Help the mind by staying away from it || Acharya Prashant, on Saint Lalleshwari (2017)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...  ⚡ Want Acharya Prashant’s regular updates? Join WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va6Z...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...   Want to accelerate Acharya Prashant’s work? Contribute: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/contri...   Want to work with Acharya Prashant? Apply to the Foundation here: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/hiring...  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  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  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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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