When a moment dies, it brings to life a new moment. The moment does not belong to you – it is part of existence. But we do belong to the moment. If the moment is lost in thoughts of the past or the future, that’s a big loss. What we call life is, in fact, existence from moment to moment. If we learn to exist in one moment, we have learnt to exist for eternity, because we only have one moment at hand. In suffering, life seems to be not moving, and in happiness, life seems fleeting. 2020 was a long year of suffering, but it birthed a new year—2021—a year of newness and freshness. Celebration is the hallmark this new year 2021. In fact, celebration is the hallmark of life. But we make the paths of our life awfully miserable when we prefer to celebrate the new year only once a year.
One goes out every day and comes back. One meets the same challenges every day that one has overcome a thousand times. One has to break the same walls that one has broken many times, dig the same wells that one has dug and filled many times. We reach for newness and freshness in the past that is lifeless now. Like the first day of the year is celebrated as New Year, every day is new. Every day, the sky, the air, the sun, trees, flowers, birds, and the earth itself are born anew. You are also not the one who was yesterday, but are born anew. Yet, you treasure melancholy and sadness. Your eyes become stone-like. You are alive simply without being there. Look into the eyes of a small child and you will find him there.
You are your being. Being comes first. Activities of life happen on the canvas of being. For doing any activity, being is required in the first place. For instance, if you run, you may run without being conscious of running or you may think that you are running fast or slow. That’s an activity in unconsciousness. To make you run, the runner who runs your run has to run. Without that runner running, you cannot run. So, your consciousness has to proceed to make you run, without it running or not. Now, the choice is yours. You can simply be running or you can run without being there. Remember, your mind cannot be without the consciousness in the background, because to be in the mind, is to be in the unconsciousness, because consciousness is your being. You are there in the being. Just be.
Once, a young man came to Buddha and said that he wanted to devote his life to serving and helping other human beings. Buddha looked at him with compassion and, most surprisingly, a tear rolled down Buddha’s cheek. Buddha said to the young man, “You are not. First just be—you have to first know who wants to help. Go find out who wants to help.”
With the same job, the same people, the same challenges, the same targets, the same despairs and the same pleasures, life becomes a routine and a burden. Man begins to live life like a habit. No freshness or newness around. When life becomes a habit, we live as if living is a habit. Like day becomes night and then day. Our auto-pilot robot-like existence hijacks our mind. When we eat, we think of a thousand things. We don’t eat when we feel hungry but when the clock hits 2 and all of a sudden hunger enrages all the cells. We begin to trust this deep hypnosis as hunger. We overeat because the robot that controls the mind does not stop eating.
If you do any activity without being there in you, you are creating hell for yourself. When you eat, simply eat. Simply be complete in the act of eating. Know that your body is consuming food and the food is all that your body is made of. Your body is food. Slowly engage into eating, devouring the totality of its taste, to make the food a part of the body consciously. Hindus call it ‘Annam Brahma’ (food is God).
Zen Master Bokuju was once asked by someone, what was his accomplishment by Zen meditation? Bokuju had said, “I eat when I am hungry and I sleep when I feel sleepy.” The questioner said that it was exactly what the questioner had been doing. To which Bokuju said, “When I eat, I simply eat.” It means that when Bokuju eats, he does not think of anything else. He has no thoughts and he is in the total act of eating. He is eating with the totality of his being. He becomes the eating and there is no gap between him and the act of eating.
Habit is like the automation of human behaviour. Man becomes a prisoner of habits. Even God becomes a habit — going to the temple or the church, reciting scriptures — unless someone jolts someone free from the prison. Nanak did it once to the governor of a city who had summoned Nanak and asked him to offer namaz with him. Nanak happily agreed and said that he would offer namaz after the governor had offered namaz. The governor and the qazi bowed down on their knees on the ritual rug and performed the ritual prayers of namaz. But Nanak kept standing. After the prayers, the governor said to Nanak, “You said you would offer namaz with us but you did not. You were standing, not bowing.” Nanak replied, “Yes, I waited for you to offer namaz but you didn’t. Qazi was thinking whether the new baby horse may fall in the courtyard well and you were thinking about the horses you were going to sell in Bukhara.” The governor and the qazi nodded in affirmation. Nanak said, “So you did not offer namaz in the first place.” Thus, you can go on offering the namaz or repeating the Gita or reciting what is written in the holy books by not even being there. That is a robotic habit you are enslaved to.
Life is in creativity. You are creative when you are in the being—be that 2020, which just passed, or 2021, which just began. A year is a part of chronological time, a utilitarian comprehension which man has adopted. There is no truth in time. Celebrating moment to moment is the truth. You will suddenly find time disappearing and timelessness reigning. In timelessness, you live. Creativity, newness, beauty, love are all part of timelessness. Suffering and misery are of the mind and mind is made of time.
You are timeless. The mind is the absence of being and no-mind is presence in the being. Remain moment to moment in existence. Whatever activity you do, continue doing it, but change your focus from the old to the new. Do it now by remaining in the being. Let it be done from the core centre of your being. Remain there in the activity in totality. You will come to discover that every moment has unfathomable depth in it as much that you can dive in it for eternity.
The writer is a spiritual coach and independent advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com.