Man sleeps, wakes up and sleeps again. He needs revitalisation to carry on. Dissipates after revitalisation. Day turns into night and night into day. One walks afar but does not reach anywhere. He climbs up a hilltop to meet a deep valley. Fights with the same enemies that he has already won over many times. Again and again breaks the same wall that he has broken them down many times. One finds oneself meeting the same milestones that one has already walked past. Life is a cycle. What you did yesterday, you are doing today, and you will do it tomorrow.
Knowers of truth call it the circle of life. Which goes on and on from one life to the other in circles of life and death. If someone truly wants to know the truth, then this circle needs to be fathomed to its depth.
Every step of life is there to make you enlightened. Life has only one purpose. To wake up. The world is made of matter. Matter is there in a state of deep slumber. Those rocks will turn into trees and man one day. Purpose of life for rocks, trees, animals and man is well laid out. In fact it is “purposeless purpose”. The ultimate flowering is the purposeless purpose of life.
Truth is simple and straightforward. Life is simple and straightforward. Life is not a complex thing. But man has made it the most complex. In fact man’s mind makes it the most complex. Mind has become the controller of life, it has become the driver of life. So, when you have a very bad driver you know what he is going to do with you.
Your body is like a saint and you should thank your body always. Much is hidden in the body. Entire cosmos is hidden in miniature in your body. Regardless of your over-abuse of the body, it remains saint-like subservient. Learn to pay gratitude to your body. Body is like a saint and your mind is like a satan. Your mind keeps on making your life miserable. It does not let you live here and now in the present which is the seat of your being. But it always tricks you to live somewhere in dreams away from your being and body. It robs you of your life. In the end when you die you question yourself when did I live. You only dreamt in the life—a dream of living a life tomorrow ruining the life that was in your hands to live.
Mind keeps you roaming in your dreams throughout life. You don’t just dream in the night when you sleep even when you wake up you are in the state of dreaming. Your thoughts birth dreams and you keep on moving from one dream to the other day and night.
Your mind is a thought. The thought that lives a dream. Thought needs your energy to become a potent dream to make you immersed and lost into it. Thought cannot take you out of the thought. Mind wants pleasure and wants to do it all over again. So thought projects pleasures into the future to keep you in the state of dreaming uninterruptedly. So you run a lot but don’t reach anywhere.
Why do we dream? It is a critical question. We dream because we don’t live our life in the present. Mind is like a computer chip that captures all kinds of data over the day and when you sleep it tries to adjust that whole film with your reality. The reality is you, the film is projected on your being in the mind; so the mind needs to readjust itself to keep on going ahead. In fact, when you live here and now and when you don’t, there is a gap that gets created between your mind and your being. This gap is the conflict. The conflict is the misery. It is suppression of wakefulness in the dreaming. When you do something like you are going for a walk. You are walking by in your dreams so your mind keeps on avoiding what is happening all around you but you keep on acting in your dreams. So mind collects data of the real world where you are walking, the traffic, the noise, the dogs, the trees, everything around you actually unconsciously. All that data that is captured unconsciously and the dream where the mind was engaged get automatically collated when you sleep. It leads to a constant state of strife and the mind gets into perennial dreaming.
Understand it like this you are living your life but in fact you are not living it. Yet, it will be very surprising to you that your being is said to be not living. But it’s absolutely true. Do you know who you are? Are you the name given by your parents? Are you what you see from your eyes or hear or feel? Are you not in constant deep slumber in the state of dreaming? You are walking and you are thinking that you are walking is to say that your thought is walking you from one point to the other. The dream of life is robbing off your life from moment to moment. Therefore it is said that this world is a dream and every man lives in his own world and there are as many worlds as many men are.
Not you in fact, it’s your ego that is living you. Ego is your thought. Ego is not letting you live. When you are walking in the street, your ego is letting you walk. Look at people wearing all kinds of embellishments and walking. Who is making them walk? Who is letting them talk? Not their being. But their mind which is making them walk like zombies. If you ever look at a Buddha walk. Buddha walks in the absolute being. The whole cosmos walks with him in its absolute beauty.
There is a way to break-free from the state of dreaming. If you begin asking yourself the question in your totality. Who am I? Who is the one who sees, hears, feels, even dreams through me? Am I me? Or, I am because I think I am? How did I come here through my mother’s womb? The answer will dawn upon you automatically.
Don’t let your mind do the walking or talking. Simply walk right now and also look who is walking. When you are reading these lines, look who is reading them. Someone asked Bhikku, “Bhikku, I am going to a great forest where most men are lost, could you help me?” Bhikku gave him a small mirror and said, “Keep it.” He asked again how this small mirror would help. Bhikku replied, “It will help you see and help you realise who is lost?”
The author is a spiritual coach and an independent advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com.