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]]>Relationships as the Ultimate Teacher
Namaste and welcome back. It’s Wednesday again, so we’re back in our sacred space with all the family members.
When we are walking the spiritual path, we look for a lot of teachers. We look for gurus, teachers, and mentors, but we don’t realize one of the finest and toughest teachers is available to us all the time, free of cost. That teacher is relationships.
Today I will not rehash the things that you have already heard a thousand times, except “be a witness,” etcetera, etcetera. I want to go a bit deeper and talk about opening up a different perspective on relationships. I want this talk to help you contemplate, help you see your blind spots, and also give you a holistic understanding of the path because I feel the sum total of teachings has swung too much to one side. I’ll explain this as we move forward with the talk.
The Mirror vs. The Cage
Most spiritual paths don’t talk much about relationships. The focus is almost always centered on transcendent witnessing, awareness, and consciousness. That’s fine; that’s part of it. But what about your daily life and relationships? They are just left out in the parking lot.
Even when relationships are discussed in spiritual circles and by teachers, most of the time it’s “accept what arises,” “witness it,” or “see if it is your ego demanding something from your partner,” etcetera. They are using the relationship as a mirror—reflecting your blind spots and showing you what you cannot see.
That is absolutely correct, but there is another side to relationships which I call the cage. Relationships can be mirrors, and relationships can be cages. They can imprison you as well. A mirror shows you where you are stuck, but a cage keeps you stuck. There is a distinct difference between the two, and you have to deal with both of these situations differently.
When a relationship becomes abusive, manipulative, controlling, or stops you from evolving, it becomes a cage—it is no longer a mirror. Sometimes, applying the principles of surrender and acceptance while in a cage leads to more suffering. It’s like mistaking a burning house for a classroom. When a house is burning, you don’t sit there and say, “I have to accept this. Let me see how strong I am at not being moved by the burning house.” You run away from the house! You don’t confuse a burning house for a classroom. Some relationships are like that, while others are like mirrors.
The Need for Clarity and Action
What I want to talk about today is clarity. I’m not talking about witnessing or seeing through things. By clarity, I mean being aware enough to watch a particular relationship—whether with a partner, parent, or boss—and see with clear vision what needs to be done so you can take the right action. If it is serving as a mirror, you can take the lesson; if it is serving as a cage, you can try to break the cage.
Testing Stillness in the Real Game
Why are relationships the greatest teacher? When we meditate day-to-day or go to an ashram retreat, the conditions are controlled. It’s like rehearsing for a game. If you’re practicing basketball all alone on the court shooting balls, there is no pressure—no defenders, no crowd, just you and the net. But the real game happens when the opposing team is playing against you, guarding you closely, the clock is running down, everything is on the line, your heart is pounding, and you still have to make the shot.
Relationships are those live-action games. Rehearsal is meditating quietly in your room where everything is serene and beautiful. Then you step out and someone in the house makes a comment, asking why you’re late or what you’ve been doing, and it triggers you. The peace evaporates into anger or irritation.
Where did that stillness go? The uncomfortable answer is that the stillness was untested. It was like practicing alone on an empty court where you easily net the ball. When ten players are scrambling and screaming, your accuracy drops. Some presence can only survive controlled conditions like an ashram or a retreat, but eventually, it must be tested. The biggest test of how much you’ve grown and evolved is your daily relationships and how you walk through the chaos, hurt, and pain. When you are in the middle of a quarrel or wound, what you do next is what the rehearsal was for.
Beyond Mere Acceptance
So, what do you do in those situations? How do you use chaotic situations as a doorway for growth?
The doorway isn’t only acceptance; the doorway can be walking away, or it can be setting firm boundaries. When we enter relationships—especially marriage and romance—we enter with conditioning, fears, and insecurities, expecting the other person to fulfill those desires. It’s an unspoken, implicit contract: “You make me feel good about myself while fulfilling my desires,” while the other person expects the exact same thing.
This creates a contradiction because each person views the other through the lens of their own wants, conditioning, and expectations. Most relationships suffocate because both people are trying to mold the other into the shape of their own ego and needs. We try to sculpt the other person into a representation of what we want them to be, rather than what they are, and they do the same to us. Relationships are often two bundles of expectations, sculptings, and desires interacting.
As you become aware, you begin to see these patterns in yourself and others. That is clarity. Once you see those patterns, there is a chance to break through them.
Responding vs. Reacting
Imagine a mother watching her child throw food on the floor. If she reacts out of frustration and raises her voice, the child cries, messing up the whole morning. But if she responds from awareness, seeing that the child is testing boundaries, she sets those boundaries calmly. The child learns a lesson, and the morning continues smoothly. The parent doesn’t have the luxury of not setting boundaries; they have to.
When you are in the middle of relationship chaos, the toughest but best thing you can do is observe the stories your mind creates to defend itself or attack. Reacting from anger or rage is like fire or lightning—it strikes quickly and leaves devastation, causing you to say things you don’t mean.
If you respond from awareness and clarity, you address the actual issue precisely. That action might mean comforting the other person, drawing a boundary, or firmly saying, “No, that’s it. This relationship is ending, and I am walking out.” The action depends entirely on the situation. The correct action is not always acceptance or kindness. Acceptance should never mean enduring abuse under the guise of “learning a lesson.” Endurance is not enlightenment.
Discerning Lessons from Cages
You must learn to distinguish: “Am I learning a lesson here that leads to evolution for both of us, or am I merely enduring a cage?” Only you can answer that for yourself.
The gift of a real relationship is that it shows you everything—the beautiful and the ugly, the generous and the petty. When a trigger or old wound comes up, if you can pause instead of attacking or defending, and see with clarity what needs to be done to restore harmony, that single moment of awareness can break patterns that have run for years.
Relationships as Spiritual Ground
Relationships are not a distraction. Parts of spiritual tradition have treated relationships as something to avoid—advising people not to marry or to renounce their family. While family often causes the most grief, relationships are the very ground of your spiritual life. Withdrawing to a hut in the Himalayas is a controlled space; daily relationships are the open ground where your stillness is actually tested.
To determine if a situation is a cage or a mirror, look at the ongoing patterns. If a relationship has continual patterns of broken promises, control, manipulation, and abuse, it is a cage. But if you argue occasionally, get ruffled, but both partners come back with a desire to grow, apologize, and evolve together, it is a mirror. Even if the other person doesn’t evolve, if it helps you see things you missed about yourself and tests what you practiced on the meditation cushion, it functions as a mirror.
I was not taught this distinction in books. Books focused primarily on transcendence, which is valid, but it needs to be balanced. I have stayed in relationships I should have left because I thought, “I must witness this, accept this, and endure this suffering to learn,” not realizing it was a cage, not a mirror.
The Middle Path
The core of relationships isn’t about avoiding conflict, because living involves conflict. The real question is: can you stay awake, aware, and clear inside a conflict?
This ties directly to transcendent truth. Transcendent truth teaches that you are not the body, mind, or content—you are consciousness. When you navigate conflict with awareness, you make better decisions. Making better decisions creates less friction to pull you off balance, allowing you to go deeper into presence and beingness.
There are two primary viewpoints in spirituality: one claims the external world doesn’t matter and should be ignored, while mine is the middle path. The external world does affect us—no matter how many books you read or hours you meditate. The middle path acknowledges that the external affects our internal state and practice, which is precisely why we must learn to be aware, awake, and clear amidst the chaos of relationships.
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]]>The Ideal of the Peaceful Seeker
When you are walking the path, you have an affinity to peace. Most spiritual seekers, as well as people who are not walking the path but have a good heart, love peace and avoid confrontation. They will also avoid conflict. Even I did that when I was walking the path—I was always shying away from any kind of verbal conflict, fights, or standing my ground.
Because I think somewhere down the line, when you’re walking the path, you build up an image of an ideal seeker or an ideal spiritual person. That ideal image will not raise their voice and will try to solve everything through love and compassion. Of course, there is no question of getting into physical fights, and no question of killing someone. Interestingly, the Bhagavad Gita destroys this idea in the first few minutes, in the first few chapters.
The Setting of the Bhagavad Gita
I think most of you would have read the Gita a couple of times. But for those who are not very familiar, I’ll just set the stage of what the Gita is and what the philosophy is trying to convey. It has got a lot of chapters and a lot of non-dual philosophy in it, very similar to the Upanishads.
It starts when two sides are going into a war, into battle. You have to remember this is thousands of years ago when fights were pretty physical. It was not like you have a drone which drops a bomb and people die. You fight till death; you face the enemy in the eye and you fight them.
Arjuna is the warrior, and his teacher is Krishna. Before the war begins, Arjuna is pretty despondent. He says, “I cannot fight this battle because the other side whom Arjuna was fighting were all his relatives, his friends—even his teacher, his guru, was on the opposing side.” His grandfather and great-great-grandfather were on the opposing side.
Seeing all those loved ones, Arjuna says, “What’s the benefit of killing all of them? Even after killing them, if I get heaven and the kingdom of the world, what’s the point? I am not going to fight.” That moment is very human. There is this person who is staring at the cost of standing his ground and deciding that the cost is too high.
Krishna’s Unsettling Advice
Krishna, who is an enlightened being as well as his friend and teacher, actually does not comfort him. He does not hug him and say, “Everything’s going to be all right, everything is peaceful and happy, let it go.” If he had said that, the Gita would have ended in ten minutes. He didn’t do any of that.
You know what he did? He called Arjuna a coward. He says, “You are a coward for not fighting.” When I first read the Gita years back, I could not reconcile this teaching with the other parts. There are paths which are predominantly based on compassion and love and laying down your life, even if someone is trampling on you and killing you.
I had those kinds of ideals in my head from reading all the stories of so many sages and saints across the centuries. Here was Krishna saying you need to fight a war, you need to kill people. See how diametrically opposite the advice is?
What I found fascinating in the Gita is that the middle part is, of course, very similar to the Upanishads; if you read the Upanishads, it is a similar philosophy of non-duality. So that was fine; I had read that. But if you read the first part, the beginning of it, it’s a stark, unsettling philosophical conversation. I was left wondering, why fight? For a very long time, I could not reconcile these two different philosophies: one of love, kindness, and compassion, and the other of fighting, killing, and battle.
The Paradoxical Setting of Wisdom
The rest of the Gita is where Krishna gives the very famous discourse on non-duality. In different ways, he tries to show Arjuna the truth, saying, “You will never die; you are not just the body, you are the soul. These people are not just the body, they will never die.” In various ways, he tries to bring him around to fighting the war.
The amazing part is that the entire discourse is not given in an ashram or a retreat where there is soft music, lovely incense sticks, lovely smells, and classical sounds of a flute. No, this was given in the middle of a life-and-death situation where Arjuna could lose. He could lose and his entire family could be wiped out, or he could fight and kill others—and then again, a part of his family is gone. So the stakes were unbearably high.
I doubt there is any other spiritual text I have read that has such a stark, paradoxical setting in which the highest wisdom is imparted on a battlefield. Of course, at the end of the discourse, Arjuna is ready to fight.
Most spiritual belief systems, even the belief system of simply being a good person, somewhere have this ideal that you shy away from standing up for yourself, standing up for others, or getting into conflicts because our peace is very important for us. We don’t want to disturb it. Fighting means there is a cost. Standing your ground means there is a cost. Krishna looks at that entire framework and rejects it. He says refusing to fight isn’t a virtue; it’s fear.
The Two Faces of Compassion
After going through a lot of suffering, I suffered a lot because initially I had that first mindset. I thought compassion had only one face. When we think about compassion, we think about someone wiping tears from the face of a child. It’s a very compassionate act, right?
But there is another face to compassion. That face is: say someone comes to abuse the child; then you stand up aggressively to protect that child. That is another face of compassion. Compassion can have many faces, but we kind of associate compassion only with that serene Buddha face—all-forgiving, not standing up, not being firm.
Later on in my journey, I saw these two different faces of compassion. Spiritual seekers—and even I—spent years practicing the first face of compassion. Krishna asks you in the Gita to wear the second face of compassion. What does it all mean?
The Monk with the Sword
I published a book called The Monk in the Mansion. Before I published that book, I wrote a couple of pages, and the tentative title was The Monk with the Sword—a monk carrying a sword. Of course, it’s a very confronting image because monks are supposed to be meditative. But this monk carries a sword.
What I wanted to convey through that book is that sometimes in life you will have to pick up the sword. But the blade of that sword is made of wisdom, and the handle—the hilt—is made of compassion. It’s not an arbitrary sword. What Krishna did on the battlefield was not arbitrary.
If you read the entire story, he had to stop the injustice. The other side was narcissistic and aggressive, and they created suffering for a lot of people, including Arjuna and his family. That injustice had to be fought somewhere. That’s what Krishna told Arjuna: “It is your duty to stand up to this darkness. You’re not fighting for yourself. I know the cost is high, but you have to fight for the benefit of all beings.” That’s what Arjuna did in the end.
Weapons as Symbols of Protection
If you look at Indian mythology, there are a lot of gods, and most of the gods carry a weapon. Earlier, I found it so paradoxical. You have all these gods who are enlightened beings, and most of them carry a deadly weapon. Why?
Later, I started understanding that the weapon represented protection—helping those who can’t help themselves. So the sword I talk about has a blade of wisdom. You only use it when required. You only use it very wisely. You only use it as a last option.
Even before the war happened in the Gita, Krishna and others went through a lot of peace offerings to de-escalate, because they didn’t want this huge battle. Similarly, the sword is made of wisdom and the handle is made of compassion so that the wisdom does not become cold-hearted. Even if you use it, you use it with compassion to bring about order and justice.
The Zen Master and Collective Suffering
There’s a very beautiful Zen story. A student asks a Zen master, “We saw someone steal some shoes from the temple. If I see someone doing that, what should I do?” The Zen master says, “Very compassionately whack that person on his head with your stick.”
I found this story very funny, and I could not understand why a Zen master would ask someone to hit another person, because in my understanding, hitting someone was completely unspiritual. So I filed this story away as one of those paradoxical tales and never paid much attention to it.
Of course, when I understood the two faces of compassion, I understood what the Zen master was trying to achieve. I’ll introduce a concept I have referred to quite a few times in my talks: I call it the total collective suffering.
What is total collective suffering? It’s the sum total of suffering that we are all going through at this moment. If a person keeps stealing from someone else and no one stands up to it, he is increasing the total collective suffering. Similarly, if a person exploits others and no one checks or stops them, it increases the total collective suffering of the planet or humanity as a whole. If someone stops them, then that person cannot exploit others or bring suffering onto them. That would help reduce our total collective suffering. It’s a very logical thing to see. This is what Krishna was trying to do, and this is what the Zen master was pointing at.
Interconnectedness and the Duty to Act
Sometimes actions are needed not only for yourself, but for others. I’ve talked about this so many times. This journey, this evolution, is not individualistic or solitary; you are embedded within humanity. You can’t live a day without this connection.
The light in your room right now is the sum total of thousands of people working in power plants who have laid the power lines, and electricians who completed your connection. Even going back in time, it includes the people who discovered electricity and harnessed it over the years. So even the small act of switching on a light connects you to this entire human web. You are not isolated.
When you look at it from that collective view, you can see from a high level that it’s okay to take certain actions to reduce total collective suffering.
Setting Boundaries and Overcoming Spiritual “Doormat” Syndrome
I’ll come to something even more personal than the collective. Most of the time, I’ve seen spiritual people hesitate to protect themselves. One of the reasons I faced was thinking it was very egotistical to protect myself—that it was just the ego trying to protect the body and the mind, and that it’s not good to think about myself.
That’s the reason I think most good and spiritual people make excellent doormats. I was a doormat for a long time.
But you see, you lock your door every night to protect yourself. Would you sleep without locking your door, or leave your car unlocked? No, that would be stupid. Yet at other times, we get caught up in calculations: “Is it the ego? Should I do this? Is it conflicting with my spirituality?” There is another stream of thought that says, “If you have 100% faith in the universe, why do you lock your room or your car?” Thoughts can go completely in the opposite direction.
Yet when you want to draw a boundary, stand up for yourself, or stand up against exploitation—whether in relationships, with a boss, or with a client who is stepping over your boundaries—that image generally comes in: “I should not conflict. I should not stand my ground. Is it spiritual? Is it ego-driven?” All those concepts arise.
Let’s take this individual suffering and connect it with total collective suffering. Say you are getting exploited by someone and you don’t stop them. You are, in a way, adding to total collective suffering because that person learns that exploitation is fine and no one will stop them. But if you stand up, take the sword, and take a stand like Krishna said, you fight back.
It’s okay to fight back. I know this might sound a bit unspiritual, but that was the entire message of the Gita. When you fight back or stand up, that person learns that they cannot exploit everyone. They learn the consequences, and they will not exploit someone else. Hence, you are not only helping yourself; you are helping humanity.
I couldn’t initially see that larger picture—the interconnectedness of my actions, Krishna’s actions, or anyone else’s actions. J. Krishnamurti talked about this endlessly in so many ways. He was so passionate about the collective unconsciousness, society, and how society can move from violence, bitterness, and dysfunction to a better place. Of all the teachers I know of, JK was the one who spoke very openly about these conflicts in his talks again and again. Maybe that’s the reason I was drawn to him so much: it was very practical and made sense to me.
Key Takeaways and Practical Application
To recap this entire talk into a few points:
First, standing up for yourself is not unspiritual, nor is it driven by ego. Once you do that, you help humanity. Of course, remember the sword: a sword has wisdom and compassion. When you use it, keep these two things in mind. You can’t just unsheathe your sword anytime; it is only used when absolutely necessary. Before that, love, compassion, kindness, and de-escalation are the way to go.
Second, compassion can have many faces. We tend to idealize one face and reject the other, but both forms of compassion exist to protect, help, and reduce suffering for everyone.
Lastly, even after disconnecting from the Satsang today, you’ll go back to your everyday life, which will be full of challenges. The moment you disconnect, there will be hundreds of things waiting for your attention—problems to solve, challenges to meet, and battles to fight.
That’s what life is, and I think that’s what the Gita portrayed so beautifully through the setting of a battlefield. Even in the midst of the battlefield, Arjuna was able to embody wisdom and compassion in action.
Arjuna wanted to run away. Given a chance, he would have just escaped from that place. In my head, I imagine if he had a chance and Krishna wasn’t there to guide him, he would have packed his shoes and run off. We all feel that. Even when I was fighting my battles, I never wanted to fight them. The cost to my peace was too high, and on some level, I thought peace was the only thing: “Why am I bothered about any kind of confrontation?”
Krishna says no, you can’t opt out. Wherever you are placed in life, in whatever situation, you have certain duties, and certain actions are necessary. You do those actions keeping in mind the highest non-dual truth: that you are this consciousness.
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]]>Facing Deep Doubts on the Path
Tonight we’ll be talking about doubts on the path. We’re not talking about superficial doubts; we’re talking about doubts which make you question everything you have built your life around, your identity around.
And I’m very familiar and intimate with all of these doubts. Whatever I talk about today and whatever you all have described, I have seen them or experienced them at different parts and phases of my journey.
There were periods in my search where I could not sleep. At night, I would lie awake in the dark. And one of the doubts which really bothered me was: “Am I even making progress? Maybe I’m just going backwards instead of forwards.”
I had been practicing meditation for years—retreats, hours of self-inquiry. I had given up things most people would consider non-negotiable in life. Of course, my relationships had changed, career ambitions had been set aside. And after all this, the reward was a doubt that I was further from the truth than when I started.
Doubt 1: “Have I Wasted My Life?”
And so the first doubt that I will go through today is: “Have I wasted my life? I seem worse off than before.” This is the same as thinking maybe I’m going backwards in life, that I have not progressed.
This one doubt broke my heart because it created a cascade of emotions. It made me sad, angry, and sometimes disillusioned.
I’ve heard this—and you all have talked about this—and I’ve heard this so many times on the path. There was a man who came to me long back and he said, “I’ve been 15 years on the path. Before I started seeking, I was fine. I had a career and hobbies. Now I’m uncertain. Sometimes I feel maybe all these years I’ve not practiced at all.”
What I realized in myself, and what you will realize, is that when you start becoming conscious—first of all, the spiritual journey is not linear, it’s non-linear. When you start becoming conscious and start waking up, you’re waking up from a long sedation. Before the path, we are sedated, we are numb, we have repressed. We had a hundred distractions to keep the pain away: there was work, there was entertainment, the next big thing.
Then you start becoming conscious, you start waking up, and that sedation is no longer available. Everything that you buried or didn’t want to look at comes up into the light. Of course, it feels like going backward. Later on, I understood this is more like a detox.
The Analogy of the Cocoon
I’ll give you a simple example. Say you want to clean your room, right? What do you do? You open your cupboards, you put everything out in the open, and things are just all over the place. If a visitor comes in, they might say, “Oh, look at the mess! It’s so messy; it’s even messier than before.” But you know that this mess is part of cleaning up. There’s a process to it, and once it gets cleaned up, the mess will be put in the proper place.
This is what I have realized on the journey: the times you feel you’re going backwards, or the times when you think there’s no progress and that you have wasted time, are the times when a lot of things have come up. You’re going through a transitional period where the old sedation—the old habits which kept you numb—have died down, but the pain and the subsequent emotions have not transformed yet.
It’s like the caterpillar. When the caterpillar dissolves in a cocoon, it becomes liquid. If you open the cocoon at that time, you’ll say, “This caterpillar is worse off than it was before because earlier it had a form, but now it’s just liquid goo; there’s nothing in it.” But of course, that’s mid-transformation. Once the transformation happens… and transformations are never easy. They are glamorized and romanticized in spiritual books, but the real work is hard, and there’s a lot of heartache involved in it, like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
So what I would say for this doubt is: don’t judge the cocoon by the standards of the caterpillar. You don’t know yet what the butterfly is.
Doubt 2: Are Spiritual Experiences Real or Created by the Mind?
I’ll come to the next doubt, which is one of my favorite doubts and one that you all will also resonate with pretty strongly: “Are my spiritual experiences real or created by the mind?”
Again, this doubt is tied to people who are very rational, logical, and intellectual. People who are more emotional just take in the experience and are happy with it. But rational people like to dissect everything, and I did that too.
I’ll share a small experience which I went through years back. I was staying with my parents at that time, sitting—I remember very clearly—on the bed in my mom’s room. I had just read the Gita; I was reading the Gita at that time, sitting and contemplating. Suddenly, out of the blue, there was this experience where I knew I was birthless, that there was no question I was born and no question I will ever die. It took me by surprise because I was not in any way seeking or wanting that experience. It just came, and it was so clear and amazing.
I got up after the experience and was like, “Wow, I was never born! How could I ever think I was born?” Of course, I’m not talking about the body, but the consciousness within.
After a few days, of course, like all experiences, this experience faded. The intensity fades. Then I started questioning myself: “Was that even real? Did I make it up because I was reading the Gita?” In the Gita, Lord Krishna says again and again, “You are birthless, you are deathless, you are beyond life and death.” So did I just manufacture it?
This is what the mind does: it takes the experience and begins evaluating it. “Was it real? Was it deep? How does it compare to what Nisargadatta said? How does it compare to what that master said?” The mind turns the experience into evidence and then puts that evidence on trial in a court, asking, “What does this experience mean?”
This is the mind’s nature. It is a machine that makes measurements and comes to conclusions, and it will measure everything. But what is the benchmark for the reality of an experience?
I’ll give you an example. We fall in love. All of you would have fallen in love at some point, loving that person like crazy. And after three years—or maybe even after three months—you say, “I can’t even stand that person.” But you see, when you had that love at that moment, that was real. It was as real as it could be. With the passage of time, things change, and this is what happens with all experiences.
You also have to understand that the mind is conditioned. The mind has its own parameters, its own perceptions of what’s real and what’s made-up, and it will apply that benchmark to all your experiences. This doubt also points to something very fundamental on the path: all experiences, however profound, will fade away. They will come and go; they are like visitors. You are not a visitor—you are the house. You are the awareness on which all these experiences arise. So again, this is one of the doubts you will encounter: “Is this real? Is this not real? Is it made up by my mind?”
Doubt 3: What If There Is No Meaning or Purpose?
Now I’ll come to another doubt, which is a pretty deep and unsettling one: “What if there is no meaning, no purpose, no divine plan? What if I’m walking the spiritual path and it means nothing?”
This doubt is not only about the path; it is about our existence itself—the meaning of what it means to be here on earth for a limited period of time and then die. We are seeking, but what does it even mean? What am I seeking?
What I have seen with people who follow non-duality deeply is that slowly, because on some level meaning is stripped out of you—meaning about existence, about emotions, about most concepts is stripped out by non-duality—it’s probable that the mind will move towards nihilistic viewpoints. And it happened with me.
I have been through a period of atheism—I’ve talked about it—where I got disillusioned with everything. That’s when this doubt of, “What is the meaning of everything? What is my purpose? If there’s no divine plan and no enlightenment, what am I even doing?” caused me a huge amount of distress.
The issue, or the thing that struck me years later when I investigated it, is: what is meaning? Meaning is just created by my mind; it is just a concept. Life is neither meaningless nor meaningful—it just is at this moment.
Even right now, if we drop the path—if you mentally drop spirituality, drop enlightenment, drop moving forward—even after dropping all those stories, there is something here right now which requires no divinity, no validation, or spiritual path. It is just there. We cannot deny that fact. It is here, and that is life; that is beingness; that is this consciousness in all its glory without a filter. You don’t need a story or a meaning to be in contact with it.
Doubt 4: Financial Comparison and Social Conditioning
After this, there is a very interesting doubt which I encountered again and again: “I should have earned more by now. Everyone is financially better off than me. I’m behind others now. I should have maybe earned more rather than meditating more.”
Sometimes you’ll open your social media or LinkedIn, and you’ll see your old classmate or someone junior to you at work promoted to a big position. Sometimes envy—that uncomfortable feeling—rises up, and you think, “I could have been them.” With that comes shame, because you’re spiritual, so you’re not supposed to feel all those stupid thoughts and feelings. So you try to say, “No, I should be happy for him.” Then there’ll be fear: “What if I’ve fallen behind? Can I ever catch up?” And then grief: “Oh, maybe I wasted all this time.”
So there is a cascade of emotions that comes with this particular doubt. It can happen when you see someone materially progressing a lot, or it can come up uninvited at night when you’re going off to sleep and the thought arises: “Ah, I’m not financially that secure,” or “I could have earned so much,” or “I could have been at this position in such a company.”
This is one of the doubts that is purely a conditioning that society has created in us. For society, a life well lived produces results that are measurable. Money is measurable; security can be seen and measured; status can be seen—you can relatively see who has more status and fame than others.
But the spiritual path does not produce all these measurable things. I have met billionaires who still feel poor. And one of my friends took the other path: he was spiritual initially, but then he went into material life, paying attention to his career and money. When I met him years later, you know what he said? He said, “Raji, what if I had chosen the spiritual path? Maybe I wasted my life running after money.” So there are people on the other side of the fence who have earned a lot and think, “Oh, did I waste my life doing all that?”
In this situation, I believe the middle path is the best path. I’m not saying don’t go after a career; I’ve never said that. I’ve always encouraged everyone because money is a tool and you need it to survive, so there’s nothing wrong with it. If you earn your livelihood cleanly and don’t use money to measure your self-worth, then it’s fine. It’s okay to think about career progression or to earn money; there’s nothing wrong with it. But be on the middle path, where you’re not measuring your worth with all these material aspects, but you’re also not completely ignoring it. You know the value of these things as tools you use in society to live your life.
Doubt 5: “Why Do I Still Feel Like This?”
And there is one last doubt that I have to talk about: “Why do I still feel like this?” You can change “feel like this” to “Why do I still feel anxious?”, “Why do I still feel sad?”, or “Why do I still feel angry?”—different emotions, different feelings.
Many seekers have come up to me and said, “I’ve been meditating for 10 years. Why do I still feel this anxiety? Why do I still feel this way? What is wrong with me?”
The question “Why do I feel this?” is not a question—it is a rejection. Why I say it’s a rejection is because what it means is: “This feeling should not be here.” Whatever I’m feeling after 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years of meditation, “Why do I still feel this?” begs the question: what is wrong with the feeling?
Again, with this doubt comes shame, guilt, and other associated emotions: “I should not be feeling this.” Then comes a doubt of, “Maybe I have not followed the path properly.” Then it will cascade into another emotion: “Maybe all of this is nonsense. Maybe there’s nothing called enlightenment.” So one doubt will cascade into multiple doubts.
For example, say you’re stuck in traffic and you’re irritated. Immediately you say, “I’m a spiritual person; I should not be irritated.” Now you have two problems: irritation and the conflict with irritation, because you, being a spiritual person, should not be like this, or having meditated for 10 years, should not feel irritated now.
All these emotions and feelings are like weather—they’re like clouds in the sky. You are the sky. If you do not understand that basic premise, then of course feelings will take over the mind. Even if they take over the mind, even if a certain feeling is there, it’s okay. It is part of the waters that arise and go; it comes and moves on.
So the antidote to this doubt is developing the capacity to accept the waters, because not only feelings, but life will throw situations at you which will not be to your liking, and that is life. We as human beings are a very small speck on earth in society. As a person, as an identified self, I’m a very small speck, and most things around me are not in my control. They will never be in my control.
The ego wants things to be in a particular way: emotions to be in a particular way, situations to be in a particular way, people to be in a particular way, finances to be in a particular way. But they will not be in a particular way because the universe will not wait for you or wait for your validation or permission to do what it does. So if you do not have the capacity to accept whatever arises, then of course it will be a challenge when the universe decides to do things which are not in line with your limited egotistical demands.
Clearing the Ground for Transformation
So these are the five unsettling doubts which most of you will encounter. Of course, there is a host of other doubts on the path. Since I had limited time, I just spoke about the most pressing ones.
The doubts are endless, especially on the path of inquiry, contemplation, non-duality—whatever you call it. It’s a very deep, abstract path. It’s not for everyone. If you have entered the path, that means a lot of evolution and groundwork has been done.
As you walk, a lot of things will get dismantled: your beliefs, your identity. You might feel less equipped to deal with external situations because maybe earlier you could be angry, or manipulate, or do things that were a bit more self-centered. But now that you’re not that self-centered, situations will not turn out the way they used to.
So parts of your identity will crumble, will be dismantled, and it’s a ruthless process. It’s like the caterpillar turning into a butterfly—all the stories and narratives will slowly dissolve. That is a ground being cleared. The new cannot come in until the old is removed. If you want to create a field full of flowers, you have to first clear the weeds, right? You have to clean the ground, remove all the weeds, and then sow the seeds for the flowers so they can come up.
So the clearing is important. This is the ground being cleared, and once the ground is cleared, there is a chance for something vast, something immense, something new to appear, rather than the old conditionings and old identities running in the same patterns again and again for lifetimes.
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]]>First Encounters in Rishikesh
Today I’ll talk about the time I spent obsessing about Nisargadatta, and many of you in the group have read him pretty intensely. There are others who have read some of his works, and some of them have been introduced to his works by coming to these talks and Satsangs.
My introduction to Nisargadatta was when I was in Rishikesh. I was going through a bookstore where I saw his book I Am That, and I read a few snippets and found it very fascinating. I bought the book, and I remember I started reading it. I went to the banks of the Ganga and started reading it. I remember I was so engrossed and intrigued by his words that I kept reading, and slowly it became evening and I was still reading. I left the banks of the Ganga only when it became so dark that I was unable to read a single word. Though I couldn’t understand what he was trying to point at, I found each and every word very fascinating and very provocative.
Confronting Concepts of God
I had been on the path for some years, but when I read his ideas, his talks, or his answers on God, it was pretty confrontational for me because he dismissed God. In traditional spirituality, God comes first and then you come later—you are a product of God or from God. But Nisargadatta turned that relationship completely around. He said first the “I am” has to appear; without you, there is no God. Who will attest or prove that there is a God if you’re not there?
Of course, for some years I did wrestle with these concepts. Come to think of it, everything is a concept. Even my thought that there is a God or a thought that there is no God is ultimately a concept. What Nisargadatta was great at—not even just good, he was great at it—was demolishing concepts. He was great at dismantling things brick by brick by brick.
Deepening Connection and Ashram Work in Mumbai
So for a few years, I read I Am That and some of his other works. Then, when I went to Mumbai—as you know, I was in Bollywood for some years doing music—that’s when I got the opportunity to meet some of his direct disciples. He had been in Mumbai, and during that time, around 2003 or 2004, my fascination for him grew. I Am That started gripping me, and that’s when my obsession and my love for him grew boundlessly.
I started meeting a lot of his direct disciples. Most of them were pretty old by that time; if they had come to him at a younger age, they were in their 50s, but most were in their 60s, 70s, or 80s. I did a lot of work for the ashram. They had an ashram there, and because I was into music and sound, I set up the audio systems and took on the entire work of digitizing his tapes.
Digitizing the Tapes with Vaneja
When I was meeting disciples, I met Vaneja. All the talks of Nisargadatta that you hear anywhere on the net were mostly recorded by Vaneja. Aunty Manpreet has also met her a couple of times—a very beautiful, loving lady. She’s very old now and lives in Chennai. She used to go every day and record, and over a period of years, as I remember, she recorded 200 to 300 tapes of his conversations.
One day she asked me, “Would you help me digitize these?” I had a look at the tapes, which were getting old. I had previously helped another teacher at Shivananda Ashram in Rishikesh archive and digitize their tapes, so I had a fair bit of an idea of how to do digitization and noise reduction. Vaneja asked if I could help because we had to preserve his words; magnetic tapes spoil with time.
We started the digitization work over the years and digitized all of his works, so at least the legacy is preserved. Then my friend and I started interviewing all these older devotees because we realized they were getting very old, and with time, their stories would be lost forever. We collected a lot of interviews and stories that we wanted to publish in book form, which hasn’t happened yet.
The Unexplained Headache on Guru Purnima
During this time, when I was deeply into Nisargadatta, something really amazing happened. I remember the date very clearly: July 11th, 2006. I was in Mumbai, and that was the day of Guru Purnima, when you go to your teacher and honor them. I really wanted to go to the Nisargadatta Ashram that day. Generally, I worked during the day, so I thought I would go in the evening when the function was scheduled.
I think it was around 6:30 or 7:00—I forget the exact time, but around then—when I thought, “I have to go now.” Suddenly, out of the blue, for no rhyme or reason, I developed a severe, awful headache. It was so severe that I had to sit down and lie down. Although I really wanted to go, I could not take a single step. I took some painkillers and struggled with the pain, and after three or four hours, the pain went away and I was okay.
I had a bit of dinner and switched on the TV. On the news was the report of the famous bomb attacks on Mumbai trains. That night, July 11th, 2006, several bombs were planted on the Mumbai rail network, and one of the bombs was on the exact train I was planning to take. I was staying in Goregaon, and from there I would travel to the ashram. One of those targeted trains was the one I would have taken at the exact time I was planning to go for Guru Purnima.
When I saw the news, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a huge terror attack where so many people lost their lives, and I was supposed to be on that train. Earlier, I had been cursing that weird headache when it came on because I was upset; I wanted to be there with all the familiar faces and devotees I had spent time with, talking, eating, and doing Satsang. But when I saw the news, I just sat down with my head in my hands. It felt like a miracle because if I had been on that train, I would most likely be dead. That incident clearly stands out to me as an instance where Maharaj’s intervention, divine intervention, or universal intervention saved my life. After that, my obsession with him kept growing for the next few years.
Reading I Am That and The Ultimate Medicine
I read I Am That obsessively hundreds of times. There was a time when I knew each and every question and answer; if you asked me a question, I could give you the answer verbatim. Even now I remember about 30 or 40 percent of the text, though I’ve forgotten parts over the years. At one point, I knew the entire book by heart.
Then I moved toward his later works. His later works were pretty terse, and they had a different quality compared to I Am That. A book I read a lot was called The Ultimate Medicine. When I was at home in my hometown, I would get up in the morning, shower, read that book at the breakfast table, work, read it during lunch, work again, and then keep reading it during dinner. My nephew was young at the time—around 7 or 8 years old—and I read that book back-to-back for a couple of months. He used to ask me, “Uncle, how many times are you going to read this book? I always see you reading this book and no other book. Why can’t you understand this book? Why are you reading it again and again? Why can’t you complete it?” He was asking out of innocent curiosity, but that demonstrates the grip Maharaj’s words had on me.
After reading, I would constantly contemplate what he was trying to point at. What is he trying to say when he says everything is an illusion, or “I” is an illusion, or when he talks about “I am” and “the witness”? So many words, angles, and thoughts—what does it all mean, and who am I in all of this? During this time, I collected many of his books, pictures, and recorded talks. I truly loved him and felt that if I had been born 20 years earlier, I might have had the opportunity to sit with him and just be in his presence.
Understanding Maharaj’s Uncompromising Teaching
The best part was that this relationship wasn’t one where he demanded anything, because he was gone. There was no question of him asking for anything. Reading his words, I knew that neither he nor any other teacher could give me enlightenment, so I wasn’t praying to him or asking for his grace. I simply loved him as a person.
He was very direct, terse, and sometimes angry and provocative in his teaching style. From the stories I’ve heard from his disciples, there is a side of Nisargadatta that most people don’t know because they only know I Am That and aren’t familiar with his day-to-day activities behind the scenes. Maharaj used to say to visitors: “If you truly understood what I am saying, you would never come back. Why would you come back? You are here to understand the truth, and once you understand it, my job is over. Once my job is over, there is no need for you to come back.”
In my mind, I used to challenge that thought. I felt I would always return because knowing reality is only one part of it; if you love your teacher, awakening doesn’t mean you drop that love. That love and respect remain. Hearing about his everyday life showed me he was a very ordinary person, completely uninterested in money or fame.
Insights from His Interpreter, Mullarpattan
I met Mullarpattan, who was his primary interpreter. Maharaj spoke Marathi, and when many Westerners started coming to him, two interpreters helped translate Marathi into English. I met both of them. Mullarpattan was the main interpreter; Manpreet and I visited his house years ago, a few years before he passed away.
Mullarpattan shared that during the last days of Maharaj’s life, when he was very sick with cancer, he kept repeating: “Forget me, forget my teachings, but don’t forget ‘I am’.” By “I am,” he meant the sense of knowingness, this consciousness. He emphasized this repeatedly in his final days, pointing out that he wanted seekers and spiritual aspirants to know the truth rather than focus on his persona or teachings.
This is why there are very few books detailing his private life. Unlike Ramana Maharshi—about whom David Godman, Arthur Osborne, and others wrote extensively—or J. Krishnamurti—with books by Mary Lutyens, the Sunanda sisters, and others documenting their daily lives—there was almost nothing published about Nisargadatta’s personal life because he actively discouraged it. He would say, “What will happen if you know my story? It will not help you find reality. What will help you find reality is unraveling the mystery of this consciousness.” Despite that, my friend Kaja and I were stubborn; we interviewed his disciples to collect and preserve stories of his everyday life.
Rare Personal Stories of Maharaj
Today, I thought I’d share one or two stories you wouldn’t have heard anywhere else because we collected them directly. I need to catch up with my friend to see if we can publish them; he has been trying to write and rewrite these stories for the last 15 years and still hasn’t finished.
Here is one story told by Mullarpattan, the translator:
“I was once admitted to the hospital for a minor operation. My room was on the fourth floor. Maharaj came to see me with three other people at about noon when the elevators were closed. Maharaj climbed all four floors. I was really touched by this gesture, especially since Maharaj was quite old at the time.”
Here is another story, also from Mullarpattan:
“After the question-and-answer session, Maharaj and I would go out for a walk and drink lassi. Maharaj loved lassi. Even after awakening, personal preferences don’t just fall away, and that’s fine. Whenever they had lassi, someone among the followers would pay. But if several Westerners or Indians followed us on the walk, Maharaj would whisper, ‘Today we will drink tea,’ because it was cheaper to foot the bill.”
It’s a small detail, but it offers a window into how he thought. Another thing that seemed contradictory to the typical image of a teacher was how he reacted to gifts. Whenever people brought him flower garlands or bouquets, he would usually ask, “How much did you buy this garland for?” If they replied, “We got it for $20,” he would say, “That’s too expensive! These go for $5. You should have haggled. Why don’t you haggled? Don’t you have any value for money?”
This is the same person who writes in I Am That about non-attachment and how everything is an illusion, yet in his daily life, he lived very practically.
The Impact of Dismantling Concepts
Even with Ramana Maharshi, he was very adamant when cooking in the kitchen; he would get up at 2:00 AM to cook and insisted that food could never be wasted. He was very particular about certain things, and so was Maharaj in his own way.
Obsessing about Nisargadatta for years gave me a deep gift. After understanding what he was pointing at, it became exceedingly difficult for me to read any other teacher except Ramana Maharshi or J. Krishnamurti. It was like drinking the finest, most premium tea or coffee in the world—once you develop that taste, you can’t go back to ordinary tea or coffee. Once I understood his words, it also became much easier to understand Ramana or J. Krishnamurti. Earlier, I used to struggle with what Krishnamurti was pointing at, but reading Nisargadatta clarified and illuminated the teachings of other teachers.
The biggest gift he gave me—and gives to other spiritual seekers—is breaking down concepts and completely removing the conceptual framework. Anything you think about enlightenment is a concept; whatever you think about reality or the mind is a concept and not the truth. That dismantling was crucial for me and is crucial for all seekers, because we come to the path carrying so much accumulated knowledge from different traditions and teachers. If you are brought up in a religion, you have traditional conditioning—like I had—about God and the relationship between God and a devotee. Then this teacher comes along and destroys everything. When those structures are destroyed, a vacuum remains for a while because those conditionings were part of our identity. I went through that process where the destruction of these concepts left me somewhat rudderless at sea for some time, something many of you have experienced or will experience in life.
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]]>Understanding Guru Hopping
Today we’ll talk about guru hopping, something I did a lot. You all are already doing it on certain levels and the mechanism behind it. Why do we do it first? And can we dismantle this entire mechanism of going from one teacher to another?
The Parallel of Falling in Love
So let’s start with a very simple example. And this example will kind of set the tone for the entire talk. So bring to your mind the first time you fell in love, right? What is the entire cycle of it?
So you meet someone for the first time and then there is some kind of connection, attraction, and that then becomes an infatuation. You like the person, there is that rush. There is a chemical storm in your brain. You like the person very much, you’re infatuated, and then you want to be with them all the time and then you start idolizing them.
I’ve heard this from people who are in love at that moment, that this is the person. They are so exceptional. I have never met a person like this. They are the one. I love them. Can’t think of my life without them. That’s when you’re idolizing them and then you’re together.
But the chemical storm, the dopamine and the serotonin and whatever is happening in your brain is not sustainable. It will subside and slowly when you’re together, it subsides and the high goes down and now you start seeing the flaws of the person. You know, earlier on they were perfect, but now they’re not perfect and you see things which you would have missed when you were high, and then slowly that starts disappointing you.
So there’s a clash between fantasy—where the person was—and where the person is. And once that happens, you start becoming disappointed. “Oh, I thought this person was X, but he’s not like that. He’s not what I thought.”
And with that disappointment, ultimately there is a breakup. You separate and you say, “I’m done with this person. They’re not what they looked like. It’s the end.” And of course, every breakup is with hurt and pain and disappointment.
And then what happens? You look for the next one. You’re already on Tinder or Facebook or wherever it is. You’re looking for the next partner or next person to love, right? And many of you would have gone through multiple cycles of it, you know: infatuation, idealization, living together, breakdown of fantasy, disappointment, breakup, back to square one. Look for the next one.
Applying the Pattern to Spiritual Teachers
Now look at guru hopping in the same light, and it will make a lot of sense to you. You meet a teacher for the first time, right? And you like them. There’s a connection. For whatever reason, you know, we feel energetically or their words touch you. And then after a while, you know, being with them, you say, “OK, this is the person I’ve been waiting for my whole life.”
And you start idolizing them because you felt a connection, you felt something good, you felt bliss, you felt whatever. And you idolize: “Oh, this is the guy or girl or person who will lead me to the truth, to enlightenment, to awakening,” or whatever. You project your fantasies.
After three or four months, the initial rush dies down, or six months, and then you start seeing the flaws or the things you missed. And then after a year, you think, “No, this person is not what I thought they were, or they have not delivered on the promise which I projected onto them, right?” And then the disappointment will turn into a breakup and you will leave the guru.
But then you’re looking for the next one already. You’re not sitting idle. You’re looking for the next one, and the same cycle will repeat with the next guru. So I saw that cycle repeat in me repeatedly. And this happens a lot in the initial part of your practice, and it happens less and less as you mature.
The Silent Plea and the Search for Freedom
But this mechanism, once you see it, it becomes very apparent. We move from one teacher to another. And whenever you go to a teacher, what are you looking for? There is a silent plea inside you. The plea is: May this person be the one who awakens me. May this person be the one who takes away my suffering. May this person be the one who takes me away from all this confusion, from all this pain.
So there is a plea. There is a silent emotion running underneath. When we meet a teacher, right, we’re not meeting a teacher out of a vacuum. There is a need in us. And that need, for most of us, is freedom—help us break free from unreality or help us find the truth. And that makes us approach another teacher now.
So the first mechanism is, you know, you see a teacher, you get the rush, the rush dies down, you go to the next teacher.
The Guru Connoisseur
But that’s just one mechanism. A lot of other mechanisms make us hop from one teacher to another. The second mechanism, that’s very interesting. I call it the guru connoisseur.
So there are some people who love collecting gurus and teachings, and then they will actually collect and learn so much about the teacher. They’ll know all the finer points. They’ll say, “This teacher said that, and no, no, this teacher said this, and that teacher said that, and they were born here, and they had this experience.” So their idea of the path is collecting more and more knowledge and teachers and gurus, but not following probably the teachings. So these people also will hop from one teacher to another because they like collecting. That’s their passion.
Spiritual Escape and Unconscious Bargains
Then another mechanism which I saw and which happens a lot is spiritual escape. And this happens in relationships as well. So say you fell in love with someone. You have your own baggage, you have your own fears, you have your own desires, you have your own complications. You are with the other person, but you’re refusing to see that in yourself. You project, and after a while, the relationship falls off. You move to the next relationship, but the pattern continues because you have not done the initial groundwork on yourself.
I’ve seen this happen with teachers as well. So you’ll go to a teacher. You like them, you love them for whatever reasons, but you refuse to do the inner work. You refuse to look inward. You put all the responsibility on the teacher: “The teacher will enlighten me. The teacher will get me there.” So of course it’s not my responsibility anymore.
So if you don’t do the groundwork, after a while the teacher will disappoint you because the restlessness is still there, the confusion is still there, the suffering is still there. And my bargain with the teacher was, “You will take that all away.” That’s a bargain you have with the teacher, right? And it’s an unconscious bargain.
Examining the Bargain
Let me do a small exercise right now for a minute. You know, what is a bargain you have with me? What do you think I’ll give you? There has to be some unconscious bargain, something that you think I will deliver, something that you think I can give you on some level. You don’t have to tell it to me, but it’s a good exercise to think: What is my bargain with my teacher? And can my teacher fulfill that bargain?
And it’s the same thing when we fall in love, you know, we have an undisclosed, unconscious, subconscious bargain where, OK, I love you and in return you’ll make me whole, you’ll make me complete, you’ll fulfill me, and you’ll give me this love and attention and specialness or whatnot. What happens if the bargain is not fulfilled? Of course, you’ll move to the next one.
But with the bargain not being fulfilled, do you also have a role to play in it? Similarly, like in a marriage or when you’re in love, you break apart and you blame the person for everything. And this is so funny: when you are in love, the person is like God, and when you break up, they’re like a demon. And I’ve heard people say, “My ex is a demon,” and he’s the same person. The person has not changed for most of it. Of course, they’ve not changed—that same person. And what has changed? It’s the projections, your disappointments. It’s a similar cycle which happens with teachers.
Chasing the Rush vs. Real Inner Work
Of course, I’m not saying all teachers are great. There are legitimate reasons to leave a relationship with a teacher: exploitation, abuse, abuse of authority. Of course, we all understand that. But we are talking about something else. We are talking about: Are we using guru hopping as a rush and not doing the inner work, or is the guru actually exploitative? There’s a difference here.
So each guru, each teacher will give you that initial rush of, you know, “Oh, this is new. I love this, and why didn’t I ever think of this? This is a great insight. I’m going to stick with that person now.” Once you’re with them, the rush dies. Then the real work happens because you will have to look inward, and some people don’t want to do that. So then they find the next rush. So that’s another mechanism why people do a lot of guru hopping.
The “Next One” Illusion
Another last mechanism, I call it the “next one” illusion. The next one will enlighten me. The next partner will be perfect. The next lover will fulfill or give me what the previous one couldn’t. The next retreat will give me the insight I’m lacking. The next book will give me what I don’t know. The next YouTube video will give me the philosophies I’ve been lacking for all these years.
The next one—you see, in every one of these narratives, we are somehow looking for the next experience or guru or teacher or video or book, doesn’t matter. But the next one will somehow give me something which I’m missing.
Now this again is another mechanism for guru hopping. This one didn’t do it, but the next one will. How do you know? How do you know the next one will do it? Maybe no one will do it.
So once you see these mechanisms in yourself already, you will know why you are changing gurus. Because everyone’s story is different, everyone’s needs are different. So at least you’ll become aware: “OK, in my past 10 years, I’ve been to X number of gurus. Was it because I was escaping my own suffering, or was I chasing the rush? Or am I too restless to sit and be with the discomfort, and that’s why I’m always engaged with something, with the other?” And that is for you to answer.
Now, seeing the mechanism, what do you do about it? Is there a way of breaking free from the mechanism? Is there a way of not going to the next guru?
Dismantling the Cycle: Stopping at Disillusionment
So even in this room, there are some of you who have been with me for many years, some of you are new, and some of you will go away. You know, the bargain will not work. I’ll break that bargain. You will be disappointed. And one day you’ll come up and say, “Hey, I thought Rajiv would, you know, deliver me from whatever or awaken me or take away my suffering. But he didn’t. So it’s time for me to move on.” And that’s fine. It’s perfectly fine. I understand.
What I want you to do: If you leave me, I want you to stop there. Stop. Don’t look for the next fix. Don’t look for the next rush. Don’t look for the next answer. Can you use this disappointment, you know, disillusionment? Many of you have disillusionment on the path, you know, with teachers, with teachers who have walked the path for a long time. You will be disillusioned. Even I was. I was so disillusioned I became an atheist for a part of my life. I’ve talked about it a lot.
But again, you know, you don’t like me. You move away from me. Fine. Can you stop there, not looking for the next one? What is driving you to look for the next one? Can I use the disillusionment, the disappointment I had with this teacher—with any teacher, doesn’t matter—as a doorway? Can I use it as a doorway?
I can only use it as a doorway when I stop looking for the next one. If I look for the next one, I’m again in the same cycle. I’m repeating the same pattern again and again. It will not break.
So what you do next time a teacher disappoints you or you want to break away: break away and then investigate this disappointment. Investigate this pain and suffering and the bargain broken. Sit with it, sit with the discomfort, sit with the pain without trying to find a fix. The problem is the next—again, you know, “the next one will fix this in some form or the other.”
There is no next one. What is here is here, right now, in this moment, in this space, and that’s all it is. And when you stop looking for the next one, you will be able to be in this “what is” rather than looking for something in the future or a person to take away your pain and your darkness and your suffering or what not. So the first step of dismantling this is understanding the disappointment and then stopping, not continuing the cycle again and again.
Implementing One Teaching and Taking 90 Days
Of course the mind will come up and say, “If I don’t have a teacher, how will I move forward? I will be in darkness.” But the room here is very well read. You know, you all are very, very well read. Most of you have read so many books. I think you are over-read and you’ve overwatched and you’ve collected too many philosophies and books, right? So you already know what needs to be known. There’s nothing more to know. A new teacher will not say any magical words which are different.
So it’s time for you to take any teaching. So the second part of how to dismantle this is: take any teaching that you have read—one line—and try to implement it wholeheartedly. Just one teaching, whatever you know, whatever you feel drawn to, whatever attracts you. Because if you don’t do that, what’s the point of collecting books after books and watching YouTube video playlists endlessly? It will not get you where you want to be.
Another thing: the next time you break off with a teacher, give yourself 90 days, three months, where you’re not going to look for another teacher, where you’re not going to look for another teaching, another book.
Examining Desire: Truth vs. Comfort
Instead, those three months should be spent in contemplation of what you wanted from the teacher. What are my desires? Am I looking at escaping suffering through enlightenment, through awakening? Am I looking at the teacher to remove my confusion? What am I looking at?
Once you understand what you’re looking for, it’s very, very important on the path to understand that. What is your drive? Is it for truth or comfort? Sometimes we interchange these two things without knowingly doing so. We think truth and comfort are the same thing, but this path is not a comfortable path. This is a path where you face discomfort, because if you want comfort, there are drugs and alcohol and sex and Netflix that give you comfort. But again, it keeps the cycle on.
So on this path, with breakup, with looking for gurus, you are looking for relief. And let’s be honest about it—it’s OK to look for relief. It’s OK to look for relief from suffering, from pain. There’s nothing wrong in it. But the relief is again short. You go with a teacher—one year, six months—you get some relief. It’s transient, it goes off. You move to the next teacher thinking maybe they’ll give me the relief that I’m wanting.
So breaking this cycle is first understanding, “What am I looking for?” and then secondly, giving space to this discomfort, to this confusion. There’s nothing wrong with confusion, you know? We are too fast at trying to fix everything. What’s wrong with being confused? You know, it’s OK. It’s a state which arises in all of us, including other states. We give it some time instead of rushing to fix it. And maybe by being with that confusion…
The Trap of Seeking the Flawless Teacher
Of course, being with confusion is something which we don’t want. We want certainty, right? We all want certainty. And that’s why there is a group of seekers who then look for the perfect teacher, the flawless teacher, the teacher who has no flaws, is perfect in every sense, and the teaching is completely perfect and has no flaws logically. But underneath is the bargain that “I don’t want to be cheated.” And that happens when you’ve been through a lot of breakups. You then don’t want to be with a guru who will waste your time or a teaching which will not deliver. So then you fall into the trap of looking for the perfect teacher.
No teacher is perfect. They’re all humans. You will not get an extraordinary teacher, and I think Zen puts it very beautifully. If you’ve read the works of Linji or Bankai, Zen talks about being very ordinary in the most ordinary way. They define enlightenment, you know, as chopping wood and carrying water. There can’t be anything more ordinary than this.
And the teachers are very ordinary in the Zen tradition. I think it’s in the Indian tradition where teachers were put or the gurus were put on a pedestal, then stripped down. And I think the strip down is essential because then you’re not projecting all the superhuman qualities onto the teacher or the guru and getting disappointed.
So then again, the next one will be the perfect teacher, the flawless teacher. No, I’m sorry to say that there are no flawless teachers. Even if you went to Ramana, he had his own preferences and idiosyncrasies. Each teacher had them. You love Ramana because you’re not staying physically with him, because he’s in the books. You see, all the teachers you love are in the books, not physical. When you stay physically with the teacher, you see them for what they are, and they’re humans. They will forget. They have memory lapses, they get exhausted, they get tired, mix up things. They’re humans. You have to understand that has got nothing to do with the truth they have seen. That consciousness or the state of immensity that they have seen has got nothing to do with the physical vehicle they are in.
And see for yourself: are the teachers that you love, are they dead or how long have you been with a live teacher? Because being with a live teacher is difficult because it will challenge your fantasies about what a teacher is.
The True Role of a Guru
And also the word guru, you know, in Sanskrit, it has various meanings. The main and the actual meaning most of you will know is “the dispeller of darkness.” That’s it. That’s it. No authority. You don’t need to surrender your life and your finances and your bank accounts. What the teacher is supposed to do is show you the path. And once you understand that role, you will not be disappointed. Because then you’re not projecting all your fantasies onto him. You’re not asking him or her to do the work for you.
I can’t hand you enlightenment. I can’t hand you awakening. I can’t. Seriously, even Buddha couldn’t do that. If he could, he would have made the entire world enlightened. Why not? Buddha was one of the most compassionate beings, right? We all agree. The most loving one. If he could have given enlightenment, he would have given it to everyone. He would not have spared a single soul. That means the teacher cannot give it to you. So stop projecting that onto the teacher. The teacher will just show you a mirror and the work that needs to be done.
Sitting with “What Is”
So what is the work that needs to be done? The work is to be with the “what is” right now, and the “what is” is: I’m unenlightened. I don’t know with certainty what the truth is. I’ve got this suffering, I’ve got pain. I’ve got questions. I don’t like myself, maybe, as I am. I’m not happy with the state of the world and myself.
That is what is, right? And can I have the capacity to be and sit with the “what is”? If I can, you will see your need to go to the next teacher automatically drops.
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]]>Post-Satsang Feedback and Introduction
Namaste everyone. In our last Satsang, we had the pre-verbal awareness talk and the exercise. Not only throughout the session, but even after the session, we received quite a few messages where people had done the exercise or went deeper into it and they saw immediate results.
So I thought we could continue this and go a bit deeper into what we talked about in the first one. I hope everyone who was not in that Satsang listened to the talk, the podcast, because today we’ll be building up a bit more on the last Satsang’s talk and exercise that we did.
Three Quotes on Going Beyond Words
So I’ll start first with three quotes by three teachers whom we all love.
The first quote is by Ramana, and he says: “There is a state when words cease and silence prevails.”
The second quote is by Nisargadatta, and it says: “You try to derive the meaning of yourself out of words. That is not you, give it up.”
And the third quote is by J. Krishnamurti, and he says: “Please do not merely hear the words. Words are like the breeze. You cannot exert all your mind and energy on words. You have to go beyond the words. Words are merely symbols, means of communication.”
Accessing the Pre-Verbal State
Now, the core idea which runs through all three quotes and pre-verbal awareness is knowing that there is a state which is prior to words. That state, that beingness, that awareness, whatever we call it—how do you access it?
It’s easy to read all these quotes. It is beyond words, it’s wordless, and it sounds very mystical, but how do you sit down to experience that? As I said in my search, I practiced—or I experimented, which would be the correct word—with a lot of different techniques. Some of the techniques were completely new, which I made up because I’m a very creative person and I always liked finding solutions. In my mind, you know, it was like: How do I do this? How do I feel that particular state?
That’s where there were two or three things I stumbled upon. One is the pre-verbal awareness technique. Another one was where you actually talk to your anxiety and your parts and hear them out. Then there were a couple of others. Today I will also talk about the relationship between the exercise that we do—the pre-verbal awareness—and where we can use the other practice where we can talk to our internal energies or unresolved thoughts or emotions which show up, you know, as different forms, maybe as a hurt child or something else.
First, we’ll go into the pre-verbal awareness, and then I’ll move to the next one.
The Pre-Verbal Awareness Exercise
With pre-verbal awareness, you will be able to at least get a glimpse initially of a state where there are no words, there’s no language. Word is language. And how do we go about it?
I’ll go over a bit of what we did last time. You imagine yourself to be a prehistoric being 50,000 years back. There was no language, right? No words. There were no words like anxiety, fear, death, enlightenment, awakening, observer, witness, parabrahma, or consciousness. There were no words, absolutely no language.
Now, if you were in that state right now, you had no access to language, and a sensation of fear, anxiety, grief, or whatever you call it arose in you, you would have no option but to experience it totally because you cannot define it. There is no word. You’ve let go of the word. There’s no language.
It was a very interesting puzzle for me when I started this, you know, like how would I express myself? Whenever I wanted to express it mentally, I would stop myself and say: I don’t have access to language. So of course I can’t express it, but I do feel it totally now.
When I repeatedly did this exercise again and again, I was able to see the gap between a state or beingness and the subsequent words, language, definitions, and labels which come after that. One surprising insight from that was that the subsequent narratives and labels were like 1,000 times magnified compared to what the actual emotional state I was in.
How Language magnifies Triggers
I’ll give you an example. Say you’re driving down or walking down the road and suddenly it starts raining or it’s very windy. You feel cold, there’s a sensation, and then you start saying, “Oh, my life… the day is horrible.” That leads to another thought: “My life is awful. What am I doing here? What is the meaning of life?” All that starts with the sensation of feeling cold.
Now, say you don’t have language; you will have to feel that cold, but there’s no forward momentum to that trigger, to that sensation, to that feeling, to that emotion. It stops there. Language creates that narrative, and then language makes us spiral down from one thought to another. The sages always talked about this thoughtless state, or this beingness prior to words.
When we are able to look at our triggers and states and refuse to use language at that moment and say, “I will not define it, no label,” the mind will come up with the label immediately or it will say, “I’m observing it.” Even that is language, you see, or “I’m witnessing it” is language. What if I give up all this witnessing and observation or trying to transmute it and make it good? That leads you to the pre-verbal state because you’ve given up conceptualizing that state in any language.
Differentiating Words and Images
Of course, when you have a trigger or a feeling, there are two things which will arise in you, and as you go deeper into it, you will be able to differentiate. First is a word, and second is also images.
Certain times you will think about a person who maybe causes you fear, anxiety, or stress. That’s an image. Then immediately words will follow: “I’m feeling anxious, this is very stressful, I don’t want to think about it,” or whatever. Now when you go deeper into it, you’ll see images are very transient, and they don’t kind of create narratives. Narratives are always created by words and language.
So this is what, if you can do the exercise properly, you will be able to experience.
Guided Pre-Verbal Awareness Exercise
Last time we did the exercise, and I want to do this again for those who were not present last time and also for those who were not able to connect to that pre-verbal awareness. This exercise just takes a minute.
The core of the exercise, again, is that we want to trigger something in us which is uncomfortable, which is not pleasant, and then we want to see the narrative which comes along with that trigger, with that emotion, with that feeling.
So we’ll take a deep breath just to settle ourselves and bring to mind a person or a situation which causes distress, fear, or anxiety. You’ll see the moment you think the trigger—I call it the trigger—now notice what happens after you think about that particular thing, after the trigger. What do you feel? I’ll give you a minute. What language, what thoughts, what labels come up?
Now we will do the same trigger again, but this time imagine you’re a prehistoric being 50,000 years ago. You have no access to language. Language is gone, there are no words, no access to it.
When you think of the trigger now, if a word comes up, try to drop it and say to yourself: “I don’t have access to words, I can’t use any words.” Initially, it’s very difficult because words are interwoven with triggers and images. But if you do it four or five times, even 10 times, slowly you will be able to see a gap very quickly.
So if you fail, that’s fine. Go back to the trigger again and try to feel it completely. If any words come up, drop them because you can’t use language, and then drop back into the feeling again. I’ll give you a minute just to try this.
You might feel a heaviness when you do not think of a particular thing, or your heart might palpitate. Your throat might get stuck. Focus on the sensation. The sensation doesn’t tell you anything. It has no words. It’s just a sensation. The mind starts with the words.
Applying Pre-Verbal Awareness to Daily Life
This is a simple exercise you can keep doing anytime. Not only is this a very fascinating way, you know, to come to think of it—what I was very fascinated about is that I would go about my daily day, and I would see a beautiful rose. Then the mind would say, “It’s a beautiful rose.” Then I would catch myself and say, “Again, I’m using language. What if I was a prehistoric being with no language? How would I experience this rose now?” Because they also experienced the rose, of course, but there was no inner monologue or a dialogue which defined that particular experience in words and language.
So then, if I was that person and didn’t have access to language, I could just see it, I could feel it, I could absorb that beauty, but I have cut off the access to language, which then cuts off the inner narrative completely. Then you can apply this wherever you are.
This state of beingness that all these teachers have been trying to tell you to access becomes very easy to access. It’s there with the sensation or an object; there is no filter which the mind is creating through words and language to label it or distort it.
If you do this enough times, there is another insight you will automatically come across: words do not label a feeling; words help produce what you’re feeling. I repeat it again: the words actually do not label a feeling. You think you’re labeling a feeling, but it’s the word which most of the time creates that particular feeling through association, through memory. That itself was a big revelation for me and for many in the group who have done this exercise.
Combining Modalities to Resolve Triggers
Now, I wanted to take this a bit further today and talk about triggers, because the trigger keeps coming back. For some, this exercise might dissolve the trigger itself and the narrative after the trigger.
There is a trigger, and then the narrative, the labeling, the story, and the spiral after the trigger. Pre-verbal awareness takes care of what happens after the trigger, and it will also remove part of the trigger. But sometimes you will see the trigger does not get resolved. There is a nagging thing—a thought, a person, an idea, a stress—which will keep triggering a particular sensation. You can be with the sensation, but the trigger does not stop. Throughout the day, maybe you’re getting triggered 20 times or 40 times. If you’re very stressed, maybe every few minutes there’s a trigger.
In my experience, how I dealt with this was: if a trigger was happening again and again, it was calling attention to itself. That is when you use the other modality that I have talked about a lot in the past, where you give the fear a form or a name. This is actually working with language now, because some fears and triggers have to be reached through language.
If it is constantly happening again and again, it’s not resolved. Pre-verbal awareness is taking care of the later part, so this modality takes care of the trigger. You give the trigger or the anxiety a name, a shape, or a form. Can you get it to open up, talk to you, and express itself however it wants to tell you?
What I have seen and experienced is that the trigger itself starts losing its power because it’s expressed, it’s been given space, and it’s been acknowledged. Most of the time, we know our anxieties and fears, but we don’t want to open the can. We’re so scared; we don’t want to look at what’s inside the can. This process helps us open the can and look inside it.
Both are different modalities which take care of different parts of the cycle. If you have a thought or emotion which is not getting resolved even after being with it through pre-verbal awareness, try doing the second modality. With these two combined, if you do it properly, I think it will take away 80 to 90% of the power and hold any of this conditioning and these patterns have over you.
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]]>Introduction to Pre-Verbal Awareness
Today’s topic is something probably you might have not heard much about. It’s called pre-verbal awareness, and this is more of a term which is used in science, but it’s not a very popular term. I will go through how I came across or discovered this pre-verbal awareness and what it means to contact it and understand it.
My Journey with Anxiety and Meditation
So as you know, I was having anxiety for years—chronic, sustained anxiety. It was diagnosed as GAD, generalized anxiety disorder. And then over the years, I meditated a lot—a lot of mindfulness and non-duality meditations.
During one of these meditations, I was just sitting and observing the sensation and whatever was arising in me. I was looking at it and saying, “You know, this is fear. I can see the fear arising. I can see the anxiety arising. I feel horrible. I want it to go away. I just don’t like it. My life is useless. How will I overcome it?” You know, all those words coming one after another.
Then I started paying attention to the sensation itself. Of course, the sensation is unpleasant. Those who’ve felt it know this can apply to any sensation. So this sensation of fear and anxiety generally happens in the heart. For some, it’s the stomach or the throat, and it’s very visceral. Whenever I had the sensation, it came with the words “anxiety” and “fear.” There was no separation of the sensation from the word.
Separating Sensation from Words
But that day, because I was very attentive and I had been doing it for a long time, I was able to see the sensation itself, feeling it without words. What that means is, imagine a world where there was no language—language was not invented, like a prehistoric being. So 20,000 years back or 50,000 years back, there was no language, right? Right now, if there was no language and I had this fear or anxiety arise in me, there would be no word or no way to express it to myself.
Most of the time, whenever the sensations arose, I had a self-talk, and the self-talk used to spiral. So the self-talk would start with the sensation, naming it, calling it an emotion, and labeling it as fear, anxiety, or whatever. And then the next step is—you know, the word itself contains the entire past. It contains a 30-year history of having that anxiety, that stress, that frustration, and shame. So the moment the word comes in, all the associations come in and it starts spiraling down.
So that day I did something different. I said, “I am not going to describe this feeling to myself. I’ll forget all the words. I’m going to separate the word from the sensation.” One day it was difficult. The moment a sensation comes in, the words automatically come in. It’s like you see a dog and the word “dog” kind of comes in. Sometimes it comes as an image, and most of the time it will also come with a verbal language cue.
I’m not stopping the thought of the sensation, you have to understand this. What I was doing was trying to separate the sensation from the word. So I said, “I’m not going to use this word. I will not describe it to myself. I don’t care what the feeling is. I will feel the feeling, the sensation, completely as if I’m a prehistoric person with no language.” And I was like, “Rajiv, in that case, what will you do?” You have no option but to feel it totally.
The Breakthrough and Interoception
When I started, it took me three or four days finally to do that and completely detach the sensation from the word. Something strange happened. The sensation arises for a few seconds—you know, the heart pounding, the throat tightening, or the stomach going in. Since I have no label for it, I cannot say it’s fear or anxiety. I feel it is unpleasant, but there’s no story, and then the sensation subsides.
At that moment, I could clearly see that the whole conceptual framework around that sensation was derived from language itself. Without language, I don’t know that it is anxiety, but the moment I label it, the whole history comes along with it. That was kind of a revelation for me. That’s where I started researching a lot about noetic experiences and interoception. Noetic experiences mean the felt, core contact with your inner sensation without any kind of definition or interpretation.
What the whole exercise taught me was that sensations do not tell you anything. For example, I’ll give you a simple example: your heart races, right? Your heart will race when you exercise. Your heart will race when, say, you’re going to meet your loved ones—you’re falling in love and you’re just waiting for your loved one to come, and of course your heart will race. And then your heart will race in anxiety, right? The mechanism is the same. The sensation is exactly or almost identical. But then why are the emotions different? Because the emotions are context-dependent, and this is what interoception means.
The Four Dimensions of Sensation
Surprisingly, when you start doing this, when you start going into your noetic or felt raw sensations, you will see there are only four dimensions to this. It is very surprising; when I felt it, I was like, “That’s all there is.”
The two main categories are pleasant and unpleasant. A heart palpitation of anxiety is unpleasant, that’s all it is. And then there are pleasant sensations, like eating a chocolate, which we all want. So the brain wants the pleasant sensations and wants to run away from the unpleasant. This is one axis. The other axis is energy and depletion. So you might feel very energetic, or you might feel very depleted. These are called core affects, and these are generally the broader categories of sensations that you feel in the body. The rest is the interpretation of those sensations.
Interoception is a word which means, “How do I make sense of these internal sensations which arise in me?” There are so many signals which come through your body—heart, lungs, gut, skin—and then the brain combines them with context and past experience and predicts. That’s how it can infer what is happening to the body. This makes your heart racing, as an example, an active interpretation rather than an internal state. The word does not label a feeling; the word actually helps produce it. It is a very strange phenomenon once you start.
We’ll go through an exercise where you can feel it, and if you do it for two or three days, you will actually start resonating with what I’m talking about right now. You’ll see the internal states are very simple and very unidimensional, and they don’t have a story or a word for them. It’s your interpretation that creates the entire story behind it.
How Language Triggers Suffering
I’ll give you another example. Say you get a phone call, and on the caller ID is someone’s name you dread—like you don’t want to pick up their call. In that moment, there is a raw experience, a sensation. I don’t want to call it an emotion right now; I’m deliberately using the word “sensation” because if you pay attention, you will see either your throat tightening, your stomach tightening, or your heart skipping a beat. That’s the first sensation. So the words on the screen or the phone call triggers a sensation.
As the sensation comes in, you’ll see the word, the feeling, and the narrative start: “Oh God, I hate this. I don’t want to take the call.” And then the further narrative: “How will I go? I’m a useless person. I’ve never done this, you know?” So the downstream language and conceptual thought process gets kicked off.
But what if you stop at the sensation itself? Again: no language, no way to express it to myself or others. Then what? I’m just left with it totally. To do that, of course, you will require a certain amount of courage. This only becomes a problem with unpleasant emotions and sensations which get stuck in a pattern and cause a lot of suffering. For pleasant emotions and sensations, it’s fine. Like when I’m eating a fruit, generally the story and narrative are very happy and joyous. It only becomes a problem when the narrative and word refer to things which we do not like, called suffering.
So we are, in a way, unpacking that entire suffering cycle, but being more surgical here. You see that call, and you stop when the sensation arises. You don’t name it. You be it. You be it totally. What does it feel like without a name, without language, without any self-talk, and without any narrative? You’ll have to develop that capacity, as I said, because it’s a negative emotion. With time, when you get that capacity, you will completely see that the emotion and sensations are completely different, and the narrative is completely overblown. It has no proportional relationship to the sensation, because what is the sensation? Just a racing heart. You’ve experienced that whenever you exercise.
Guided Exercise: Identifying the Words
To understand this very practically and experientially, we’ll do a small exercise right now, and I’ll guide you through it. If you do not understand something, just do what comes naturally to you. This is a very simple exercise. This is similar to what I did for three or four days to decouple sensations from words and emotions, which could then take me to the pre-verbal stage.
If you remember what we were talking about, the talk is about pre-verbal awareness. So we’re coming to a place which has no language at all to interfere with perception. Here is the simple exercise to see if we can do it right now.
Take a deep breath and just loosen yourself up. As I said, we will have to work with something difficult for this to work. So we’ll try and recall something which invokes anxiety or fear in you—an image, a person, or a thought. It just takes a thought to create those sensations. Think about something which creates anxiety and fear, and then notice what happens. What words come in? What narrative comes in? What judgments come in?
Maybe you tell yourself, “I don’t want this. I don’t want to feel this,” or whatever—any kind of words, language, and associative stories. Pay attention to it. So let’s do it again. Again, we’ll recall something which invokes fear or anxiety, and I’ll give you a minute to see the old patterns coming up: the words, the stories, and the judgments.
When fear comes in, you know what will happen: “Oh God, oh God, how will I cope? What will I do next?” These are also words which come up along with the sensation or right after the sensation. You know, the sensation comes in, and within a fraction of a second, you’ll see this language flowing, which is a kind of self-talk.
Sometimes, for me, primarily the words which came up were, “I’m really anxious. I don’t want this. I’m fearful.” Those were the words which came to me with the sensation. For everyone, there will be different words, but there will be a narrative which starts once the sensation triggers, and self-talk starts on its own. What I realized in my case is my anxiety is triggered, say, by a particular thing, a person, or a situation. I think of that situation and, of course, immediately there’s a sensation. First is the sensation; you’ll feel it viscerally somewhere in your body.
Guided Exercise: Stripping Away Language
Now we’ll go to the second part of this exercise, which is even more important. Again, I will invoke the uncomfortable feelings, because that’s the only way to work through them, understand them, and then resolve them. Please bring up something that makes you fearful, creates anxiety, or invokes that distress.
Now imagine you have lost the capacity of language. Is it possible for the sensation to arise? The sensation will arise and scream, “This is fear! This is fear! This is anxiety! This is fear! This is horrible!” What I want you to do is feel it, be with it, but don’t use any words, okay? It will be very difficult. The mind will creep in with the definition, with the label, or a narrative because they’re very intertwined. But we are trying to see the gap.
We’ll invoke the emotion and then see if we can just be with it without any words. No words, no self-talk. If you fail, then you again invoke the trigger and try to just be with the sensation—sorry, not the emotion, the trigger—and then just try to be with the sensation completely. You have lost the capacity for words. You cannot explain it to yourself. There’s no need to explain the sensation. I want you to be with it, feel it, and be it. That’s it.
So let me start now. I’ll give you two minutes to do it, and you can do it repeatedly as many times as you want. There’s nothing to fear; it’s just a mental construct. It will not kill you.
The Revelation of Pure Sensation
All right, great. I know it’s difficult to invoke all these distressing feelings, but great job on doing it. Now, if you’ve done it properly—and it might take a few times—you will discover something very startling: the sensation does not tell you what it is. The sensation has two axes: it is either pleasant or unpleasant. The only thing that you feel in the sensation is, “Is it pleasant, or is it not?” So, of course, a heart palpitation is not pleasant. But if you stay with the sensation, does the sensation say it’s anxiety or fear? Does it pass any judgment on your self-worth? Absolutely not.
This is the discovery which startled me when I started just being and seeing the arising—that it had no stories to tell, absolutely no words to tell me. It was just there. The words and the stories were the narration which I created, and they became so entwined with the sensation that they became a part of it.
Maybe many of you would have felt part of what I’m trying to explain, and for some, it might take a day or two. It’s not very difficult to disentangle this. For me, as I said, it took me three to four days, and then I was easily able to just be with a sensation without any kind of words. You’ll see it will reduce the power of the conceptual framework that each of these sensations has created in us.
This will also create a capacity in you to be with that unpleasantness. Unpleasantness is what the body feels when you interocept, when you feel your sensations inwardly. The body has a natural mechanism of saying, “This is pleasant” and “This is unpleasant.” It will try to run away from the unpleasant sensation, but it need not create the narratives and stories around it, which are completely based on language and nothing else.
You drop the words and the language, and what remains is the pure sensation. Were you able to detach a bit or see that the sensations do not tell any story at all? That’s the power of this whole thing. It can resolve narratives, pain, and suffering we’ve been carrying for a long time pretty fast.
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]]>Today we are going to talk on a very important and also a confusing aspect of spirituality.
And as we walk the path, we hear or we are introduced to a lot of words, new words: enlightenment, awareness, consciousness, presence, stillness, emptiness, oneness. And we read all these different words in different books, we hear them in talks. And as we progress on the path, we then start comparing one teacher’s language, their words, with another teacher. And at the back of the mind, we are trying to work out which term points to the highest truth, which one is more precise, which makes more sense.
And this is what happened to me on the path as well. I used to lie awake at night thinking, “Is awareness different from consciousness? What is pure awareness? Is it the same as witnessing presence? Is stillness a quality of being, or is being a quality of stillness? Or is emptiness the same as oneness or the opposite?”
And this is the nature of the mind. It tries to put all the words together neatly, like you have a kitchen shelf and you have all the jars labeled correctly with whatever is in it. That’s what the mind tries to do with all these words: label them correctly with correct meanings. At the back of the mind is a thought that, “Once I understand probably what the word means or what the word points to, I will be closer to the truth. I will understand what the teacher is trying to say.”
How Words Derive Meaning: Ostensive vs. Conceptual
There is a huge gap between what the words mean and what we think they mean. Today we will deconstruct a bit around what words mean and where they get their meaning from. I will go a bit into the science part of it as well, just to make the process clearer as to how words derive their meaning, and how meaning is formed for conceptual words.
There are two kinds of words that we use in our life. One is words like, say for example, a ball. When we say a ball, the ball is tied to something which is physical. It’s a solid object. I can see it, you can see it. The community can verify the meaning. So if I call, say, a table a ball, you can correct me and say, “No, a ball is physical, it’s round, the table is not a ball.” The word is pointing to something which is solid, which is there in the perceptual or sensory field. A child will learn the ball through see and tell. Someone will show them a ball and say, “This is a ball,” and with repeated understanding and repetition of the word, the child will play with the ball and understand, “This is a ball.”
There is a sensory component to it, and this is called an ostensive definition. This is a linguistic word. I was very interested in linguistics and language, and how language forms words and how we understand meaning. Ostensive definition means the word is taught by an example, by showing something—for example, a ball or a candle. I show the candle and say, “This is a candle,” and then you understand that word based on the physical object.
Now in spirituality, most of the words and the meanings are not ostensive because no one can show and tell. Most of the words are conceptual, so no one can point and say, “This is consciousness, this is emptiness, this is awareness, this is presence.” This is a difference which you will have to understand to make sense of why these words are so confusing and why they are more conceptual rather than something with a fixed meaning.
Networks of Words and Philosophical Disagreements
How do I explain a word for which I cannot point to like a ball? It’s very interesting how you actually learn or understand words which are more conceptual: it is through a network of related words, through explanation, and related categories of words. For, say, awareness, they might have a cluster of words which will point to the meaning of it. Since there is no physical object, the meaning has to be conveyed, and the meaning is conveyed through a relative network of words.
That is where the problem surfaces when you’re using all these different spiritual words. There is no one fixed meaning, and each meaning is then defined by other words, and those other words are then again defined by other words.
For example, I’ll take a simple word, Brahman, which you would have heard hundreds of times. Atman, Brahman—you know these are Sanskrit words—or Nirvana. Now, Brahman is a word, and there have been hundreds of books written to explain this singular word. If you see the treatises on the Upanishads, Shankaracharya has written, and even after all these treatises, the word has different meanings for different schools. Even in Advaita, in this entire philosophical structure, there are different schools of thought which define the word Brahman in completely different ways altogether.
How do you explain that word? Because, again, the word has no fixed object. Since it has no object, I need to explain it with more words. That’s why people have written volumes around Brahman and were still not able to explain it, or they were still having contradictory meanings.
Words as Pointers and Personal Conditioning
Whenever we are hearing any word, especially in spirituality, we need to treat those words as pointers and invitations. What I mean by pointers, you all understand: the finger pointing to the moon. Another word which I really like is an invitation. These words are an invitation for you to explore. The word inherently has no meaning. The meaning has been created or borrowed through all these different concepts.
We talked about ostentation and how a word can have a solid reference, whereas a conceptual word will have no reference. Another issue that comes up after this is that whatever word we think of will have a meaning based on your personal circumstances.
For example, if I give you the word “home,” for some people it will invoke the feeling of warmth and comfort. But for a person who has come from an abusive home, home might mean stress, tension, or violence. The word is the same, but the emotions and the meaning behind the word are completely different for each of us.
If I say the word “dog” in front of 100 people, there will be 100 dogs. Each dog in each person’s head will be different. The moment I say dog, neurologically what happens is not a neat definition that comes up. You will see an image and related concepts. The word dog will bring up a dog, and most probably it will be a particular dog for you. It might be brown, white, or black, a particular breed, along with the associated feelings and emotions. You might be happy hearing about the dog if you like dogs, or it will bring up fear if you’re scared of dogs. A word will depend on your own personal circumstances.
Now, this is for fixed, ostensive words which have a fixed meaning where you can see that object in the world. Still, there is some overlap; we both can kind of agree on what a dog is because there is a common object we’re talking about. But say we come to the word “emptiness.” My meaning of emptiness and the meaning for 100 seekers when I say the word emptiness—they will have 100 different meanings, right? Everyone will have their own history and conditioning of what emptiness means. For some, it might be a great experience. For others, it might be a written word they’ve read somewhere. Of course, there are a hundred different forms of emptiness, but here we cannot cross-check the word with each other.
With a dog, there is a possibility of cross-checking the meaning because a dog has a form. Since emptiness has no form, there is no way to validate and cross that bridge. The only way we can cross that bridge is through more words, trying to explain that emptiness. And those extra words will lead to even more words. At last, you see these are just—at the end, if you see, you’re taking one word, “emptiness,” and taking 10 words to explain it, and then using another 10 words to explain those 10 words. Ultimately, it’s just a hallway of mirrors. Each word points to another word, but they do not convey the true meaning behind the word.
Stepping Beyond the Mind into Consciousness
This has to be really understood when you’re walking the path. If you don’t, then you will be eternally confused with all these different words which teachers use. If you see, Buddhism uses a completely different set of words, and Advaita uses a different set of words.
The word is not the meaning. Even a single word like Brahman, if it needs hundreds of books to explain it, what does it even mean? Even those hundred books disagree with each other. What I’m trying to say is there’s no fixed meaning to all these words. Each teacher has used these words based on their conditioning and how they understood them, trying to use them to convey something. Since what they’re trying to convey is not fixed and is not an object, they use more words to convey it.
The correct way to understand all these words is to see them just as invitations, empty of meaning. The meaning is what you are giving to it, and no two meanings will be the same. Once you understand this, you’ll stop debating and arguing with people, if you’ve understood this correctly. Someone might say, “No, consciousness is everything,” and you would say, “Nah, not consciousness, it’s awareness.” But again, their definition of consciousness might be something else, and your definition of awareness might be something else. There’s no common ground here to compare.
This leads to a simple and very basic observation: words and meanings arise in the mind, and the mind arises in consciousness. So when I hear a word and see the meaning, both of them are arising in my consciousness. That is what the words are trying to point back to. The moment I step away from the word and the meaning into this consciousness, I’m already doing the practice. I’m already on the path. I don’t need to worry about the meaning of the words.
Whenever you hear all these different words and get confused, first ask yourself: “What are they pointing at, and what do I actually understand by it? Do they actually have a physical meaning which I can compare?” We are not trying to say words or language are not important. Words serve a purpose. Language serves a purpose up to an extent. But especially when we are discussing abstract, conceptual knowledge, words need to be seen as invitations only.
Once you start doing that, a lot of confusion, suffering, and heartbreak will fade. Like I mentioned in the beginning, wondering about all these different words—”Is awareness different from consciousness? Is pure awareness the same as witnessing
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The Power of Gaps and Silence
For those who have come for the first time, when I speak, there’ll be gaps and pauses and silence in between. And that is by design, because words are important, but also important is the meaning and the silence behind the words. So all of you would have already read thousands of words and listened to endless books. So something has not landed, and that is the reason you are here. So also pay attention to the gaps and the silence in between my words.
The question is, many of you or most of you have dedicated your life or a part of your life to finding answers. You have read, so many of you have gone to retreats, gurus, read books, YouTubes, podcasts, and of course that’s changed you. I can see that wisdom. I can sense that depth in the room, and I can also sense that courage, because most people are just interested in running after the ego, fame, and money. But you all have said no, and you said, “Okay, there’s something more to life.” And in doing so, you have tried to become conscious, which takes a lot of courage, which is not an easy act.
Most people run away throughout their life; they’re running away from difficult emotions or they’re numbing them through drugs or whatever. But there’s a group of people who are trying to understand it—they’re running towards it. And that means something.
Why Triggers and Pain Persist
But even after reading all the books, listening to podcasts, sitting down, meditating, being mindful, being aware of emotions, and fighting your mind, what we have seen and what I saw in my journey is the triggers persist. A lot of the triggers, a lot of the trauma, a lot of the desires, suffering, and pain—it does not go away.
Many of you have had a lot of spiritual experiences. You would have had that opening where you’re one with the universe, or you feel that bliss, that peace, that connectedness, that wholeness. And during those times, you can see through those emotions: the anger, the ego, the pain, the suffering. Everything is so clear, everything makes sense. But once that fades away, you’re put in a situation where the triggers arise. You see you’re getting triggered again; the fear comes back, the pain comes back, the desires come back.
Why is it so? If I had an insight where I could see through that ego or see through that pain or pattern or trigger, why does it come back?
An Exercise in Radical Honesty
Before going into the talk about spiritual bypassing—what it is and how you can recognize it—we’ll do a simple exercise which will make it very apparent and clear to you how it functions. You can close your eyes if you want, or not. It’s a very simple exercise. It’s just completing a sentence in your mind. You don’t have to say it aloud.
In your mind, I want you to complete this sentence: “If I’m being completely honest with myself, even though this sounds unspiritual, I honestly want…”
The question is to be very honest with myself. I really want this. And even though this might be unspiritual or not good, it doesn’t matter. What is it that you really want? What are the things you want which might sound unspiritual to you or to others? It can be money, sex—it doesn’t matter. And whatever you want, stay with it for a few seconds.
The Three Inner Processes
Now, when you have a thought which arises, especially thoughts which you think you should not have for whatever reason, there are three processes which happen inwardly.
First, the thought arises—I want to have sex with 100 people, for example. Then the second part would be, and it’s very, very subtle, it’s very, very immediate: there’s an editor, someone who edits your thoughts inside of you. So first the thought will arise, and second would arise the associated emotions, like, I should not have this thought. Shame, humiliation, whatever—you know, this is not spiritual, I should have been over this by now, why am I thinking this, why am I wanting this? That is the second.
Then the third thing which happens, I call it spiritual rationalization, is you will use some kind of pacification to diffuse that tension inwardly. So the pacification might be, it doesn’t matter, I’m not the body, or the pacification might be, you know, everything is transient, or the pacification might be, you know, I am what I am. This thing happens very quickly inside our minds.
Investigating Envy and Judgment
For another example, we’ll do another small exercise. Now be aware of these three things: the thought, what emotions arise with that thought (is it shame, censure?), and how do you rationalize it?
Let’s take another example where you think of someone who is more successful than you—any one person. It has to be very concrete. Someone who has had more than you money-wise, happiness-wise, success-wise, spirituality-wise—it doesn’t matter. Just bring that person to your mind.
Even bringing that person who’s had more than you, most of you will feel a sensation. Mostly it’s envy or a feeling of I’m not enough, that person is bigger, or I didn’t do anything worthwhile with my life. Shame.
And then there will be another part, an editor-rationalizer, which will say, doesn’t matter, it’s transient, or I am beyond money, I am beyond fame. Or another part would be, why am I thinking like this? Why am I feeling like this even after putting in all the hard work?
Now, first of all, why does this step happen inside of us? This spiritual pacification that’s been going on, where we try to diffuse this thought or we are not in contact with that fear or with that envy, with that pain or with that suffering—it’s part of spiritual bypassing. Why does it happen? Let’s go a little deeper.
Moving Into the Chaos
Also, I want to say, you know, most spiritual meetings and groups are about finding comfort—love, happiness, feel-good. Here, we are doing something a bit different. We are going really deep inside into chaos. And that needs a lot of courage and attention. It’s not an easy job. The easy job is to sing and dance around, which is easy. But again, even after the singing and dancing around, the next day a phone call which you have been dreading rings.
What happens to you? The call that you’ve been dreading comes and then your heart sinks, your hands sweat, and you say, “I don’t want to take this call.” So somehow that singing and dancing has not translated. And that’s what we’re trying to do: you’re translating those insights into your everyday life.
The Retreat vs. The Supermarket
There is a gap, and I call this gap the gap between the spiritual retreat and the supermarket. It’s just a word trying to convey that there is a you, a feeling, a state which you experience on the cushion, and you experience in retreats or with teachers or gurus or dancing or whatnot. And then there is a state in the middle of your everyday life, which is completely different from this state. There’s a gap in between.
Most seekers spend—and I spent—years chasing and trying to close this gap. I felt like this here, but I don’t want to feel what I feel here. And then you start to think, why is there a gap? So we’ll go into understanding why this gap arises and how we can bridge this.
Why this gap? Why does the mind pacify? Why doesn’t the mind want to feel that envy, want to be in it, feel that pain? Because pain is something we all run away from, and pain is something which requires a lot of intimate contact to resolve. The mind will find out ways to avoid pain. Even as you progress on the path, you will start using your spiritual concepts to avoid that contact.
The Spiritual Armor of Avoidance
What is the spiritual armor? Even before I can feel that pain, I can feel that envy, I can feel that suffering, I will rationalize it spiritually: everything is God’s will. You see, you haven’t given enough time for that thought, that feeling, that emotion to come up, to feel it, to integrate and resolve.
If the resolution happened, the next time it would not get triggered. So say next time you are sitting in a gathering with friends and one of the friends says, “Oh, I had such a big breakthrough and I earned a million dollars with this.” Even if you’re smiling, your heart feels something, and at that time you might rationalize it to yourself. That feeling is gone for that second, but it is not completely gone. It’s gone underground. It’s there in the subconscious because you’ve not resolved it, and it is waiting for the next moment to come back again.
Spiritual bypassing is a term that was coined by psychotherapist John Welwood in around 1984. He saw that a lot of sincere seekers who have dedicated their life are using these spiritual rationalizations to bypass, to stop meeting that emotion which needs to be met and dealt with. And how do you know you’ve not resolved it? Because it will show up again. If you would have resolved it, it wouldn’t have come up again.
A person who’s materialistic and thinks about money, they don’t censure themselves, right? They go after it. They go after a career or they go after materialistic pursuits. There is no one saying this is bad, this is shameful, this is guilt, this is not right. And then there is no third layer where they justify or they relieve this feeling by saying, you know, everything is transient or I’m whole or whatever that rationalization might be. It’s not happening in their head; it’s happening in your head.
Layering the Current Reality
Now we need to investigate why this is happening in our heads, and as seekers, we all struggle with it: money, ambition, security, financial obligations.
For example, say you were supposed to receive a check, maybe from a client, maybe from your employer, maybe your salary. And you know it might not arrive. There’s some problem, and it will go back in your head. There’ll be an arithmetic in your head: will it arrive or not? How much will I get? And then you will relieve that thought. Spiritual people will relieve that thought by saying, oh, I’m above money, or I should not worry about this, or there would be shame about thinking about all these materialistic thoughts.
This is bypassing. You are bypassing the current reality of what you’re feeling. That feeling which is arising right now—whatever it might be, it might be for security or fulfillment or being whole—you’re layering it up.
Spirituality in the true sense means to be with it without any kind of stories, without any relief. And that’s where the courage comes in. Everyone looks for a way out of this pain, and that can take many forms. Relief is one: Netflix, or doom scrolling, or gaming, or love, or sex, or drugs. Somehow you want out of that pain, out of that misery, discomfort, unease. And the whole point of being aware, of trying to find the truth, is to be in direct contact with it there where it’s raw, where it hurts.
Digging to the Bottom of Trauma
When you start going deeper, say just into a thought about security or money, when you investigate and go deeper and deeper, you will see so many threads come out of it: childhood traumas, a sense of being unworthy, a sense of not being enough, a sense of uncertainty clouding over you. There’ll be enormous threads which are lying at the bottom which are never explored. And unless you go deeper and explore and have full contact with these emotions completely…
So full contact means: I want money. I accept it. It’s okay. I don’t spiritualize it away. I don’t rationalize it away. I don’t say money is bad or I’m a renunciate. I fully touch it. I feel it. I understand what it brings up in me.
When you can have that contact with difficult emotions—money is one of the emotions you all would carry—your own emotions, your own traumas, your own fears… For some it might be the fear of death, for some loneliness, for some, as Pooja said, it might be a difficult breakup. We all are carrying that within us. And we do dress up things in spiritual language, but ultimately, you see, we’re looking for relief on some level psychologically from this weight that we are carrying inside.
Bypassing as Sophisticated Avoidance
What if relief was not an option? Just as a thought experiment, what if relief was not an option? What would you do?
Some people say if for whatever reason you were not able to achieve what you want, maybe monetarily or a life that you wanted, you will spiritualize it away and say, “These people, they’re just running after money and career and fame. You know, they’re unconscious, but I am conscious.” But underneath, that pain is still there. There is a wound. If the wound wasn’t there, if it was resolved, everything would be fine. And you would know if that wound is still there or not, if it has resolved or not.
That fear, that pain or suffering or whatever you call it, that longing—if it is not resolved, then instead of spiritualizing it away or avoiding it… Spiritual bypassing is a sophisticated way of avoidance. It is avoidance, but now it’s dressed up in a lot of spiritual language.
Another very simple bypassing, very, very, very simple, which I did when I was seeking, was I wanted to become a monk and leave everything. Why? Because the world was too much. Relationships are too much, family is too much, earning a livelihood is too much, paying taxes is too much. But if I become a monk, well, I don’t have to think of any of these things. It is bypassing. On some level it is noble, on some level it is spiritual. But then, is it really spiritual or am I avoiding and running away? And this is a question for you to answer.
How do you know you are? It’s if the trigger comes back again and again. That means it’s not resolved, even though you might have censured it or spiritualized it, and at that moment it’s gone. It is still lurking in your subconscious mind.
The Illusion of the Unruffled Image
Another form of spiritual bypassing which I’ve seen a lot has to do with anger—anger, rage. We are afraid of this emotion when it comes up; it’s very intense. And once it comes, once we are off that cliff, we think, why did I get angry? You know, after meditating for 30 years or reading the Bhagavad Gita or the Buddha or J. Krishnamurti for years, why did I get triggered?
And there is shame to it. You get unsettled because in your mind there is an image of you which should not behave like this, which should not be rattled, which should not be disturbed or get angry because of whatever you have read and whatever wisdom you have accumulated. But this anger is here, it’s there, right? It’s a fact. That wisdom is also a fact. As I said, you know, the gap between the spiritual retreat and the supermarket—both are real and you’re stuck in between.
What is the solution to this? Any solution to this gap, to this in-between person who is trying to bridge these two states of clarity and confusion and pain and happiness? What if the gap was not real?
We say there is a gap between this thought and this thought, and this state and this state, and this life and spiritual life, and material life or whatever, whatever. What if that gap is not real? What if that gap itself is created by the mind? Is that a possibility? It is so. This gap is created by what we are identifying with, with the conditioning that we have.
Meeting What Is
The courage we need is to meet “what is.” By “what is,” I mean whatever arises in the moment, completely and totally without a story, without rationalizing it away, without any spiritual belief system. Be in complete contact with it, even though part of you wants to run away from it or part of you feels that this thought, this emotion might consume me.
Especially with fear and anxiety, you’ll have that feeling that, you know, this emotion or thought will kill me. It’s too intense. I just can’t bear it, I can’t be with it. And then you look for a relief; you look for a way out.
Now the courage is, can you sit with it? Can you be with it completely without bypassing it, without the avoidance, without a story? Because until you do it, it’s not resolved—it will come back again in a different form.
And freedom means what? We all are looking for freedom. All of you are here because there is something in you which wants to understand the truth, wants to understand the truth of your being, wants to understand reality. And that can be had only when you develop this capacity of meeting “what is” as it is.
I’m feeling envious about this person’s wealth and beauty and success. I’m not going to spiritualize it away. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, I’m neither saying it’s a bad thing. I’m not building any stories around it. I let it pass through me. I let it be. I let it take me to wherever it wants to take me, knowing I’m not the thought.
This is a very important thing on the back of the mind: you’ll have to understand you’re none of these thoughts that are arising. You’re none of the states of mind that are arising. You’re none of this conditioning. So knowing that, knowing that it’s just a thought, can I let it express itself completely?
Accepting the Triggered Self
Another issue that seekers go through is, you know, sex and physical desires for love or wanting or intimacy. But when it arises, instead of having all those stories and shame around it, can I accept that yes, this is what I am—not the person in the retreat.
The person in the retreat is more of a curated you. It’s a fact. If you see that, it’s a curated you because you’re kind of sealed away from the troubles, from the challenges of your everyday life. There’s no taxman there, there’s no neighbor disturbing you, your family is not calling you, your parents are not triggering you. So of course you are a different person. It’s so easy.
But what about this person who is getting triggered all the time? That’s also you. And you have to have the courage to accept it and not hanker after this person who you were or are in the retreat, because that’s gone. That was in the retreat. You are here. And here is what is, with all the complications of life.
And I accept that’s a problem with seekers. You can’t go back. You can’t go back even if you want to. You know there is a life of hedonistic pleasures and whatnot, but on some level you have seen the truth and it might be painful, it might be different. And being conscious, being awakened requires a lot of attention, energy, and the capacity to go through all these things. It’s not an easy path. It’s not all roses.
I call it the brochure of enlightenment. The brochure of enlightenment has all this beautiful marketing jargon—it’s enlightenment, the awakened, and everything is roses. But the path goes through all these complications and everyday questions.
Dissolving the Labels of Life
So your question was first: is there two parts to life, material and spiritual? I’ll start with that. Okay, let me unpack this.
First, what you are saying is very true, and I realized this later in my life and I’ve written a book around it. There is no spiritual life, no material life. There is just life. These are labels created by the mind and they are very destructive labels. Mind my words. Material people don’t have that separation; for them, that’s just life. You know, there’s no question of separating it and they’re fine. Spiritual people suffer because you have separated things into two parts: there’s the spiritual, there’s the not spiritual. This action is spiritual, a pub is not spiritual, a retreat is spiritual. You know, all those conceptions in your mind. Or street love is not spiritual, just to be provocative.
So we are dividing things up, and that division is here. Life is not coming up and saying, “I’m spiritual.” This glass doesn’t come up and say, “I’m spiritual or material.” It’s just a glass. Your conception of it is in your mind and you’re dividing up things.
Of course, that’s one of the teachings I’m trying to bring to all the seekers because I made that mistake for a long time. Now, what that did was it made me suffer a lot. Also, it created a division between my work, money, my financial responsibility, and the spiritual aspiration. So once I get rid of that distinction, either everything is a label… If you can’t do that, another approach is everything is spiritual.
If you see the devotional path, what they do is they say everything is spiritual, everything is God. But then we come, people who are intellectual like us, and we say that is also a label. And we go one step beyond and we see things as labels. So the easier path is instead of dividing both, I have one concept which says everything is X, everything is spiritual or consciousness. And then when you want to go even deeper and go to the root of it, you see even spirituality is a concept, it’s a label. It’s not that. And that’s a true way of seeing this. But if you can’t go there, even taking everything as spiritual is far better than dividing it into two parts. So that answers your first query.
Simplifying the Intellectual Mind
The second thing that Ravi raised up is: is this all required, or is this itself stopping you from seeing things as they are?
You see, spiritual people who think a lot, they’re tortured on some level because they do think a lot. That’s one of the traits of seekers, or of people who are intellectual and philosophical. They try to find answers, and sometimes the intellect itself creates more problems than it solves. Too much reading, too much understanding, too many questions.
How can we simplify all of that? Is there a way of simplifying that confusion, that endless chatter in the mind? Is there a simple way to resolve that?
I think one of the issues which we all have is: I should not be perturbed. I should not feel X or Y, I should be calm and peaceful or spiritual or whatever. That thought itself stops you from meeting the waters as they are on some level. My constant want for happiness, balance, peace, and calm is a denial of what is happening right now. Because right now, what is happening is happening. It might be something which I do not want or do not like. And can I develop this capacity of, instead of avoiding it or bypassing it through different ways, can I develop the capacity to be with it? Because without being with it, there’s no question of transformation.
Welcoming the Suffering
So one question that you raised, Pooja, in the beginning was: can I get more insights into the suffering, the pain? And my advice to you—because you probably do not have the entire background of searching and seeking and reading, which is good in a way, because you see this, Ravi has done all that and he regrets it on some level and says maybe I was better off without it—so you’re not in a bad place.
If you want to make sure that you don’t go through it again, you’ll have to learn to welcome this suffering. You don’t want to end it. On some level, everyone wants to end that suffering and discomfort, right? And that’s why we go into spirituality and meditation and reading and whatnot.
I’m saying something different. I’m saying, can I go into that suffering without the thought of wanting to end it? Because then I can meet it as it is, not with the filter of avoiding it or running away from it or ending it. Even when I go with that thought, I cannot meet it because I’ve already decided that this is not good, I don’t want it, I want it to end, I want it to go away—and that’s why I’m meeting it.
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]]>Compassion Guided by Wisdom
Today we are going to talk about compassion, and there are some stories in Buddha’s life which are not very widely known, which paint a picture of compassion that is very different from the picture that a seeker carries, or what we have been taught about compassion.
The ideal picture of compassion is an awakened being, a saint who is always available, who never says no, who keeps their doors open no matter how demanding it is.
Seekers try to follow that ideal in different forms. In this vision, in this perception, love means permanent availability, patience means endless tolerance, and compassion means smiling and letting go even if the chaos around you keeps growing.
But Buddha did not teach that. He taught compassion that also followed wisdom and intelligence, and he taught that there were moments when the most compassionate act is to step back.
So I’ll talk about the three times when Buddha walked away. Generally, an enlightened being is not supposed to walk away, right? But the Buddha did.
These stories will show the different forms compassion can take. They also talk about the limits of persuasion and what happens when truth refuses to become sentimental.
The First Story: Upaka
The first story is about Upaka.
This is when Buddha had freshly attained enlightenment, and he was walking towards Sarnath to find his previous group of fellow disciples who had been with him. On the way, the Buddha met a person named Upaka.
When Upaka saw Buddha, he saw something in him. He saw his face, the clarity, the light, the brightness, the calmness.
Upaka was also a spiritual seeker, so he asked Buddha, “Who is your teacher? Whose teaching do you follow?” etc.
The Buddha answered with one of the most outrageous sentences. He said, “I have no teacher. I am awake through my own seeing.” And he said, “There is no one like me.”
Upaka looked at him. He could see there was something in Buddha, heard his words, shook his head, and said, “It may be so.”
And he walked away.
Now this was the first person who met Buddha after his enlightenment.
You see, Buddha didn’t follow him. Buddha didn’t ask him to stay and understand the teaching. He just let the man go.
So Buddha is standing on the road holding the most precious knowledge in human history, and the first man he encounters says, “OK, that’s what it is.”
He turns around and goes, and Buddha doesn’t stop him.
That encounter ends.
This matters a lot for spiritual seekers because, on some level, we feel that we need to share this teaching, this wisdom, this peace, this treasure that we have found.
That’s what a compassionate person would do, right?
We also feel that if someone loves us, they will listen. We think, “If our compassion is pure enough, if our truth is virtuous enough, the other person should recognize it.”
But you can stand in front of someone carrying freedom, and they can still turn away. That is their free will.
It is not uncompassionate to let them go.
Even in your everyday life—with your spouse, your partner, your colleagues—there are situations where you think, “This is the right thing to do.”
Buddha knew this was the right path, but Upaka was not ready to receive it.
Buddha understood that situation, that condition. He made a judgement, and he let him go.
In daily life, there might be situations where you have all the compassion and goodness in your heart to help someone.
If someone is not ready to receive it, you’re not becoming unkind or moving away from the path of love if you let them go and allow them to take their own path.
Now this is something that is a bit contradictory, or at least not what a spiritual seeker usually thinks about helping others.
For us, helping means we should always be available, and we should try our best to help someone, and that is compassion.
Then why did Buddha just let the first person walk away?
This first story teaches the hard lesson that a person has the right to say no to you.
The second lesson is that walking away is not always abandonment.
The Second Story: Devadatta
Now the second story is also very interesting.
Buddha’s cousin, Devadatta, was always against him, and he tried three times to kill Buddha.
This is really strange.
For every teacher who has walked the earth, or is walking the earth, there is someone who will be completely against them—like Jesus or Buddha.
Even Ramana Maharshi’s first manager eventually turned completely against him. Earlier he was a great disciple, but later he spread a lot of rumours about Ramana Maharshi as well.
So anyway, the second story is about Devadatta.
Devadatta tried to kill Buddha three times. He was unsuccessful, so he came up with a very cunning plan.
He wanted to divide the Sangha. He wanted to create division.
So he came to the Sangha when everyone was present with a proposal.
That proposal was to add five more rules which would increase the austerity and supposed purity of all the monks.
These five rules included things like: monks must dwell in the forest until death, they must live only on alms gathered by begging, they must sleep at the foot of trees, etc.
On the surface, these rules sound very holy and virtuous.
He was increasing austerity. He was trying to make the monks purer.
Why would you object to a man asking for greater purity?
Of course, that was the design, because Devadatta knew Buddha would refuse.
Buddha was always for the Middle Path.
So when Devadatta came up with this proposal, Buddha said no.
He refused.
Another lesson here is that saying no is part of compassion as well.
If he had said yes simply to please Devadatta, or to adhere to that symbolism of the compassionate being who always says yes and never draws boundaries, he would not have been acting wisely.
Instead, he drew a clear boundary.
He said no.
When he said no, Devadatta stood up in front of the community and declared, “I am the person who is holding true austerity and virtue. Who is going to follow me?”
He walked out with a couple of hundred monks behind him.
The Sangha split into two parts.
If Buddha had accepted those conditions, of course the Sangha would not have broken apart.
But Buddha’s refusal became the cause of that division.
Can you see the difficult choices here?
One choice is: I agree to his demands and keep the Sangha together.
Or I say no, maintain my boundaries, and that results in division.
These are very practical examples.
While Buddha was running the Sangha, he was dealing with everyday conflict and everyday situations that were not black and white. They involved real trade-offs.
Buddha stood up and did what he believed was right.
He would not purchase unity at the cost of abandoning the path he had taught.
Compassion will sometimes refuse.
Compassion will sometimes say no.
And that is OK.
As seekers, you will sometimes have to choose between being good and looking good—between living truthfully and maintaining an image of virtue.
Buddha was already seen as a symbol of austerity and virtue.
Devadatta wanted to push that image even further.
Similarly, you may have an image of yourself as a good person, a compassionate person, a kind person.
That label—that identity—can become a trap.
Then you have to keep up that image because, if you don’t, people might turn against you or leave you.
The same thing happened with Buddha.
Buddha said no, and people left because they had an image of him as someone who should always be more virtuous, more austere, or whatever they imagined.
They felt Buddha was not living up to those expectations.
So they left.
And that’s OK.
Sometimes people may think you’re not living up to the identity they have created for you.
They may leave.
And it is compassionate to let them go.
The Third Story: Expelling Monks from the Sangha
The third story is about Buddha expelling monks from the Sangha.
The Vinaya, the record of monastic discipline, states very clearly that Buddha actually expelled monks from the community.
This idea does not fit the image of Buddha that many people carry—the Buddha of the monasteries, the garden statue, the smiling Buddha, the calm Buddha, the Buddha who forgives everything and asks nothing.
If he was throwing people out, doesn’t that go against forgiveness?
If someone broke a rule, wouldn’t a compassionate person simply forgive them rather than expel them?
Why did Buddha throw people out?
We want a Buddha who only forgives.
We want a Buddha who only includes.
We want a Buddha who always rehabilitates.
We want a Buddha who always keeps everyone inside the container, no matter the damage.
But Buddha did not follow this image or ideal that we have created.
He drew a line.
Not because compassion had ended.
Sometimes that line, that boundary, is compassion.
You will encounter these kinds of situations in your own life as well.
Of course, you have to understand that when Buddha did these things, there was no malice in his heart.
There was no anger or hatred.
He saw the situation, and he responded to it without labels such as compassion, love, or kindness.
He simply saw what was the right thing to do—what would bring about balance and harmony.
Then he took that action, even though that action seemed uncompassionate or appeared to go against compassion.
Even in your everyday life, you will encounter situations where you’ll have to use wisdom and intelligence, and it’s OK to draw boundaries.
Sometimes it is OK.
The main thing is to look into your own heart.
Do you have malice?
Do you have hatred?
Do you have anger?
Or is the space inside you gentle and loving?
You can be very loving inside, but your outward actions and demeanour might appear cold or uncompassionate.
That is fine.
That’s what Buddha did.
His heart was full of love and compassion, but the form that compassion took externally was very different from the image of compassion that we carry in our minds.
So instead of holding on to these identities—and we spiritual people do hold on to these identities, like “I’m endlessly forgiving,” “I never give up,” “I’m always compassionate”—it is better to let go of those identities.
Meet the moment as it is.
Then take the actions that restore harmony and balance, not only in your own life but also in the lives of those around you.
The post Three Times the Buddha Walked Away – Hardest Lessons in Compassion – Podcast 26 appeared first on Rajiv Agarwal.
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