Constant Inner Practice_

 

Mulla Nasrudin once fell in a river, and he was just going to be drowned. He was not a religious man, but suddenly, at the verge of death, he cried loudly, "Allah, God, please save me, help me, and from today, now I will pray and I will do whatsoever is written in the scriptures."

While he was saying this "God help me", he caught hold of a branch hanging over on the river. And when he was grabbing and, coming toward safety, he felt relaxed, and he said, "Now it is okay. Now you need not worry." He told again to God, "Now you need not worry. Now I am safe." Suddenly the branch broke, and he fell again. So he said, "Can't you take a simple joke?"

But this is how our minds are moving. Attachment will make you more and more miserable; preference will make you more and more happy. Patanjali is against attachment, not against preference. Everybody has to prefer. You may like one food, you may not like another. But this is just a preference. If the food of your liking is not available, then you will choose the second food and you will be happy because you know the first is not available, and whatsoever is available had to be enjoyed. You will not cry and weep. You will accept life as it happens to you.

But a person who is constantly attached with everything never enjoys anything and misses always. The whole life becomes a continuous misery. If you are not attached, you are free; you have much energy; you are not dependent on anything. You are independent, and this energy can be moved into inner effort. It can become a practice. It can become abhyasa. What is abhyasa? Abhyasa is fighting the old habitual pattern. Every religion has developed many practices, but the base is this sutra of Patanjali.

For example, whenever you get angry, make it a constant practice that before entering into the anger you will take five deep breaths. A simple practice, apparently not related to anger at all. And somebody can even laugh, "How it is going to help?" But it is going to help. Whenever you feel anger is coming, before you express it take five deep exhalations, inhalations.

What it will do? It will do many things. Anger can be only if you are unconscious, and this is a conscious effort. Just before anger you consciously breathe in and out five times. This will make your mind alert, and with alertness anger cannot enter. This will not only make your mind alert, it will make your body also alert, because more oxygen in the body, the body is more alert. In this alert moment, suddenly you will feel that the anger has disappeared.

Secondly, your mind can be only one-pointed. Mind cannot think of two things simultaneously; it is impossible for the mind. It can change from one to another very swiftly, but it cannot have two points together in the mind simultaneously. One thing at a time. Mind has a very narrow window; only one thing at a time. So if anger is there, anger is there. If you breathe in and out five times suddenly the mind is with breathing. It has diverted. Now it is moving in a different direction. And even if you move again to anger, you cannot be the same again because the moment has been lost.

Gurdjieff says that, "When my father was dying, he told me to remember only one thing: 'Whenever you are angry wait for twenty-four hours, and then do whatsoever you like. Even if you want to murder, go and murder, but wait for twenty-four hours.'"

Twenty-four hours is too much, twenty-four seconds will do. Just the waiting changes you. The energy that was flowing towards anger has taken a new route. It is the same energy. It can become anger, it can become compassion. Just give it a chance.

So old scriptures say, "If a good thought comes to your mind, don't postpone it; do it immediately. And if a bad thought comes to your mind, postpone it; never do it immediately." But we are very cunning or very clever, we think. Whenever a good thought comes we postpone it.

Mark Twain has written in his memoirs that he was listening to a priest in a church for ten minutes. The lecture was just wonderful, and he thought in his mind that, "Today I am going to donate ten dollars. The priest is wonderful. This church must be helped!" He decided for ten dollars he is going to donate after the lecture. Ten minutes more and he started thinking that ten dollars would be too much, five would do. Ten minutes more, and he thought, "This is not even worth five, this man."

Now he is not listening. He is worried about those ten dollars. He has not told anybody, but now is convincing himself that this is too much. "By the time", he says, "the lecture finished, I decided not to give anything. And when the man came before me to take the donations, the man who was moving, even I thought to take a few dollars and escape from the church!"

Mind is continuously changing. It is never static; it is a flow. If something bad is there, wait a little. You cannot fix the mind, mind is a flow. Just wait! Just wait a little, and you will not be able to do bad. If some good is there and you want to do it, do it immediately because mind is changing, and after a few minutes you will not be able to do it. So if it is a loving and kind act, don't postpone it. If it is something violent or destructive, postpone it a little.

If anger comes, postpone it even for five breaths, and you will not be able to do it. This will become a practice. Every time anger comes, first you breathe five times in and out. Then you are free to do. Go on continuously. It becomes a habit; you need not even think. The moment anger enters, immediately your mechanism starts breathing fast, deep. Within years it will become absolutely impossible for you to be angry. You will not be able to be angry.

Any practice, any conscious effort, can change your old patterns. And this is not a work which can be done immediately; it will take time - because you have created your pattern of habits in many, many lives. Even in one life you can't change it-it is too soon.

My sannyasins come to me and they say, "When it will happen?" and I say, "Soon." And they say, "What do you mean by your 'soon', because for years you have been telling us 'soon'."

Even in one life it happens - it is soon. Whenever it happens, it has happened before its time because you have created this pattern in so many lives. It has to be destroyed, recreated. So any time, even lives, is not too late.

Someone insults you and you are pulled by his insult. You have moved without consulting your center. Without even for a single moment going back to the center and then moving, you have moved.

Abhyasa means inner practice. Conscious effort means, "Before I move out, I must move within. First movement must be toward my center; first I must be in contact with my center. There, centered, I will look at the situation and then decide." And this is such a tremendous, such a transforming phenomenon. Once you are centered within, the whole thing appears different; the perspective has changed. It may not look like an insult. The man may just look stupid. Or, if you are really centered, you will come to know that he is right, "This is not an insult. He has not said anything wrong about it."

I have heard...

Once it happened - I don't know whether it is true or not, but I have heard this anecdote - that one newspaper was continuously writing against Richard Nixon, continuously! - defaming him, condemning him. So Richard Nixon went to the editor and said, "What are you doing? You are telling lies about me and you know it well!" The editor said, "Yes, we know that we are telling lies about you, but if we start telling truths about you, you will be in more trouble!"

So if someone is saying something about you he may be lying, but just look again. If he is really true, it may be worse. Or, whatsoever he is saying may apply to you. But when you are centered, you can look about yourself also dispassionately.

Patanjali says that of these two, abhyasa - the inner practice - is the effort for being firmly established in oneself. Before moving into act, any sort of act, move within yourself. First be established there - even if for only a single moment - then your action will be totally different. It cannot be the same unconscious pattern of old. It will be something new, it will be an alive response. Just try it. Whenever you feel that you are going to act or to do something, move first within, because whatsoever you have been doing up until now has become robot-like, mechanical. You go on doing it continuously in a repetitive circle.

Just note down in a diary for thirty days - from the morning to the evening, thirty days, and you will be able to see the pattern. You are moving like a machine; you are not a man. Your responses are dead. Whatsoever you do is predictable. And if you study your diary penetratingly, you may be able to decipher the pattern - that Monday, every Monday, you are angry; every Sunday you feel sexual; every Saturday you are fighting. Or in the morning you are good, in the afternoon you feel bitter, by the evening you are against the whole world. You may see the pattern. And once you see the pattern then you can just observe that you are working like a robot. And to be a robot is what is the misery. You have to be conscious, not a mechanical thing.

Gurdjieff used to say that, "Man is machine, as he is. You become man only when you become conscious. And this constant effort to be established in oneself will make you conscious, will make you non-mechanical, will make you unpredictable, will make you free. Then someone can insult you and you can still laugh; you have never laughed before. Someone can insult you and you can feel love for the man; you have not felt that before. Someone can insult you and you can be thankful towards him. Something new is being born. Now you are creating a conscious being within yourself.

But the first thing to do before moving into act, because act means moving outward, moving without, moving toward others, going away from the Self. Every act is a going away from the Self. Before you go away, have a look, have a contact, have a dip into your inner being. First be established.

Before every moment, let there be a moment of meditation: this is what abhyasa is. Whatsoever you do, before doing it close your eyes, remain silent, move within. Just become dispassionate, non-attached, so you can look on as an observer, unprejudiced - as if you are not involved, you are just a witness. And then move!

One day, just in the morning, Mulla Nasrudin's wife said to Mulla that, "In the night, while you were asleep, you were insulting me. You were saying things against me, swearing against me. What do you mean? You will have to explain." Mulla Nasrudin said, "But who says that I was asleep? I was not asleep. Just the things I want to say, I cannot say in the day. I cannot gather so much courage."

In your dreams, in your waking, you are constantly doing things, and those things are not consciously done - as if you are being forced to do them. Even in your dreams, you are not free. This constant mechanical behavior is the bondage. So how to be established in oneself? Through abhyasa.

Sufis use continuously. Whatsoever they say, do; they sit, stand, whatsoever... Before a Sufi disciple stands, he will take Allah's name. First he will take God's name. He will sit, he will take God's name. An action is to be done - even sitting is an action - he will say, "Allah!" So, sitting, he will say, "Allah!" Standing he will say, "Allah!" If it is not possible to say loudly, he will say inside. Every action is done through the remembrance. And by and by, this remembrance becomes a constant barrier between him and the action - a division, a gap.

And the more this gap grows, the more he can look at his own action as if he is not the doer. Continuous repetition of Allah, by and by, he starts seeing that only Allah is the doer. "I am not the doer. I am just a vehicle or an instrument." And the moment this gap grows, all that is evil falls. You cannot do evil. You can do evil only when there is no gap between the actor and the action. Then good flows automatically.

Greater the gap between the actor and the action, more the good. Life becomes a sacred thing. Your body becomes a temple. Anything that makes you alert, established within yourself, is abhyasa.

 

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