other minds may carry different such things and both the things are relative. We may format a hard disk and fill the same hard disk with completely a different set of data. Thus we understand the relativity of all the views, opinions beliefs, etc. We start understanding the perspective of others. We understand what people are fixated on and what makes them stubborn. That brings compassion rather than anger.
Awareness and wisdom together do something even more profound. They bring love to our lives. As we come out of the river, while sitting on the bank of the river, we realize that there are many others sitting on the bank of the river. We connect to them freely. That connection is quite different from the connection between two people struggling inside the river helping each other to survive or enjoy. That relationship is also different from the compassion that a person sitting on the bank of the river has for the person struggling inside the river. The love between two persons on the bank of the river is free of all types of fears. It arises out of a merger. A complete understanding and sharing. As if space is merging with space to realize that there were never two different spaces. In that state of oneness, they observe the river flowing together as if there are no two rivers. There are no thoughts that are yours or mine. They are just shared thoughts of the entire humanity.
Comments