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Video Information: ShabdYoga Session, 23.8.17, Advait BodhSthal, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India


Context:
~ How to meditate?
~ What is meditation?
~ How to live freely?

Context:

Quote: “Meditate within eternity. Don’t stay in the mind. Your thoughts are like a child fretting near its mother’s breast, restless and afraid, who with a little guidance, can find the path of courage.”

~ Saint Lalleshwari .



Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00Meditate within eternity, Don't stay in the mind,
00:20Your thoughts are like a child fretting near its mother's breast,
00:25Restless and afraid, Who, with a little guidance,
00:32Can find the path of courage.
00:46Meditate within eternity, This is not an instruction about how to meditate,
01:02This is rather an instruction on how not to meditate.
01:13We do not meditate within eternity, we meditate within little things, little patterns, little
01:28selves, little images.
01:33As if we are afraid of going to the real, As if we have given up on the possibility
01:47of eternity.
01:53As if we have surrendered to the idea that the infinite is impossible, so let me just
02:05settle down with the limited, finite, even if it offers me no real rest, but just momentary
02:23consolations.
02:24Like saying, do not make anything the center of your meditation, because anything doesn't
02:39matter what it is, would always be limited and the limited simply won't comfort you.
02:54It can entertain you for a while, you can toy with it, but lasting peace won't come
03:08through the little, through the boundaried, through that which can be captured in thought.
03:20Obviously, you are restless because you want the support of something bigger than yourself
03:30and that which is finite, that which can be captured in your thought is obviously smaller
03:35than yourself.
03:36It is so small that it can be captured even in your little brain, that which can be captured
03:45in your little brain, how will it comfort you?
03:52That which is so small that it can occur in your thoughts, how will you live by it?
04:06Mother has taken the image of a little child, a little child who is complaining and restless
04:26and fretting near the mother's breast.
04:36The mother's breast is a symbol for that which the child is looking for, the place of love,
04:46the place of nourishment, the place of warmth, the place of closeness and the child is complaining
05:01and seeking and searching without knowing that it is already in the mother's arms.
05:13There is no need to go anywhere else, it's well positioned, it's just that it's trying
05:22too much and it has so little confidence in the mother.
05:37All that the child needs is a little guidance, a little guidance, somebody just needs to
05:49gently tap the head of the child and turn it towards the source and that's all.
06:03The rest of the body might anyway be rightly placed, it is the head that keeps turning
06:10to other directions.
06:14Somebody needs to become the head, caress the head a little, that will put an end to
06:27the unnecessary wandering of the eyes, to the ceaseless search of the mind.
06:42We are always in the mother's arms.
06:53But to remain restless is always a privilege available to us.
07:08The mother can bring the baby to herself, to the breast, but even she can't force the
07:16baby to be attentive, to see, to succumb, that is the baby's prerogative, if the baby
07:32decides that the world is a little too attractive for him, if the baby decides that he wants
07:43to keep looking elsewhere, even the mother is helpless, she has all the power, but she
07:57won't force the baby.
08:07The Buddha has a line saying that the way of restlessness is our own choice.
08:15Do not blame the world that it carries you away.
08:22The world does not come and petition to you.
08:27The world does not come and force you.
08:30The world can at most display itself, whether or not you are captivated by the display is
08:42your own decision, it's a matter of yourself.
08:52So you can't blame the world.
08:55And neither can you blame God, the mother, because God has done everything that God can
09:05possibly do.
09:12What more do you expect from the poor fellow?
09:16He has given birth to you, he's always carrying you.
09:20He has never refused anything to you.
09:26So if remaining in God's lap and God's arms, you're still enamored by the world, then it's
09:35neither the world's mistake nor God's.
09:40It's your own deliberate choice, something that you mistakenly call as free will.
10:02The mind will always tell you that there are horizons to be covered, distances to be
10:19run, stuff to be obtained.
10:28It is not the mind's wise or compassionate counsel.
10:39It is the mind's helplessness.
10:47The mind must tell you something that makes the mind necessary for you.
10:57The mind needs activity for its own survival.
11:08That is why Allah says, don't stay in the mind, not because the mind is evil, just because
11:25the mind is not you.
11:30Your nature and the tendency of the mind just do not go well with each other.
11:40They are immiscible.
11:45The mind needs frantic activity, the mind needs fear, the mind needs agitation, the
11:52mind needs boisterous energy and you are troubled by all of these.
12:03Whatsoever is nourishment for the mind is the same thing that enfeebles you.
12:22As the mind grows stronger and bigger, you find that you are diminishing.
12:31It is another matter that a bigger mind, a fatter mind is ultimately not good even for
12:39the mind itself, but the mind, the fool that it is, takes too long to realize that.
12:51For very long periods of time, the mind keeps believing that if it gets fatter and bigger
13:00and more armored and more knowledgeable, then it will get peace, then it will reach home.
13:11It keeps doing all the wrong things and if you stay in the company of the mind, you too
13:16find that you are doing all the stupid things, leave the mind to its own fate.
13:25You stay a little away.
13:29If you are away, that will help the mind.
13:34If you are with the mind, that destroys both of you.
13:44If you can manage to maintain a certain distance from the mind, then there is nothing healthier
13:55than this for the mind.
14:02The mind can have all the mischievous intentions of its own, but it has really no energy.
14:14The energy comes to the mind only from you.
14:21And if you refuse to provide that energy, if you refuse to maintain that kind of contact
14:32with the mind, then the mind's intentions fall flat.
14:39That helps the mind.
14:41It's a strange thing.
14:43You are helping someone by staying away from him.
14:53Hmm?
14:55Clear?
15:13I don't even feel like I am with it.
15:33That brings me more frustration.
15:36That frustration makes me even more inside the mind.
15:42It is indeed difficult to consciously know and point out when you are away from the mind,
15:51because when you are away from the mind, then there is no need to take the trouble of pointing
15:57anything out.
15:59It's anyway a very peaceful position you are in.
16:05And when you are attached to the mind, identified with it, a partner in all its mischiefs, then
16:13there are telltale signs.
16:17Your energy becomes self-destructive.
16:22It becomes evident to everyone that you have turned a mad monkey.
16:27How can you miss it?
16:30You need not know when you are away from the mind.
16:34You must be careful about the moments when you are firmly riveted to the mind.
16:41And those moments are so easy to detect.
16:45You will smash something.
16:48You will collide with somebody.
16:51You will not be able to do anything that requires harmony and application.
17:00Your thoughts and your shots will go awry.
17:07There will be no rhythm in your movements, in your game.
17:14There will be a great deal of randomness and chaos in your movements.
17:23And all of that is very hard to miss.
17:26These are very clear signs and very gross signs.
17:32Your voice will change.
17:35Your eyes will change.
17:36Your body language will change.
17:39Of course, your thoughts will change.
17:45You will start forgetting a few things.
17:50And a lot of things that usually don't come to you in your moments of calmness will start
17:55coming to you.
17:57How can you miss them?
18:02The facts are now evident.
18:05You have slipped.
18:09And everybody can see that.
18:12It depends on how much you love yourself.
18:40If you don't love yourself, then you can tolerate any harm coming your way.
18:46When you are riveted to the mind, you incur a lot of losses.
18:55You invite a lot of hurt.
19:00The one who is sensitive becomes alert upon receiving the first loss.
19:13He says something bad just happened to me.
19:18I am sure I am not in the right condition.
19:22So he shrugs the mind away.
19:25He says, Oh, I had lost it in my moment of deep unconsciousness.
19:37This thing had become attached to me.
19:40I must cast it aside.
19:45If I don't cast it aside, there would be more losses.
19:48But this can be said only by that person who does not like even the first loss.
19:58If you do not like the first loss, if you love yourself so much, then the second loss
20:03won't happen.
20:06But if you don't love yourself, then you will keep on adjusting to all the losses that you
20:14suffer.
20:17All the insults and the humiliations and the defeats that you go through.
20:58It's just that you don't love yourself deeply enough to see and to be woken up by those
21:06defeats.
21:08The two defeats that you are talking of are colossal defeats.
21:14And you see only that which is grossly colossal.
21:19There are 20 other defeats in between, but you take them as minor.
21:25So you gloss over them.
21:29Don't even pay attention to them because you have become used to being defeated.
21:35You're not woken up, not shaken up by the little defeat, the one who is shaken up by
21:40the little defeat.
21:42And what am I calling as defeat?
21:45Displacement from the center is what I'm calling as a defeat.
21:49A loss of composure is what I'm calling as defeat.
21:53A break in your meditativeness is what I'm calling as defeat.
21:58The one who is sensitive, the one who loves himself will not tolerate even a small defeat.
22:05So he does not then have to go through the pain of tolerating a second defeat or a bigger
22:12defeat.
22:16Love your peace.
22:21That is the same as loving God.
22:24Love yourself.
22:26And the moment the slightest harm comes towards you, pinch yourself and say, boss, you must
22:35have been dreaming.
22:42You couldn't have been deeply conscious.
22:46Where is your awareness?
22:50Where are you?
22:53The punishment meted out to those who do not get shaken up by little losses is that they
23:14have to incur great losses.
23:38If you were so intelligent and so skilled that you could win against even great enemies
24:03having suffered great losses, then why would you lose to small enemies who can inflict
24:14only small losses upon you?
24:25It is indeed heroic in a game of squash to be down 9-0 and yet win.
24:45But you must firstly ask yourself, if you indeed had the game to win from such a hopeless
24:55position, why would you firstly come to that hopeless position?
25:04But the fellow keeps losing and losing and comes to a point where the scoreboard reads
25:100-9 and he is still confident because he has read a lot of motivational stuff.
25:17He has heard a lot of motivational speakers.
25:21He says now it is 0-9 but I can still win.
25:24Of course you can still win.
25:27But is it not important to firstly ask yourself, what are the odds now?
25:36And why have I made it so difficult for myself?
25:40And if I indeed have it in me to win from this position with the odds so heavily against
25:55me, why did I first of all let this position come?
25:58So you are obviously not in touch with yourself.
26:03You are just fantasizing about yourself.
26:05You are grossly overestimating your capacity.
26:11And what helps maintain your delusion is that rare occurrence, one in a thousand times when
26:21you do indeed manage to pull one back from a 0-9 position.
26:28That happens in one game out of thousand.
26:33Just one game.
26:34But the ego is always searching for that one game only.
26:40The ego will forget 999 defeats and remember that one game when it was able to win a game
26:49in spite of being 0-9 down.
26:52The memory of that one game keeps your false confidence alive.
26:58Then you repeatedly keep slipping to 0-9 positions.
27:03It's 0-3.
27:05It's not yet too bad.
27:06I can win even from 0-9 position.
27:08It's 0-5 and you still refuse to wake up.
27:12Oh, I can still do it.
27:160-7, you are still unaffected.
27:25Your confidence is still not shaken.
27:280-8, 0-9, nothing.
27:32And now that it is 0-9, now you say, ah, it's time for me to perform.
27:37Unfortunately, too late to perform.
27:47You have gone so far behind.
27:57Some things must just not be lost.
28:02After they are lost, recovery is proportionally difficult to the depth of the loss.
28:09Are you getting it?
28:13The deeper the loss, the more difficult is the recovery.
28:20But at the same time, the deeper the loss, the more heroic is the recovery and because
28:24the ego is looking for heroism.
28:28So it lets the loss happen so that it may get an opportunity for heroism.
28:37That opportunity is extremely costly.
28:40We just talked about it, we said it depends on the depth of love you have for your true
29:01self.
29:02I said, the depth of love you have for your true self.
29:15Do you like remaining in pain, restlessness, anxiety?
29:21That's it.
29:28Many of us like that.
29:33If you do not like it, how would you tolerate it?
29:39I'm asking, if you do not like it, how would you tolerate it?
29:44You need to have an absolute dislike for anxiety and fear.
30:15And suspicion.
30:19The moment they arise, an alarm should go off.
30:26The moment they arise, you must know that something unsavoury has happened.
30:36And if you can catch those things early, then you won't let them grow further.
30:48But to catch them early, you must detest them absolutely.
30:58I just cannot tolerate living in jealousy and I find jealousy raising its ugly head.
31:12That prompts me, ha, return to the center.
31:19That does not prompt me to kill jealousy, mind you.
31:22Jealousy is doing its own thing that prompts me to return to the center.
31:28I can't get carried away.
31:32Jealousy has momentum.
31:33If I don't return to my home, jealousy will carry me along.
31:40And I'm not liking it because tension is not my natural state.
31:44Jealousy is not my natural state.
31:47Suspicion and fear are not my natural state.
31:49The moment they arise, I must say, ah, not good for me, not good for me, not good for me.
32:03It's not just a mosquito bite, it might be dengue.
32:12Not good for me, appears small, appears tolerable, but I better not tolerate it.
32:32It gets progressively worse and more difficult to recover.
32:42But again, you know, the ego looks for heroism, the ego looks for superhuman effort.
32:50Don't you see how you idolize all the supermen?
32:56So the fellow plays an impossible shot.
33:01The fellow comes to your rescue always when the chips are down.
33:05Just when you are about to hit the ground, that helpful hand comes and rescues you, saves you.
33:17But nobody asks, why did I get myself in such a bad position, first of all, that I had to
33:23be rescued this way?
33:29Very very bad positions are necessary so that supermen can flourish.
33:35If there are no catastrophes, who will worship all the supermen?
33:41So what do you do?
33:42You turn yourself into a catastrophe, so that you can become your own superman.
33:50Now the catastrophe is real, it becomes the fact of your life.
33:54But the superman never arrives.
34:07Or if he arrives, he arrives once in a thousand times, not worth it, not worth it.
34:22You are relying too much on a fickle friend.
34:26He is not at all dependable.
34:31Zero nine down, how many games can you win?
34:51Which books are you reading?
35:10There are more books than there are men.
35:15And we know that the majority of men are not worth meeting.
35:26Which books are you reading?
35:28I haven't read any book that says accept it.
35:34You see these gentlemen here and the ladies, none of them ever said accept it.
35:40They were rather rebels.
35:44They said don't accept.
35:51Just because something is printed on paper, it doesn't become valuable.
36:11But it's the old tendency, especially in India.
36:19Even if a cigarette wrapper is lying on the ground and you step on it, then you touch
36:26the feet of the cigarette wrapper.
36:31Because it is paper and something is written on it.
36:51Don't read bad books.
36:59Read good books.
37:08Bad books have filled your mind with a lot of bad details.
37:13So you'll have a lot of questions to ask.
37:16First read a few good books so that we may at least have good questions.
37:28These are my friends, some of the authors I suggest.
37:41And there are some books on display outside.
37:44After the session, Rohit will ensure that…
37:54Yes, Bantu.
37:58Now Bantu is extremely freaky about mosquitoes.
38:05And scratching at all the unmentionable places.
38:35If you can even say that something is bad, then you will at least stop.
39:00You are riding a car.
39:02You are riding a car.
39:06And alien funny sounds are emerging from somewhere.
39:14As if somebody is beating a guitar on somebody's head, that kind of musical noise.
39:20Now you do not know exactly from which part of the car is the noise arriving.
39:25What will you do?
39:29You will stop the car.
39:31Even if you don't know exactly what is wrong with the car, at least you will lose the confidence to continue moving with speed.
39:39So stop.
39:41Even if you do not precisely know what is going wrong, if you find that there is a lot of noise and agitation, stop.
39:53Having stopped, now you can probably investigate better.
39:59Or at least slow down.
40:22When there appears a problem with the electrical circuit in one part of the house, the voltage seems to be rising dangerously.
40:43Or you smell some smoke.
40:50What do you do?
40:53You don't just switch off that part because you are yet not sure about what is really happening.
40:58You go and…
41:01The mains.
41:07You switch off the mains.
41:10Switch off the mains.
41:13The ego is the mains.
41:19If you find something is going wrong, and if you can't really precisely diagnose what is going wrong, then just go to the mains.
41:34And pull the lever.
41:46Stop everything.
41:48Because if fire starts in one part, it will very rapidly spread to the other parts as well.
41:59Don't wait for the fire to consume everything.
42:04Be a little smart.
42:10Mains.

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