We have to let it be a little freer than usualfrom now until the rest of the stay. Let's apply that rule. One ortwo people, who are completely new, if you find any difficulty, letus know. If Pandit Ananta, Pandit Drabral is not here, you can sendme a note. That you're not managing it very well, shows itself inbursting of emotions, in the mind and heart. Unnecessary angerarises. It can be on almost anything, very small, which wouldnormally not disturb you: the beds are not comfortable; the food isnot what you are used to; the teachers aren't teaching well; Swami'salways late, or whatever.
There is a principle about allyour angers and emotions and sadnesses and depressions. I'd like youto remember that principle. That it's seldom about the objectpresent. You think youare being angry with your husband, or with your teacher at school, orwith a professor, or with your boss, or an employee, or a friend, thedaughter, son, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law.
That's not true. The anger is not about thatimmediate person. The anger is not about that immediate situation.Anger is. That's all. In you, a conflict, in the mind, something youhave not been able to resolve, from your childhood, from your youth,from the person you have been in love with who betrayed you, or withwhom things did not quite work out, and unsatisfied cravings,unsatisfied desires, have remained there lodged in you. And whereverthey find a hook, they jump out and they catch the object in thehook, because you are very dependent on the person you're angry with.
Anger is the worst dependence, as aversion is theworst attachment. Anger is the worst dependence and aversion is theworst attachment.
Things you're averse to, persons you're averse to,that's who you are thinking of all the time. You are not thinking ofpersons you love, you are thinking of the people you're averse to.
A woman comes to me, says, "Swamiji, oh my husbandis so unreasonable. He says: whole day at the office, he is cursingme in his mind."
I say, "You lucky woman. He's thinking of youwhole day."
And that's not meant to be a joke. You're thinkingof the person whole day. It's your choice whether you want to thinkright, or you want to think wrong; you want to think lovingly or youwant to think hatefully, but you can't stop thinking of the person,so very attached to that person. And the same thing is with youranger, sign of dependence. You're dependent on that person and youresent that dependency in you. Inside you, you're resenting thatdependence.And that's where your anger is.
There are many other areas. There are somebeautiful books about anger. I always recommend Marcus Aurelius, theEmperor. His "Meditations" is a very nice essay. There is one by theDalai Lama. In the one by the Dalai Lama there is not one word onanger but the title is On Anger [ed. note: Healing Anger].The title of the book is On Anger; there's not one word about anger.It is his translation and paraphrase of an eighth century Buddhisttext, "Bodhicaryavatara", "The Way of One Who is Walking on the Pathto Enlightenment," by a great Buddhist saint named, Santideva. Myfavorite story about Santideva is that--you know the Buddhist conceptof shunya, null? It's not as simple as it's made out to be. Similarlywhen the Christian theologist speaks about being [exnihilo?], out of nil, it's not quite as simple as that. In thevast texts in the Buddhist philosophy explaining that concept oforiginal nihil--but I'll not go into that right now. For that youhave to come to my Gurukulam and study for three to five years andthen you'll begin to understand, who ever wants to come. So, the wordshunya here, sign of zero, comes from that. So he was teaching hisdisciples the meaning of shunya, the meaning of null, the meaning ofvoid, and after the discourse he said, "I will now demonstrate."
Sitting there right from in front of thedisciples' eyes, he disappeared. There are two beautiful inspiringworks by him, eightht century AD, Santideva, and one isBodhicaryavatara, the descent, descent, into the person, of the wayof enlightenment. In the sixth chapter of it, Dalai Lama has done abeautiful paraphrase and explanation of it and he's titled it as OnAnger.
And he hasn't said a word about anger. He put aword or two here and there. Because it is not what it appears to be.
There is also a book on anger by Thich Nhat Hanh.These three you should read.
So, in these silence retreats, a lot of yourunresolved emotions come up because they don't have the outlet, theexpression, you have all the time. So we don't normally recommendlong silence retreats for people who are naturally emotional. Itdoesn't work out for them. They begin to cry and they begin to jump,and they want to pick up and pack up and go away, or keep boilinginside, or what have you. If you see any signs of this in yourself,or if you see any signs of this in someone around you, bring it toour attention, because either we will force them to break thesilence, or we know how to handle it, okay? Especially for those whohave never done deep meditation practice, or who have never done deepsilence before.
I've said enough about silence and it's healingand rejuvenating power. But if you are practicing silence for 10 daysor 5 days--by the way next year's dates are between June 16-30, 2004.There's a 10-day and there's a 5-day, and better to just get itregistered now so we don't have to waste postage, you know. Just lookup in your calendar and organize your year accordingly.
So, this five days or ten days is for letting itseep through into our personality. So that you begin to enjoy it.When I take a few days silence I begin to feel as if I will never,ever, ever again want to speak but I don't have the luxury you have.I have to take care of the people. I've known Swamis who have notspoken a word for twenty-five years. There are, in the Westerntraditions, the Trappist monks, the Carmelites, the monks on theMount Athos. You know the rules of Saint Benedict? When I read them,to me they read like paraphrases of the vows both the Swamis and theBuddhist monks take. You know our monastic orders go back 4000years.
Buddhist orders go back 26 centuries. Rules ofconfession and all of that, they are common traditions. So also thepractice of silence. Ten days is not anything. Forty days should bethe practice. How many would like to take forty days? Wonderful. Allright! That forty days I recommend at the Rishikesh ashram. In theright setting. I am proud. And I'm sure they'll be others.
This forty days is a strange tradition. Fortydays: Jesus on the mountain. In the case of the Buddha, it'sforty-nine days under the Bodhi tree in enlightenment. And I'vetalked to people from [Dyak?] and [Cortecon?]traditions of Borneo, their teachers, their spiritual leaders intheir so called tribal traditions. You know what is a tribaltradition? If you can speak English, you're a nation. If you don'tspeak English, you're tribal.
It's like religion and myth. You know thedifference between religion and myth? What I believe in is religion.What you believe in is a myth.
And so that's how it is between the nations andthe tribes. If you speak French, you are a king; if you don't speakFrench, you are a tribal chief. And they are conditioned to thinkingin those terms. So since the [Dyak? and the Cotecon? ] andthe others did not speak English they are tribal people. I've spokento their wise men, because I go to Borneo every year. We have acenter in [?].
I say "What do you do?"
And they say "Oh we just go out into the forest.We eat fruits and berries and sleep under the trees for forty days."
"Forty days, hum."
The great masters of music in India, some of thoseyou hear in these countries sometimes, they work under their mastersand you may not know, they don't have music degrees from someacademy, certificates hanging on the walls. They work under masters.As individuals in a Gurukulam, in the guru's family. The master feedsthem. The master's wife takes care of them. And they study and theypractice and then some of them have gone through what is known as aforty day [chilla?]. When for forty days, the music discipleis to do nothing but keep singing, non-stop, even if he has to hum.He may dose off, but he is not allowed to sleep.
Then you create a master.
I was living in New Delhi. New Delhi has expandedwidely, from the time I was a child to now, and has taken over thevillages. So some pockets of the village culture remain in the middleof that, you know. You people go to Delhi and you see all this smoke,and noise, and unruly traffic and everything. But many people do notknow that it's also a holy city. And there are people who know it;they even do holy circumambulation of its sites. And anypoint--noisy, and smoky, and auto-fume-filled point in Delhi, fromany point--I can take you to within five minutes, I can take you to aplace of absolute stillness, quietude and sanctity. I wish I couldjust have you come for a tour of Delhi with me. Right in the middleof all that confusion and you won't know you are in a capital of acountry of one billion people.
So, I was living in Delhi for some time. The watersupply is very short. Sometimes the water just doesn't flow, youknow, in those countries. The amount of water you people waste here!I can't. I never open the tap full, just enough, you know. So somemornings there is no water in the pipes. We used to have thesevillage wells. You know, village wells like you used to have inEurope? Sometimes these wells used to be in the houses. They arestill there in old Delhi, in the mansions, old mansions. And thebeauty of those wells is its water is warm in winter and cool insummer.
So I said, "In this area we were living, in thisold area, there used to be villages. There aught to be some wells."
I drove around some old wells. They had all becomegarbage dumps. And I said, "This can't be."
Fortunately in a country like India, anythingworks if it is sacred; nothing works if it is secular. (For fortydays of Kumba Mela, if you have seen the video, seventy-millionpeople in a space ten miles by ten miles. Up to twenty million takinga dip, holy dip, everyone in prayer and song.
Immaculately organized. Hygiene, hospitals,clinics, even internet, five thousand ashrams were represented.)
So I said, "There has to be someplace."
So one person told me there is one holy place nearhere, just five minutes drive from where I'm living. Of course inDelhi, that's very natural. Five minutes drive from anywhere there'sone holy place. Went in to it--simply a patch of forest. Forest ofsome thorny trees, about one acre, preserved, because it's sacred,nobody can cut those trees down for fuel or anything. Just behind theOld Fort that was demolished in the tenth century, just behind that.And the [?], the [gaa's?] are graves of Muslimsaints. But all the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, everybody goes to seekblessing in these holy places. There's no distinction. And I told the[gaa] of a disciple of Baba [? Fahrid?] a twelfthcentury great Sufi saint. It has a cave, a cave in Delhi, ameditation cave. You don't need to climb Himalayas. And you go intothat cave. I have a habit, if I go to a Buddhist place, I behave as aBuddhist. If I go to a Christian place, I am a Christian.
I go to a Muslim place, I am Muslim. So I went in,and I did the [sista] the way you go in bowing in prayer, inthat tradition, in the [vudharashina?]. I tell you, myforehead touches the ground in the cave the spot where the great Sufiused to sit, mystic energy flows into you. There are places likethat. I had the same experience at the grave of Saint Francis ofAssisi. And there are other places like that, on the earth. There arepockets of special, special power. And here was the village; therewas the well. So I used to go there and bathe. You know you just havea system, you just have two poles with a little bar and a wheel andthe rope goes over the wheel and the bucket is tied to it. You throwthe bucket down, and you fill it up, and you pull it up, and you pourthe water over yourself. There is nothing more refreshing in the openair.
And Baba [Fahrid?] the great Sufi, haddone this forty day [chilla?] that's a Muslim Sufi tradition,of prayer, nonstop prayer hanging upside-down in that well. So it wasnot a well, it was a monastic cell. Forty days and nights. So, thereis a forty-day tradition, many places all completely culturally,historically unconnected places. Forty days of Lent, forty days from[?] to Holi, the sacred periods in India.
So these days are baby stuff. Waiting for you toget ambitious. Come to the Rishikesh ashram and do a forty days.You'll see all your accumulations oozing out.
"The place is too cold; the food is horrible; theSwami doesn't pay enough attention."
I just sit there. That's the whole tradition. Isit there watch the process the person goes through; then subsides,calms down.
Then another assimilation occurs. You know,depends on what your grounding is, you know when the desert fatherswent out in the desert, they had visions of Satan and the demonstempting, and testing, and frightening. The Buddha, in his lastmoments before enlightenment, had all the fairies and all the furies.Depends on what pictures and what visions have been filled in yourheart and mind. You know that is the thing that religious people whoreport near death experiences, returning from dying or whatever. TheChristians have seen the St. Paul or St. Peter or Jesus; theBuddhists have seen the Buddha; the Muslims have seen the AngelGabriel [Gibral?]; and Hindus have seen Krishna and Brahma,or their own Guru.
So your visions and fantasies all come from whatis stored in you. They're not coming from outside somewhere. You arethe storehouse of consciousness. And you're linked to the universalmind and you pick out whatever is the image you're conditioned topicking out. And in period of Silence you go through these purges ofemotions. And then below that, underneath that, there is utmostserenity, a stream, and you have to learn to go and deep, deep, deepdive into that stream. And you will come out of that, and yourworldview will have changed.
Unfortunately, when you will come back into thissociety, your family, and your friends, and your professionalcolleges, they will think something abnormal has happened to you.They will take you to a psychiatrist. When my guru, Gurudeva SwamiRama put me in a cave in Gangotri for a forty days' practice, thosecaves are, you know when you're isolated and all the feed you receivefrom your world.--Now those places are gone, actually. To find realmystic caves in the Himalayas you have to really search.
Tell you a story: One day I was sitting meditatingand I feel a throb here. I say ah, now my seventh chakra is opening.It's going to burst open! Just now, my skull is going to part. When Ilook at myself and I say hum, no, it's something coming fromsomewhere outside. So I opened my eyes, broke my meditation. Ifelt--you know these caves are all pure rock. There's hollows in therock. Its dry inside, you can stay in the winter, the meditationcaves of the yogis.
(You know these caves that the Taliban occupied?Where they demolished the world's largest Buddha [the BamyanBuddhas in the Bamyan Valley], the huge old complex that theyused?
They were actually built by the Buddhist monks.They were monastic cells, vast networks and many of them were GreekBuddhist monks. People don't know, the Taliban, the Buddha that theydestroyed, was built by the Greeks. It's a whole different history.So, these cave cells are a very ancient tradition for meditationbecause they are dry, completely insulated and isolated.)
It's pure rock, so I thought somebody washammering the rock over the roof of the cave--the huge rock,hammering from there, and I was getting the echo. I came out . . .there was nothing there! It was an echo from across the Ganga Riverwhere they were doing road building. I thought my seventh chakra wasopening, courtesy of the roadways department of the government ofIndia! And when I left that cave forty days later and came down tothe plains. I was a householder, married person. My guru, Swami Rama,would call Mrs. Arya and Angiras would joke, "Now let me introduceyou to these people, this is my daughter, Lalita, and this is yourson, Angiras. Your whole world changes. And all the transient and thetemporary, just vanishes. But you have to know what to do in thoseforty days, and teacher has to know when you're reaching a break-downpoint and says, "No more."
"Oh no, I'm not! I came here for forty days. Icancelled my programs! I took leave! Why are you breaking mysilence?!"
You assimilate that silence. And walking, talking,eating--and if I may tell you, if you are a householder and marriedperson, even while making love--your interior silence remains andmakes you more efficient in whatever you do. It makes you steadier inwhatever you do. It digs into subtleties of whatever you do. It helpsyou go into perfection of whatever you do. And the world's actions donot evoke a reaction from you. As the text says: "As all the riversflowing are absorbed into the ocean, so is the mind of a yogin, thatall the world may pour it's troubles into you, and the ocean remainsthe same." And you walk like that deep vast ocean, both of knowledge,and of love.
I want to see in my teachers that love pouring outof the voice when you teach meditation. If you teach only atechnique, it is no meditation. No, only if the grace flows throughyou then it is meditation. Otherwise what, somebody should write thebook on--you know there are all kind of how-to books? Somebody shouldwrite a book titled, "How to Smile". If you want to ensure that allthe smiles should vanish from the face of the earth, write a bookcalled How to Smile. And "How to Meditate". How! There is somethingthat natural in you: it's your own inner self. Just taking a dip inthere, remaining there. Even while you carry out your communicationseven more effectively, more lovingly. So, silence of meditation,silence of isolation, silence of the monastic cell, silence of theashram, that is one aspect, but silence maintained through daily,effect and loving communication that is your personal secret.
I take two kinds of sleep. In one sleep I'mcompletely unaware. [Yomitro?], my Japanese disciple who wastraveling with me. She was in Rishikesh and I have this thing Ialways need my foot massage every day. It's necessary for me. Sosomebody comes at eight o'clock in the morning. I'm sleeping and Iwake and I have my foot massage. And sometimes I'm so deeply asleepI'll wake up later on.
I say "How come you didn't do my foot massage?"
"I did it!"
I feel my foot after waking up sometimes, if thereis a trace of oil on it. I sleep that deeply. And one day she says,"Swamiji I couldn't because your ankle was crossed over like that,and I needed to lift our foot. And I couldn't lift your foot! It wasso heavy, that I couldn't lift your foot."
You know? Just so relaxed.
Then my other kind of sleep, is sleeping: thislevel of the mind is sleeping, this level of the mind is meditating.I never come out of sleep without going through that phase. Becauseit is such a busy life, fifty e-mails a day. And write articles, andtravel and think of my travel and financing the affairs of twoashrams, and communication and everything. I have time to meditatewhile I am sleeping. I've had to perfect that art; otherwise whatwould I teach you?
I've had to learn the art of mediating whiletalking to you. Do you not feel it? Because the lesser part, thesurface part of the mind, speaks and it depends entirely on whatdepth I want to speak.
[Swami's voice lowers and becomes moreresonant] And now, I go a little deeper and meditate with alittle deeper layer of the mind and I speak from there.
[Swami's voice rises] I come up a littlebit more, to a shallower surface, and I speak to you this way. Themind has depths, within depths, within depths. Till it reachesinfinity, and you have to learn to link with that infinity.
So silencing your senses, not just your mouth.Replacing your disturbances with that interior silence. Remainingattuned with that interior presence: while working in your office,while working on your computer. In old days, when there were nocomputers and I wanted test whether one of my disciples, students,was making spiritual progress or not, I'd ask them take me for adrive.
Just so, "Come on. I'll let you take me for adrive."
"Okay."
Then we would go drive. I would watch how personchanges gears. Then I would know whether you are making progress ornot, that you are making spiritual progress or not. You're grindingthe gears of life. And it shows. Now I put them on my computer, thiscarpal syndrome and god knows what and pains here and pains therebecause you have to work so much . . . .
It's because you people don't type with fingers,you type with shoulders. Why do you type with shoulders, like it's anineteenth century typewriter? It's not. Even the term in thelanguage, "Hit the key." Why hit the key? Just touch the key. Justtouch the key--it will work. You don't need to hit the key. Poor keywhat has it done to you, you have to hit it? And that's where I seewhether silence is working or not working. If you hit the key, firstyou cause pain to all your systems, and then a symptom, you hit otherpeople with your words. You don't communicate.
You hit other people with your words, with yourtones, with your sounds. You don't look, you throw/stare stones.Change all of that, then you have silence.
So learning to keep that silent stream flowingwhile operating in the world is the art of living skillfully. Andyou'll find that the world resists you the less. The world will notplace so many obstacles in your way. The life will become easyflowing. Whatever you would suggest, people will say yes. It wouldnot occur to them to say no to you.
"Sitting here, saying all these things, we have tooperate in the world out there." And, "It's such an aggressive world,and so on, and so on, we can't survive without this and that and allthe rest."
If something has been mismanaged by my bank, somecheck, something, this thing, that thing, I call the bank. I ask thereceptionist, [softly] "Can I speak to the manager please?"
"Can I help you?"
"No, I'd like to speak to the manager, it'ssomething important."
I don't say, [shouts] "Can I speak to themanager!"
You've already evoked a no response. You'vealready invoked a no response.
[Curtly,] "No, sorry, he's very busy! Whydon't you send him an e-mail?"
"Look, those people at the bank don't even want totalk to the customer. I think I'm going to change my account."
Because you didn't know how to evoke the yesresponse.
They pick up the phone, "May I help you?"
[Very low and softly,] "Sir, I'm callingin a very angry and loud voice to protest over something." I speaklike that ... and I get what I want.
And you don't get it because inside you, you haveresistance. Did not Jesus say, "Resist ye not evil."? And the fourBrahmaviharas, the four "frolics in God" in the Yoga Sutras, the lastone, Upeksha, indifference to evil. So don't come to silence just totake a holiday from the turmoils of the world, but to assimilate, goout and let it do your work for you. And your silence will do yourwork for you. I assure you of that. Not if it is merely a silence ofspeech and words. But if it shows in your person, in your voice, inyour presence, okay? Always be aware of that place within you. Walkfrom there. Talk from there.
I don't sing: "He walks with me. He talks with me.He tells me I am his very own."
I say: "He walks in me. He talks in me. And Hetells me I am your very own." Then the joys you share as you tarrythere, none other has ever known. It's available. It's not far.
So silence during speech. An interior silence inthe middle of a feast. So you don't get yourself sick or extra fatfrom that extra piece of the pie. Interior silence. A feeling offullness, mental, spiritual fullness will not make you to fill yourmental emptiness by filling a cavity in the body. If you have aninterior fullness, then you will not use exterior objects to feel asense of fullness by filling a cavity of your body with extra piecesof the pie. Otherwise you can take all kinds of operations, and youcan pop all kinds of pills, and you can go on all the different kindsof diets, and you can lose ten pounds a week. Six months later you'vegot twenty more, because the mental emptiness was not filled by anyof those diets. No? Very simple thing. You've heard it all before.And I repeat that. I remind you, that's all. The saints have said it.The sages have said it much better. The prophets have spoken of it,written of it, sung of it. A friend's duty is just to remind afriend. That's all. I keep reminding you.
We've talked of contemplative walking. I hopeyou've had a chance to read through the booklet. I recently walkedthe labyrinth in the Cathedral of Chartres in France. I was there inthe end of May. The labyrinth is drawn on the floor of the cathedralhall. I don't remember the exact dimensions. It is twenty meters atthe most, maybe less. And I saw people going in there walking aroundin five minutes, ten minutes. It took me one hour and forty minutes.And because of my certain physical condition I cannot do more. So Idid not walk back the same trace, otherwise it would be three and ahalf hours to complete that. That's why I am not agreeing to walkwith people and what you have planned, because we are havingsomething at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the courtesy ofAmy and John and other friends and they have a replica of theChartres labyrinth. I don't have the physical energy to take the fullthree and a half hours that it would take to walk the labyrinth myway.
What we have written in the booklet is for yourdaily walks and so on. The monastic, contemplative walk is not quitethat way. The monastic, contemplative walk has its own specialtechnique. First of all: interior silence. Interior silence. Alongwith that, naturally relaxed musculature. One reason you peoplesuffer so much is because part of your body, the part of your organs,limbs, your nervous system, your neuro-musculature, your sensory andmotor nerves, your left and the right hemisphere of the brain youtire it unnecessarily by using those parts which are not necessary touse for a given task. As I said, you type with your shoulders insteadof with your fingers. I don't type with my shoulders; I just typewith my fingertips. Just that, just touch, let your fingers do thetensing. So my shoulders are not tired. I sit on the computer allnight. Most days I lie down for a few hours of rest in the morning,8:00, 9:00, because so much work to do. As people know. So I have toconserve every ounce of my energy and not waste it, in tension. Whenyou people walk the forehead is walking, the shoulders are walking,the stomach is walking, the foot is going this way, the eyes aregoing that way. There is no coordination in your neuro-musculature,in your senses, in your experience of being. That's not walking, Idon't know what it is. It is some making erratic graphs with yourmind. What do the scriptures do?
"I have no peace of mind, Swami. Do something forme."
I have a magic wand? Nobody has a magic wand. No.
Some of these labyrinths, and so on, were made sothat the monks could take their walks in their monastic cells. In asmall space they could take, one, two, three miles walk. For acontemplative walk in a sacred sense, you can do circumambulation ofa church, sacred spot, temples in India. Nobody in India went into atemple without doing the [pricrama?] doing the holycircumambulation once, twice, three times. Some of those templecampuses, the walls are several miles, you know, and people do firstcircumambulation and then the second wall around and then the third.How many walls are there? Seven [pricramas?] And so on. Butif you are practicing silence in a monastary what do you do? We havea tradition along with silence, in our tradition, monastic tradition,we call it [stalsanyasa?]. Heard of [stalsanyasa?].[Stalsanyasa] is when you say to yourself, "Okay, I will notleave my ashram for three years."
Or, "I will not leave my monastic cell for threeyears."
The very first retreat in the Tibetan Buddhisttradition--you don't reach that state for quite a while, first youhave to prepare. When they first initiate you, in the old Tibetanmonasteries, you have to do 125,000 prostrations, with your mantra.(I've seen people do it in temples in Korea.The poor people, there is no one to guide them sothey are "hah-ah," huffing and puffing. I sometimes wish I could juststay there and tell them how to do it.) 125,000 prostrations to thedivinity, with the recitation, mental recitation, of the prayer.
Total purification after that. And after they havegone through that, they are given the first retreat. You're given abox, in which you cannot stretch out fully. You don't sleep for thesake of laziness. You sleep slightly curled. And for three years,three months, three days, three hours and perhaps, three something,the minute is not their count; you stay there, except for toiletry.Remain. The whole world is forgotten, and you are totallyinteriorized. When I go stay in places, like here and the lastretreat in Koinonia, you all will see, I am not in the position totake that type of [stalsanyasa?].
People sometimes ask me, "Swami, where do youlive?"
I say, "Look out from here, thirty-five thousandfeet straight up, there's a place called aeroplane. That's myashram!" [laughter]
So I cannot take that [stalsanyasa?] whichI would very much like to. But those who come to the ashram they knowI seldom, from my seat, ever walk down to the ashram gate, nodesire.
Whatever is to happen, happens by itself. If Ihave steadiness and balance everything around just goes on right,just happens. I don't ever run around the whole ground, no. I don't.And when I come to a hotel, or a retreat place, or somebody's houseyou know they spread a little two, three blankets on the floor, awooden board behind to support my back because my back is not in agood position, all my books are on the floor along side me. If Idon't have those low tables I am used to in my ashram, I pull out oneof the chest of drawers and turn it over. And I use it for mycomputer table and my dining table. And you will see me theretwenty-four hours.
I leave my seat just to come here. I eat on thatseat. I sleep there. I meditate there. I study there. I do mycomputer work there. I meet people there. I don't move. Noinclination. So I practice my [stalasinyasa?] in this way. Soexternal conditions are no excuse, if you have the inclination. It'sonly your restlessness, which makes you accuse the externalconditions and other people. I'm telling you, believe me: it's onlyyour restlessness. Your lack of inner calm, makes you restless, makesyour voice restless, makes your body restless. Practice of silencegives you an interior restfulness.
So the monastic walking technique is verydifferent. Okay? Remember your deity, your prayer, your mantra, yourguide. Your spine in the same position in which it is when you aremeditating. Stand with your spine in that position. Your shouldersrelaxed. Your facial muscles relaxed. You have no anxiety, no fear,no resistance.
Then your walk begins. Your hands can be in thisposition, the meditation position. They can be at your side. If youare really on a more difficult pilgrimage, you might want to keep itthat way. For a certain part of the walk you might want to do it thatway. But I find, personally, this position with relaxed shoulders,with right hand holding the left hand and the thumbs joined, relaxed,not tight. This time, for Guru Purnima, I send everybody a gift, justa picture of my hand. Everybody keeps asking for a picture of me, soI send them a picture of my hand. Hand in meditation. And make surethat you've relaxed all parts. Your feet are parallel only the partsof your mind, your motor nerves, your musculature, your skeleton,that are necessary for walking are to be used. Please remember thatformula, the rest should be in a state of interior stillness.
When you're assured that your breath is flowinggently slowly and smoothly,
Lift your heal of the right foot, your prayer isgoing on, and you place the toes right in front of the other foot,toes first,
Then put the heal down, kind of swivel from thewaist, you can see from the waist here and you lift the heal, andwhile doing so, remember your prayer and remember your breathing, andremember your mantra, your prayer word.
Again the toes down, your heals you balance onboth feet, kind of lift yourself from the waist up again this way.
Watch your mind, how it is walking.
Maintain your prayer.
At each step make sure that you have not picked uptension, that your mind has not wandered off.
Now your eye, there are two ways, actually, threeways:
A fixed gaze, on the horizon. If you're balanced,you will not slip and fall. Just there, your eyes fixed straight, andyou walk, and you keep your prayer.
The other way, you keep your eyes, let us say,about one yard from you on the ground, and you keep it there all theway through, so you are not being distracted. Your mind isconcentrated.
The other is keeping the eye on the hand. See?When you are very, very interiorized keep it that way, okay?
Each step is contemplative. It is awareness.Okay.
When I do the walk, I stop. I don't just put myfoot down and lift the other foot. I stop for a second. Relax,meditate, breath, just for a second, and so on. So it's not a walklike this. It's a walk like this, one foot in front of the other,spine straight. Decide whether your gaze is to be at the horizon orone yard from you on the ground, or on your hand. Okay? Your prayer,your mantra. Body relaxed, total awareness of being, breath flowingsmoothly, gently slowly. After awhile it will become enjoyable. Itwill not be a strain. It will not be an effort. It will be the mostrelaxing thing you do through the day. But at each step, stop for asecond to recoup, to relax, to remember. Each step, you've taken thisstep: always put the toes down, then put the heals, then lift theheal from the other foot, hold, relax, remember your prayer, slidethe foot, slide the foot forward, see? Slide the foot forward. Toesdown, balance, hold for a second, relax, meditate, watch your breathlift the heal, then lift the toe, then put the toe down, then theheal down, balance, hold.
Try it. Try it in your room, as though it wereyour monastic cell. And walk for fifteen minutes in your room. In thelimited spaces, where people live in very, very crowded conditions inAsia, all over India, we have flat roofs. There are no parks. Thereare no green spaces. What is the density in those places? How manythousand people per square mile? Hot. People go to the roof in theevening and they walk around, a whole family walks. Single file.Whole family walks single file, on the rooftop. That is the onlyresource they have for some fresh air.
So remember these steps, from now until the restof the retreat. Practice this contemplative walking, even when youwalk to the dining room. Try it, for a part of the way. For anevening walk, try it part of the way. Walk fifteen minutes in yourroom, to and fro. But follow the steps that I've given for each step:
Straight spine.
Relaxed shoulders, and body, and face.
Awareness of your prayer and mantra.
Fixing the gaze.
Lifting the heal of one foot, and putting the toeof that foot down.
Balancing on the two feet in that position.
And during that time remembering to relax,becoming aware of yourself again.
In one second, remembering your prayer.
Lifting the heal of your back foot.
Sliding the foot forward.
Placing the toes.
Then placing the heals.
There are twelve steps in each step. Keep a booktitled: "How to Do Contemplative Walking". Keep your notes. If youdon't want to do contemplative walking, read your notes on how to docontemplative walking. Share recipe.
All this how-to about mystical experiences, andhow to open your chakras. And how to go into silence. I don't knowwhy it has not occurred to anybody to do research on smile. How manycentimeters to the left and to the right; how many micro-inches open;how much of the tooth showing for what social effect, no? Whathappens when your smile is only one eighth of an inch wide; what kindof hormones are flowing; what level of endorphins are beingreleased.
You can have wonderful charts and several Ph.D.theses. You will be an expert on smile. Only you will have forgottenhow to smile. No? That is what we have nowadays on How to Be aMystic. Okay? I don't know which school the infant, the baby, thefetus went to learn: How to Smile Effectively at Your Mother. Okay.Enough.
When you go home. . . . Okay, let me put it thisway: I've observed this with very keen perception. Everybody has akind of a ground-level, baseline emotion. I've been saying it for along time, now it's been proved, by measuring the activity ofdifferent parts of the cortex and so on. And wherever people are,they use that as a baseline to see whether there is a change in theiremotional make-up through the practice of meditation, or breathing,or relaxation, or what have you. There are a lot of studies. I have alist, a bibliography, of about 2500 articles in medical andscientific journals on meditation. If I had some kind of a researchgrant, I could sift them and really summarize them in some sequence.
So everybody carries some kind of baseline emotionthrough life. It changes. It may change from year to year, but itbecomes your baseline emotion, a kind of baseline in which youremain, constantly. You're not aware of it, the level of your anger,or the level of your assimilated sadness. The level of your interiorjoy, a mixture of all of these--without showing it in a graph--isthere, as a baseline. You may call that the zero point. And then, thegraph rises or falls. Now anger, now joy, now happiness, nowunhappiness, now sadness, now depression, now insecurity, now fear.It all arises from that baseline. And what you have to learn to do ischange that baseline. So that your basic, mental frame changes.
And when your interior silence becomes yourbaseline, you speak from there--you'll come back to that. You'll playfrom there--you'll come back to that. You'll smile from there--you'llcome back to that. You may guffaw from there--come back to that.You'll walk from there--you'll came back to that. See. It's a sort ofmonitor, your over-eating, your over-reacting, and what have you.Next thing that will come to you is that you will become a perceptiveobserver.
You know I have never red a book on psychology inmy life, and I see psychological problems and I diagnose them and apsychologist said, "How do you know that? This is how we do itactually in the clinical set-ups."
I am a keen observer of mind, first my own mind.That's the book you need to read. You want to study psychology? Readthe book titled, Your Mind. Everyone wants to be a mind reader butthey can't read their own minds.
My favorite joke is that I knew one expert ongastric diseases. Knew everything about stomach and digestion andcolon and food and all the digestive juices, you know, world famousexpert.
He had a belly about this large. For all hisexpertise, he never knew, in his own mind, when his stomach was full.He hadn't read his own stomach. He read all the books. So be a mindreader. Read your own mind. Watch its vagaries, its movements, how itshifts ground, what it does, what effects it brings, first in yourbody, then in your surroundings, then in the persons you arecommunication with.
What I do when I am sitting and talking withsomeone:
First of all when someone walks in I say, "Hum,you're very upset, angry, frustrated, troubled, all right."
I make sure to calm him. My professionalinstrument is something always by my side and that is a box oftissues. People have no one to cry to, so I make sure within fiveminutes of coming, sitting with me, they cry. Because they feel thelove, they feel the compassion they've never had before, they startcrying. So there is my box of tissues. Here . . . I wipe their tearswith my own hand, somewhere in my course on Counselor and TherapistTraining Program I said, "Counselor, do not counsel; console."
So then I see, talking to someone, sometimes thisshadow passes over people's faces, as they are communicating. I'vebecome a very keen observer of those shadows that pass over people'sfaces. If you're dwelling in your interior silence, your mind doesnot create the noise that befogs your vision. If you're in interiorsilence, your mind does not create the noises that befog yourperceptive vision. Most married people have never looked at theirwives and their husbands, I'm telling you. Thirty-five years married,forty years married!
"Swami, we are having a Fiftieth Anniversary ofour wedding!"
How very nice. But they have never learned to lookat each other's face and that is where all the friction comes from.That's where all the friction comes from.
A person comes, I watch the shadow passing overthe face, and I normally always have a yes response to whatever I'msaying. When I see a shadow, and I see the person is, in the mind,resisting a bit, you want to say no. What do I do? I check. I scan mylast sentence. Where did I fail? What was my tone? What was theemotional feeling in my mind, at that time? And I change it. Then thenegative shadow disappears. The person goes away happy. You can dothat with your boss. You can do that with your employee. You can dothat with your manager.
You can do that with everywhere. Be a person whohas learned to call evoke a "yes" response.
You know, in the lectures of mine, I keep sayingthe same thing, because people don't learn. They hear.
"Yeah, what a nice lecture."
What good is a nice lecture? If it didn't helpyou, if you didn't help yourself to it, it was of no use.
Copyright 2003 West-Art, Prometheus90/2003