Man is terrified. Terrified of thousands of things. Terrified of losing something. Terrified of losing house. Terrified of losing money. Terrified of losing prestige. Terrified of losing family. Death will anyway take all this away. Death is the only guarantee life gives to you. Life lived is like a dream. A dream that will anyway fade away. Like you dream it becomes reality at night but in morning you call it a dream. This whole life is dream-like. Because man is in constant dreaming. The dream is dreamt on you. The dream happens on you. You are the witness of your dream. Since you are a reality and all else is a dream. Dream is like you continue to be in desire. Desire leads you to the world. It is said that the world is a dream of the ultimate dreamer, the God, that Hindus call maya.
Why so many enlightened ones come to the world. There must have been reasons for them to evolve into flowering. Buddha, the awakened, saw a person who was suffering from disease and a dead body. So he realised that if he is also going to die, if he is going to be no more in this life, what is the purpose? Why are there so many possessions? He began with basic enquiry. What is? Who am I? What is that-which-is? He discovered all past knowledge like rituals, gods a lie. He gave up his kingdom and left his wife and newly-born son. His enquiry was instinctive, pointed towards his inner being. Not towards the world of outer possessions. Normally all religions ask us for renunciation. Renunciation from the slavery of possessions. Millions renounce homely life but only a few attain to that-which-is. Man is seeking. Whatever that man is doing on this earth, knowers of truth describe it ‘seeking’. If a man is trying to amass wealth, or if he is trying to find some big house, once he acquires any possessions, this does not end seeking. The seeking continues. We think we seek money. When we get money, seeking continues. Seeking is to find thatwhich-is.
Seeking is to be one with that-which-is. When one is born to this world, one is one with that-which-is. When one dies, one becomes one with that-which-is. In life on earth one continues to seek. Wealth, fame, religion, God. We go to temples, churches, mosques to seek Gods, perform rituals.
Between two points of being, man lives like an island on earth. While his true self always remains with him and there is no cause without the true self not being there with him. But his mind which is a sum total of the society thinks of making money, prestige, God. You are not aware of what is that you are seeking even once you have given up worldly pleasures and gone to the jungle like Buddha, you would continue seeking. You may be seeking God or that-which-is. What is seeking? That is the moot question. Seeking starts from the self. It is a search to find out thatwhich-is.
Understand it like this: That-which-is is existence itself. The moment you feel that you are going out of you to seek in that moment you have decided that you are different from thatwhich-is. The moment you made a misconception that you are different from thatwhich-is, you are isolated. It means that existence is working against you. You create an island of you — an island made by effort and violence.
You go out, you get some money, big house, big kingdom, and then you get terrified of losing it; you feel frustrated. You are going to lose it anyway. There must be another way to live your life. Buddha, when he left home, thought that there must be another way to live this life. That time life was lived the same as it is today. Buddha, the awakened, became the awakened. He realised that this frustration is a lie. It is not true. So he began with his basic inner enquiry. He had no map, no GPS, nothing.
Your understanding that you are different from existence breeds seeking. If you think you are not part of that-which-is, then you create your right to seek. If the fish has gone out of the sea it would be seeking the sea. It may pant up in seeking. But your mind begins seeking being within the sea of existence. Your invigoration to go out of existence to find a God that is outside of you breeds problem. Because you have not gone out of that-which-is. It is your belief that you are different from that-which-is. You are seeking what you have never lost. You are seeking something which you have already got. So you cannot find it. Because you are already in it. When search is dropped, seeking drops and one is one with that-whichis. When Buddha got awakened, he laughed at the joke of existence.
In seeking you make yourself self-focussed towards something. You make a future in seeking. Seeking is for the future. Being is in the now. When you return to your being, seeking immediately drops. Throughout life you keep on seeking and get frustrated, terrified of losing and then scriptures say you should seek God. So you keep on seeking God outside you in temples, churches, in the Himalayas, all over the world.
You keep on thinking about how to do, how to save, how to be someone. All your insecurities, fears and you feel terrified by them. But all these are your thoughts. Because a thinker is a thought. Seeking drops in the being. Simply in the being. So be simply in the being mode. When you understand that all this seeking is like a dream, you feel frustrated and terrified. You then begin in the right direction of understanding that thinker (you) is the thought, seeker (you) is the sought. Seeking was the seeking of the sought that is you. Someone asked Bhikku: Who am I? Bhikku replied, “You are the jungle king lion who has been caged and domesticated as a part of a herd of sheep by your mind, and you by mistake take yourself as a sheep. Go see your face. Know yourself. Drop your dream right now. Let the lion roar.”
I am only an awareness. In awareness I abode. In awareness I be. I am pure wisdom. I am pure consciousness. On me everything happens. On me day and night happen; on me summer and winter happen; on me childhood, youth, and old age happen. But I abode in pure consciousness in the being. You are sitting where you are and you are not an inch apart from that-whichis. You are it-that-which-is. You are pure bliss. You are Sat-Chitta-Ananda (TruthConsciousness-Bliss).
The author is a spiritual coach and an independent advisory on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavalokitta@gmail.com
