Buddha, Manifestation Of Silence
Are you aware you are saying "Yes?" This something that is beyond your yes or no answers, beyond your thoughts, your concepts, your feelings and ideas.
That something that is so delicate, yet so concrete, and yet so vague and again, tangible, that is pragya, awareness.
This comes up when you are calm, when you are in samadhi, when you have equanimity. Right mindfulness can root out the misery in our lives.
This can break the patterns that we live with. Silence breaks the pattern, like nothing else. It is in-built in our nature, in our system.
The human body is made that way. See, anything that is too much for the mind to take, it becomes silent.
When something shocks you, what does it do to you? It takes you to silence. Something stunning takes you to silence.
When something is very wonderful, words disappear, you become silent. At the height of every emotion, at the peak of every happening, there is silence.
Recognizing it, manifesting it in your life, you cross over the ocean of samsara, the ocean of misery.
Otherwise when you feel happy or miserable, you link that feeling to something outside yourself.
Then the wheel starts rolling, the reaction, the chain of reaction starts happening. You hold something else responsible for your misery or your happiness, someone else is responsible.
Buddha said, "No," just observe the sensations. I think it should be mandatory for every psychologist to study Buddha.
A psychologist can never be
complete if he does not study Buddha. Buddha has given all the knowledge about the mind and its functions in such a methodical manner.
In traditional psychotherapy people are told, "Deep inside you there is sorrow, deep inside you there is fear, your mother did something to you, your father did something to you."
This is such ignorance. I have known several people who had very good relationships with their parents. After going to the psychologist, it all fell apart, because the psychologist attributed their misery to their childhood by just asking them questions.
The psychologists do not know one simple thing - that every emotion has a sensation in the physiology. A specific part of the body resonates with definite emotions.
When you observe the sensations, the emotions disappear and dissolve. When you observe the sensations, you see that the body and
consciousness are separate.
As you move on with the observation, you see you are simply linking the sensation with an event outside.
Wisdom is delinking the event with the emotion, and de-linking the emotion with the sensation. Ignorance is linking any sensation, sadness, or other feeling to some event.
That makes you more miserable, and it sets the cycle going on and on. Many people go to psychotherapy for many years, and nothing happens.
Maybe a little relief is felt for a couple of days because somebody was there to talk to you about all your problems.
You paid someone to listen to you. There may be some value in traditional psychotherapy, I don't completely rule that out.
There are some values, but I'm
saying there are serious flaws, and it is high time that they recognize it.
I think some are already doing it, adding the value of meditation, the value of silence, the value of observation.
Unfortunately, none of the psychologists who furthered the profession came in contact with a Buddha or another enlightened one at any time in the past.
They wrote volumes and volumes of books without even
encountering the depth, without knowing what is meditation, the true source of the mind.
The mind is noise, the source of the mind is silence. That is why Buddha said, "No mind." That doesn't mean that Buddha was not talking.
How can you talk, how can you interact with people if there is no mind? When Buddha said "No mind," he meant not the chain of thoughts that simply wander around in your mind all the time.
Buddha kept silent for many questions. Every answer only pushes the question a little further.
Every answer brings forth many more questions. There is no end to a question/answer session. It can go on forever.
If you answer one question, it will bring forth another 10 questions. Questions and answers are the pair, the couple, and they have no family planning.
Buddha said go beyond the questions, be answerless, for your being has the solution to all the questions.
Turn every question into wonder. What is the difference between a question and wonder? A question creates violence, wonder creates silence.
A question is looking for an answer, wonder is like a question which is not looking for an answer.
Do you wonder what I am saying? The astonishment of wonder does not seek for an answer. Wonder brings you home to silence.
Question creates violence. Someone asks you a question, "Where are you going?" Just smile at them, don't answer them. A second time they will ask you, "Where are you going?"
Again, smile at them. The third time their voice will be rising, "Where are you going, I am asking you? Come on, answer"
When you are asking a question you are demanding. In the mind of every criminal, there is a big question, "Why this?"
Every misery is associated with the question, "Why me?" Joy is associated with wonder. The practices we do, the sadhana, is to make our questions turn into wonder.
As Buddha said, there is a possibility to get rid of the misery. There is a way, come, sit, meditate.
During his time when there was so much prosperity in India, there was nothing much to be done.
Everybody had plenty. At that time, Buddha gave a begging bowl to all his main teachers, "Come on, go and beg."