die to live...

The man did not like the movie he was watching. He decided to change the television.However, after a few changes , the movie continued.He was desperate.

It never occurred to him that the dvd required changing, not the television.....

Sounds stupid?

How sane it is then to keep seeking changes on the outside when our inner hard disks are playing the same movie? We then wonder why the same underlying patterns are getting repeated across seemingly different events?

The outer worlds are mere reflections of our inner worlds..changing events in the outer worlds can really lead us nowhere..in a while, we are back to the fundamental theme of our lives; repetitive and monotonous.

A hunter went to the forest and hunted down a baby bird while the mom managed to escape.He caged the kid in his house, she appeared forlorn and sad. One day , he returned to the forest where he came across the mom. She enquired of her child. The hunter mentioned that she was very sad. Hearing this, the mom fell down, apparently dead.

The hunter returned home and conveyed the same to the kid. Hearing this, the kid fell down, apparently dead. The hunter slowly opened the cage. Seizing the opportunity, the kid flew off.While going, it told the hunter, "To attain freedom in the world , one has to die as one is. This was my mom's teaching for me."

So it is with us....freedom has no halfway measures. Pain never decreases or increases in our lives. It is a constant - physical + psychological + spiritual. When we say we have solved something, we have merely changed it's apparent cause. The pain remains intact.Notice, how after deep psychological suffering, we end with a headache. The psychological pain transmutes to physical which is more manageable.We can pop a pill.

As we rise in consciousness, we get de-clutched from the fundamental pain, not it's apparent causes. This process is liberating, not managing. It is not a moving across concepts; it is moving beyond concepts and watching everything as a concept and dissolving our acquired positionalities vis-a-vis the same.It is not a transformation within the mind, it is a moving away from the mind, a reformation - creation emerging in emptiness....the mind stops using us, we could use the mind where required.

Awareness is freedom, liberating, a death of the old....It is radical...

An old zen story says that a man was going to the market and on the way became liberated.He went to the market and finished his shopping. Everything is seemingly the same, but the vision is different. Before enlightenment, the trees are the trees and the rivers are teh rivers. During enlightenment , nothing seems real. After enlightenment, again the trees are the trees and the rivers are the rivers.But everything has changed in the way we see them and feel connected....