Life and death happen on the canvas of one thing. Canvas remains the same. Life and death happen on this canvas. A child is born on it and becomes young and old and dies. Canvas remains unmoving. But canvas watches the young as young and old alike. Canvas is like a mirror on which life and death happen. Mirror mirrors you. Mirror mirrors you being young and old but the mirror remains there.
Do you remember the mirror. Each one of us is born into this mirror. On it we see ourselves being a child, young and old. Mirror remains ageless and unchanged. Mirror is the ageless you that does not age. Your body ages. So when you say you are passing time it is wrong. Time passes you by. You remain unchanged. You remain the axis on which this cycle of life plays.
Therefore Kabir calls it a sheet of cloth (chadar) ‘Jyo kee tyo dhar deeni chadriya’. The canvas on which this life happened, Kabir says that he kept that as it is as pure and flawless as he received it. That is the bliss of life.
You are a mirror and this world is reflected on you. Each one of us has one’s own world. We fictionalise our world and create fictions like heaven and hell. Then we live through them. This world is your own reflection. You identify with fictional characters, you get trapped in them. It makes you miserable. When you look at it from the mirror that you are, you find this world a dream. When you yourself become one of the characters of your self-created fiction, you become miserable.
Buddha sees the world from the mirror of his being. When you enter the world you start building possessions. You possess your mind then your mind possesses your energies. Mind is the sum total of all your past experiences that are reflected into the future. When you see yourself from the mirror, your mind disappears, but when you get stuck with the images of the mirror it enslaves you. Mind takes you to a dream world. You begin believing in the reality of the dream world. You begin hallucinating into its idiosyncrasy.
This world is a dream dreamt by the creator. Therefore it is called maya. Whether your fiction is real or not needs sharp intelligence. Throughout life you keep on dreaming a life that you wish to live but never live. Life robs you of your childhood, youthfulness and makes you old and wretched. Ask all those who possess worldly achievements in comparison to others who don’t. All feel the same way as others. Life robs you. In India one of the names of God is Hari, which means that who robs (har) you.
There are two ways of living life. One is when you enter this life as one of the characters of your own fiction and become a bad driver. Two is when you let life flow on the canvas on the surface of the mirror that you are—the mirror of your being. It is like seeing life from space (akash) and time (samay). When you look at life from akash, the mirror that you are, you look at life happening in time and you witness it as the one on whom this life is happening but does not create any ripples in you. And you remain completely blissful. But when you enter life from samay (time), you begin to live in the psychological mind.
Psychological mind is the sum total of all your past knowledge and is led by your ego. Ego that has created a false you. The false you continues to live your life without you being there. The false you is made of the known. It does not know the unknown. Mind clings to the dead that is already known. It knows nothing of the unknown. Possessions are of the known—they are deadwood.
Mind wants eternity. It wants certainty. Therefore it creates a future where insecurities would be no more there. It creates a future to fulfil past desires but the future remains a distant future. Life is in the living. Life is a flow. Life is not a certainty. There is no guarantee. Like love is a flow and freedom. Life is love and opposite of bondage. But the mind wants to live continuously forever and it invests into fiction that dreams to make one live forever. The dream is a dream to avoid death. But death is a certainty. When the mind meets death or deathlike, it wonders that its dream of life has been robbed of by death. Life exists because of death. If death is not there, no life would be there. But mind creates the false you and the false you wants life forever. Therefore in death, in fact, the false you dies, the mind dies.
The real you that remains a part of that which is doesn’t die. The mirror that you are continues to be there watching beyond life and death.
We live and die both at the same time. Every moment when we breathe in we live and when we exhale we die. Accepting both life and death is being existential. The mirror that you are is part of existence and like this whole world is a reflection of the mirror of existence.
Existence accepts all. Mind is a duality. You are made of 90 trillion cells. Each cell has its code. You are an indivisible. Therefore you are called an individual. In fact you are also an animal and you do what animals and trees do on the earth—procreate. Eat and breed. Sex makes you part of the creation—creator of your generations.
But there is something in you that has flowered as consciousness. You can either continue to remain an animal or flower your consciousness like Buddha. When you begin competing, fighting, being angry the animal comes out. In your ego, the animal is just behind it. In Buddha there is no animal left.
To understand the animal in you is the ultimate intelligence. A rare intelligence flowered in Buddha and he understood the animal in him and has deep respect for the animal that is governed by laws of nature. In knowing the animal in him in totality Buddha understood that the animal is the deep unconscious state that lives in greed, violence, competition, misery. Therefore Buddhahood flowered on him in being in the state of total consciousness.
Like Buddha your whole animal being is ready to explode into flowering of consciousness. Consciousness is to understand. In understanding there is transformation. In understanding your animal being which is creeping in anger, violence, sex, greed is to unleash godliness in you. In your animal being God is hidden and in understanding, Godhood will flower on you..
The author is a spiritual coach and independent advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com.