DONT CHERISH IT - RELISH IT
(Times of India(What's Hot) New Delhi - 10th Oct, 2008)
Osho says that every enlightened one—who is neither saint nor sinner—lives in the present. He lives in the ‘eternal now’. That now is not the now that we know, nor does it co-exist with any past, any future tense. Time ceases to exist in the space of the eternal now. What is this space? It is certainly not the space of mind. Our mind is always busy going into the past and planning the future. That’s why it is always tense. To survive, it has to pull us horizontally, into both the past and the future. Osho explains this nature of both time and mind: “The mind exists in time, it exists in the past and the future. And time consists of the past and the future. The present is not part of time, the present is part of eternity.”
Philosopher Deepak Chopra has commented on Eckhart Tolle’s very popular book The Power Of Now: “The book has the power to bring us into the gap, into the space between our thoughts where we find deep serenity, stillness and a sacred presence. This is book to cherish.” It’s an important statement but I wish to says that if you cherish.” It’s an important statement but I wish to say that if you cherish something, the past and the future creep in from the back door. Don’t cherish it—relish it. Meditate on it, with it and enter the realm of timelessness. One may not be able to attain to this space just by reading a book. The book certainly triggers something in you and takes you beyond the confines of your mind, into the space of limitless emptiness, where there is no power, no mind—only the pure space of presence and peace. The eternal now has no power—only peace, only tranquility, only vibrant stillness. Relish it!
Let’s understand this phenomenon from a simple story from Gautama Buddha’s life. Once, as Buddha was sitting on the bank of a river, a man came and spat on him. Gently wiping his face, Buddha thanked the man for giving him the opportunity to understand if anger could overpower him. Buddha asked the man if he had anything else to say. He also said that if, in the future, the man felt the urge to spit, he could come again! What Buddha meant was that he should not let his act remain incomplete, else he would have to do it in the future. Buddha’s response shocked the man. He had acted deliberately to outrage Buddha but had failed. The Enlightened One’s calm face and compassionate eyes haunted him. He went into a great repentance and was not able to forgive himself.
The next day, he came back to ask for Buddha’s forgiveness. Buddha replied: “My dear friend, do you see the water flowing in the river? Is it the same that you saw yesterday? No. So much water has flown down the river… Such is the state of my being too. You are not meeting the same person on whom you spat yesterday. I do not live in the past. I am new every moment as I die every moment. It is not only me who is different now; you too are not the same as the man who came to spit. Drop your past and be here now. Get out of your own mind that creates divisions of past and future.
Being in the grip of the mind is being in misery. Freedom from mind is real bliss. Tolle explains: “The mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don’t even know that you are its slave. As if you were possessed without knowing it, so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of freedom is the realisation that you are not the possessing entity—the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. And the moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousnessbecomes activated. You then begin to realise that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You realise that all the things that truly matter—love, creativity, joy, inner, peace—arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.”
- Swami Chaitanya Keerti
Philosopher Deepak Chopra has commented on Eckhart Tolle’s very popular book The Power Of Now: “The book has the power to bring us into the gap, into the space between our thoughts where we find deep serenity, stillness and a sacred presence. This is book to cherish.” It’s an important statement but I wish to says that if you cherish.” It’s an important statement but I wish to say that if you cherish something, the past and the future creep in from the back door. Don’t cherish it—relish it. Meditate on it, with it and enter the realm of timelessness. One may not be able to attain to this space just by reading a book. The book certainly triggers something in you and takes you beyond the confines of your mind, into the space of limitless emptiness, where there is no power, no mind—only the pure space of presence and peace. The eternal now has no power—only peace, only tranquility, only vibrant stillness. Relish it!
Let’s understand this phenomenon from a simple story from Gautama Buddha’s life. Once, as Buddha was sitting on the bank of a river, a man came and spat on him. Gently wiping his face, Buddha thanked the man for giving him the opportunity to understand if anger could overpower him. Buddha asked the man if he had anything else to say. He also said that if, in the future, the man felt the urge to spit, he could come again! What Buddha meant was that he should not let his act remain incomplete, else he would have to do it in the future. Buddha’s response shocked the man. He had acted deliberately to outrage Buddha but had failed. The Enlightened One’s calm face and compassionate eyes haunted him. He went into a great repentance and was not able to forgive himself.
The next day, he came back to ask for Buddha’s forgiveness. Buddha replied: “My dear friend, do you see the water flowing in the river? Is it the same that you saw yesterday? No. So much water has flown down the river… Such is the state of my being too. You are not meeting the same person on whom you spat yesterday. I do not live in the past. I am new every moment as I die every moment. It is not only me who is different now; you too are not the same as the man who came to spit. Drop your past and be here now. Get out of your own mind that creates divisions of past and future.
Being in the grip of the mind is being in misery. Freedom from mind is real bliss. Tolle explains: “The mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don’t even know that you are its slave. As if you were possessed without knowing it, so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of freedom is the realisation that you are not the possessing entity—the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. And the moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousnessbecomes activated. You then begin to realise that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You realise that all the things that truly matter—love, creativity, joy, inner, peace—arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.”
- Swami Chaitanya Keerti
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