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Spirituality
Restlessness
Itself is Mind
Collated by
A.Thiagarajan from Guru
Nisargadutta
 A
Swedish seeker came to Nisargadutta and told him that he studied the
whole teaching of India and that he got peace of mind. N asked him if
his mind was at peace and the search was over.
When he said
no, N told him there will be no end to it, because there is no such
thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is
mind. Examine closely and you will see that the mind is seething with
thoughts. It may go blank occasionally, but it does it for a time and
reverts to its usual restlessness.
A becalmed mind is not a peaceful mind.
For many years you sought your peace of mind. You could not find it, for
a thing essentially restless cannot be at peace.
The peace you claim to have found is very brittle any little thing can
crack it. What you call peace is only absence of disturbance. It is
hardly worth the name.
The real peace cannot be disturbed. The self does not need to be put to
rest. It is peace itself, not at peace. Only the mind is restless. All
it knows is restlessness, with its many modes and grades. The pleasant
are considered superior and the painful are discounted. What we call
progress is merely a change over from the unpleasant to the pleasant.
But changes by themselves cannot bring us to the changeless, for
whatever has a beginning must have an end.
You can find what you have lost. But you cannot find what you have not
lost.
The true knowledge of the self is not a knowledge. Knowledge is but a
memory, a pattern of thought, and a mental habit. All these are
motivated by pleasure and pain. It is because you are goaded by pleasure
and pain that you are in search of knowledge.
You got yourself into your present state through verbal thinking; you
must get out of it the same way. Only when you realize the true peace,
the peace you have never lost, that peace will remain with you, for it
was never away. Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out
what is it that you have never lost?
The obstacles to the clear perception of one's true being are desire for
pleasure and fear of pain. It is the pleasure-pain motivation that
stands in the way. The very freedom from all motivation, the state in
which no desire arises is the natural state.
Giving up desire after desire is a lengthy process with the end never in
sight. Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention to
the subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear.
Ask: 'who desires?' Let each desire bring you back to yourself.
The happiness you can think of and long for is mere physical or mental
satisfaction. Such sensory or mental pleasure is not the real, the
absolute happiness. They have their roots in imagination. A man who is
given a stone and assured that it is a priceless diamond will be
mightily pleased until he realizes his mistake; in the same way
pleasures lose their tang and pain their barb when the self is known.
Both are seen as they are — conditional responses, mere reactions, plain
attractions and repulsions, based on memories or pre-conceptions.
Usually pleasure and pain are experienced when expected. It is all a
matter of acquired habits and convictions.
Desires and fears- Where are they but in your memory? Realize that their
root is in expectation born of memory and they will cease to obsess you.
How restless people are, how constantly on the move! It is because they
are in pain that they seek relief in pleasure. All the happiness they
can imagine is in the assurance of repeated pleasure. The end of pain
lies not in pleasure. When you realize that you are beyond pain and
pleasure, aloof and unassailable, then the pursuit of happiness ceases
and the resultant sorrow too. For pain aims at pleasure and pleasure
ends in pain relentlessly.
In the ultimate state there can be neither happiness nor sorrow. Only
freedom. Happiness depends on something or other and can be lost;
freedom from everything depends on nothing and cannot be lost. Momentary
relief from pain we call pleasure — and we build castles in the air
hoping for endless pleasure which we call happiness. It is all
misunderstanding and misuse. Wake up, go beyond, and live really.
When the seeker said that the condition that one must have freedom from
desires and inclinations is impossible of fulfillment, N told him that
there are no conditions to fulfill. There is nothing to be done, nothing
to be given up. Just look and remember, whatever you perceive is not
you, nor yours. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are
not the field and its contents, nor even the knower of the field. It is
your idea that you have to do things that entangle you in the results of
your efforts — the motive, the desire, the failure to achieve, the sense
of frustration — all this holds you back. Simply look at whatever
happens and know that you are beyond it.
To look for it on the mental level is futile. Stop searching, and see —
it is here and now — it is that 'I am' you know so well. All you need to
do is to cease taking yourself to be within the field of consciousness
The greatest Guru is your inner self. Truly, he is the supreme teacher.
He alone can take you to your goal and he alone meets you at the end of
the road. Confide in him and you need no outer Guru.
July 2, 2006
Image under license with
GettyImages.com
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Spirituality
The Week of July 2, 2006
Nuclear Notions: Critics of Indo-US N-deal Miss
the Larger Picture by Rajinder Puri
Kargil Remembered: A Homage to the Indian Army
Martyrs by Dr. Subhash Kapila
The Flood Story of the Hindus, Hebrews and Sumerians
by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Toxic Tourism by J. Ajithkumar
Achievement of Liberation by TA Ramesh
Know
AIDS for No AIDS by Naira Yaqoob
Suicide Tourism by Kusum Choppra
How Rejection Becomes A Writers Tonic by
Michael Levy
The Art and Science of Water by VK Joshi
Feeding Your Toddler by Garima Gupta
Yudhishthira: A Game of Dice with Dharma by
Satya Chaitanya
Hidimba: The unacknowledged Heroine of the
Mahabharata by Dr. Saroj Thakur
Restlessness Itself is Mind by A.
Thiagarajan
To Be or Not To Be ... Happy by Anjali Anand
Seth
On My Way to Haridwar – Uttaranchal Diary by
Ragini Puri
Ram Swarup : A Fearless Intellectual by V.
Sundaram
Marking Women Through Status Indicators by Dr.
Ajit Kumar Sinha
Version Control System by Ruchi Gupta
Chicken 'n' Robed
A Recipe by Davidbhai Jodhpurwala
A Bride Hunt by PGR Nair
The Witty Side by Melvin Durai
Love Stories from Mahabharata A review by
Amreeta Sen
The World of Tamil Politics by G
Swaminathan
Tales with a Twist by Lekshmy Rajeev
Ram Naam Bolo, Rahim Naam Bolo by C.R.
Gopalakrishna
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