Man is searching for some dependence. Man needs dependence. He is frenetically searching for dependence. Someone takes to dependence in counting the beads and someone wants to find a path to God and someone wants to possess everything to lend him dependence. And someone gets ready to drink the whole ocean of life.
Let some assumption of God give you dependence. Let some deities lend you dependence. Let possession of wealth lend you dependence. Dependence is in fact your insecurity. Your God becomes your insecurity. Your mantra becomes your dependence. Your religion becomes your dependence. That does not let you drink the ocean of life to make you independent.
Why man is searching for dependence? Because man is afraid of the unknown. Whatever pleasurable he has known he wants to replicate in future. The mind works in future. Whatever that you need now you can get now. But your mind makes planning not just this life but the next ones. You ask which one of the Gods, the deities should one believe and follow. Hindus have millions of Gods. You ask which one is the right one to believe and follow. You are asking which Guru you should believe and follow.
You are walking on the path. In fact, you do not know where this path will lead you to. Because you don’t know where you are headed. Therefore you need dependence. You need maps if you wish to go. But your dependence on your mind is absolute. It does not need any external dependence. All external dependence call it wealth, kingdom, fame, and God are poor copies of mind.
Have you noticed, during the pandemic, how the arrangement of Gods that mankind developed falls? You do not go to temples or places of worship when you need to worship God the most. Then it is said God is everywhere. Atheists believe that God is not there. And theists believe that God is there. But both have not encountered God. An atheist is far truthful than the so-called theist who believes first and wants an encounter with God later to believe.
Theists believe and repeat words written in the scriptures to believe in God. That’s dependence. When a man dies. Hindus chant ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai’-Thy name is the truth. If someone asks them whether they believe that ‘thy name is the truth’. They say yes without knowing and understanding ‘thy name is the truth’. Because to know ‘thy name is the truth’, an encounter with That-Which-Is is needed. Mere repetitions of words fall far short of an encounter. It’s like a picture of the universe vis-à-vis the universe. The picture is far different from the universe.
In the name of God, we have memorised words that were once spoken by seers who encountered That-Which-Is. But even after 5000 years, we keep repeating words without encountering God. Repetition of words does not denote any meanings to us that would once denote to seers. For us, they are dead words loaded with fear. A bird is singing and you rejoicing the birdsong is godliness than repeating dead words which have lost meanings in the temple is ungodliness.
During a pandemic the one who is wealthy and powerful have access to hospitals, medical science does not survive. At the time of a pandemic, we have lost all trust in money, modern medicine, Ayurveda all kinds of occultism and we have nothing else in our hands to try on. We fall back upon God to help. The only link that we have with God is repeating words used by seers. Nothing helps. What is the reason?
Man has forgotten to make prayers, religious conditioning has lent man irreligious. Prayers that were once said to God or in the praise of existence by the seers of Vedas were the first-person account of prayerfulness. But in the name of teaching Vedas, scholars began to repeat them. Prayerfulness was slowly lost into the overwhelming language.
Buddha asks us for being prayerful. Buddha tells us what does prayer mean? How does one pray and to who does one pray to? You have made all kinds of rituals but you have forgotten to pray. Who is the one who wants to pray? Buddha says before making prayer understand the one who is the one who wants to pray. Because the one who wants to make prayer is fast asleep. How does the one who is asleep make prayer? To begin the prayer know who wants to pray.
Buddha asks you first to know the one who wants to pray. Then first trust the one who you want to pray. Don’t search for dependence on protocols of praying. You learn to be prayerful without knowing who you pray to. You keep asking which God to pray to and how to pray to that God because the organisation of religions have told you that God has books of protocols for making prayers without which you may antagonize that God. Buddha says first trust the one who wants to pray. And then trust the one who you want to pray to.
But man is crazy. After Buddha had gone. People turned Buddha into God and started to make prayers to Buddha as God and they started believing in Buddha and bred new theism out of Buddha. Buddha began his journey as an anti-thesis to God. But once gone, Buddha has been turned into a sanctuary for millions of fast asleep ones searching for dependence in Buddha. Buddham Shranam Gachchami means that ‘I go to the refuge of the awakening’.
What we call life is a pandemic. There is no bigger pandemic than life. It terminates everyone in the end. When you trust the one who wants to pray, your whole being is filled with prayerfulness. Your trust in existence disperses your doubts. And when it disperses all your doubts the ocean of existence comes to you and you can drink the whole ocean to be one with it.
But man has made his life death-like. Death has become our religion. Our belief is in a pandemic than in our own existence. Your being is the temple and all your prayers are the prayers made to the one who is seated in the temple. Without the one who is there in you, your temple will no more be a temple. This body is the temple in which your prayerfulness flowers.
Remember our religious conditioning has set all types of protocols rituals for making prayers. But in them, we are not able to make a prayer. In the sanctum sanctorum of you, the temple of existence is abounding in prayerfulness. The whole universe is in deep prayerfulness. Oceans rise withdraws in prayerfulness. Sun, moon, stars lit in prayerfulness. Existence is pouring consciousness everywhere including you. When prayerfulness exists in that prime enormity, one who wants to pray can do nothing but express humble inability—‘how to pray’. That is when you become prayerful, that is when existence fills you up with prayerfulness. When you empty yourself in that total emptiness prayerfulness dawns on you. That is when you drink the ocean of life to be free from dependence.
The author is a spiritual teacher.