Summary: In answering a question, emphasises the necessity of commitment to reach one’s goal; explains the nature of true freedom and that outer freedom can only be relative. Gives the example of the Buddha and his one-pointed commitment; speaks of the importance of working with and exceeding one’s limits. Lastly advises to develop a sense of humour and keep the mind relaxed.

A.: What does it mean to commit to something?

Commitment means to go the whole way until you reach your objective, your goal.

It is so with anything and everything that you may take up in your life, for example when you want to take to college for the study of any subject to acquire a degree you commit yourself, time and energy until it is done. That is to be committed but if you interrupt and leave your study giving up your set objective then you were not committed whatever may be the reason. If you say, ‘I will try for a few days and then I am off,’ that is not a commitment but a trial or a fancy – you are not going to complete whatever your objective is. Whenever you have an objective, you have to commit yourself to the objective, only then will you reach it.

It is with anything, even so with relationships – if you want to carry the relationship far, to a deeper level, then you have to commit yourself to that relationship under different circumstances even trying ones. If it is only going to be short-term or superficial, then it is not going to reach to where it deepens to something greater.

It is so too with sadhana: if you want to reach to some benefit you require a long-term commitment. There are short-term commitments for short-term goals and long-term commitments for long-term goals depending on the kind of goal. For some things it has to be very long before you are visibly benefited. Sadhana done for self-realisation, enlightenment, God-realisation is the ultimate goal of life and therefore requires lifetime commitment. ‘This moment I feel like it, the next moment I do not feel like it’ – that is not commitment. You are not going to get anywhere. No goals were ever accomplished on whims and fancy, small or big. One may feel, ‘Oh, I am going to get tied up to this place, I am going to lose my freedom.’ But it is the same with college and with everything for that matter. You have to spend time with it; you have to spend time in that place, in that environment, that is all – commitment.

For example, me: I am committed to doing this work. I would prefer many a time to be elsewhere. Even though there are many a time when I am disappointed, I am still committed. I have decided that I am going to commit myself to this, at least for this life. So I am committed, this is my personal approach to it. Without that – if I said on a whim, ‘Okay, now I am off’ – then this work does not go on. Commitment is all about consciously deciding, making the choice, and building your commitment.

It also takes a while before you develop your commitment. Sometimes one is not used to doing that, so you have to develop it. It also depends on your upbringing, conditionings and education. So if you are used to being whimsical and fanciful, if you have been brought up not being serious and respectful with things, not giving them the due importance they deserve, then it takes you a while before you can even develop your commitment. This happens to many people. It is always the case: if you want something to develop into something of importance then you have to keep to it setting aside the rest for a while. It is so. For example, I would love to take up my music again, my flute-playing, but I do not get time because I am doing this work, so I have left it to next life. If I have time I may and can take it up, but it is secondary in importance to the work we are doing and so it will wait, kept in cold storage, if I have to do this work. Otherwise I can on a whim say, ‘I want to take up my music so good-bye you guys and off you go, I have had enough of you!’ and finish with all this. No commitment. Of course the choice is always yours to make but then you have to decide. If you want to do this, then you have to make the choice that, ‘This is my priority in life.’

You have to understand your priorities. But then of course, if you believe you have only one life to live and many things to do on whim and fancy, you can only think in an uncommitted way moving rapidly from one thing to the next without getting anywhere deep and serious. I know I have had many lives in the past and I am going to have many in the future, for life to work out many things, so I can say, ‘Okay, music next life’ without disappointment. For me it is easy to think in this way, for many it may not be. They will say, ‘Oh, I am going to miss this, I am going to miss that’ – then they miss everything basically, because they cannot even do the thing they are in because the mind is always here and there. Here when it should be there and there when it should be here – never where it should be. The mind is untrained. A trained mind is a committed mind. You have to be focused, and to stay focused means to be committed. You have to carry on all the way, carry yourself to completion. If you do not complete then you may know of many things but only so much and superficially, you will never go deep. This seems to be the trend these days. That is why the Indian classical music teachers are quite unhappy with the way things are today and voicing their complaints because few are committed enough to carry their music sadhana or their practice to the level they would like them to, to be really proficient musicians because they want it at an instant, everything instant, like nescafe instant coffee and yet even that is not instant! This is today’s temperament actually. That is why there are teachers also who tempt people with instant enlightenment. There is no such thing! Those who got attracted by that, fifteen, twenty, thirty years down the road, are still waiting for this instant to happen. It was only a device to get you into sadhana to seek for it which you may have never done otherwise. So it may be a gimmick to catch today’s people because they are so fickle, you know: this moment they want to be here, next moment they want to be elsewhere. They just follow an impulse. But you have to go beyond that initial impulse to be committed to the thing you seek and carry it through, only then can you get somewhere and something out of it that is retained, sustained and permanent. Otherwise you get nothing or just a little and your infatuation and romance with it is over and so you move on to something else. So to whatever degree you have the commitment, to that degree you will develop yourself in that particular thing. If you take music for example, most people are satisfied with just cursory playing or to whatever level they can manage, and then they play, but they have not gone and do not go any further than that. They cannot until they commit themselves more to it.

A.: What scares me is to think of committing myself to something for such a long time, so I think maybe I should give it a try first. I feel a bit in the middle between a generation that used to study few subjects but in depth and another generation studying more subjects but not with the same depth. I feel I want to do many things but in depth.

For that you will have to commit yourself, whether working individually with a thing, one at a time or together, which will only take so much longer, and commit yourself in depth to each one. For example, here, you can do the cooking, then you can do the sandpapering, etc., there are many things here you can do out of necessity, simple and unglamorous though they may be. We believe in the diversity of things, we believe – and that is one of the teachings here – that you should develop and have as many skills and as much capacity as possible but at the same time all done as sadhana for self-discovery, enlightenment and God-realisation. This is our objective in life. It is not that this is not the case here, the only thing is that it has to have the basis in meditation and to develop being conscious, increasingly being more and more conscious in whatever you do – that is the objective. But the basis to that is your meditation, it is your approach to life and it is sadhana – so to first develop this sadhana. We encourage the development of capacities and the variety of skills in excellence which is an ongoing development. You can be a musician, you can be a painter, a cook, a carpenter, etc., but these are only the externals, incidentals and means to the thing that you should be grounded in – your sadhana. It should be seen as sadhana, it should not be just mere impulse that you take up until you are bored and fed up and then move to something else. This is the new generation, this is the complaint of most teachers, even so the music teachers. If you hear the teachers, they are always talking about this now: that the people are not keen to do sadhana, they do not want to commit themselves to doing a long study and practice. They do not respect it enough nor understand the need of long practice because they want in a very short time, if not immediately, if it is music, to play like the Master. It cannot happen: the Master has spent his whole lifetime doing that – how can you compare yourself to him? It does not work. And if they manage to play a little through some practice they immediately want to set up their own shop – it does not work! This is how it is happening now with everything. There is no devotion, there is no dedication and no appreciation of the commitment required.

A.: And what about freedom: what is the relationship between commitment and freedom?

Maybe you have not understood what freedom means. For example, if you take up again a subject like music then you have to commit yourself to that. Then you do not have the freedom to do something else. Your mind may say, ‘I do not feel like it today so I will not do any music today, I will do something else.’ And so you can just carry on and on – but for that day you have stopped doing music, so that day you have not progressed in music. For you to progress you would have to come back to it again and progressively become consistent, because without being consistent you cannot develop and become good at anything. You may kind of superficially know something – ‘Oh, yes! I know how to play this’ – but that is it and no more, whatever you managed with your practice up to that time. And so you may pick on anything on a whim but then you will have to look into yourself: is this waywardness and mere fancy, lack of commitment, lack of discipline? – All this makes for true freedom. Otherwise you just become a wayward person and you do not get very far. You may enjoy that kind of freedom, but it does not get you anywhere with anything. It just gets you ‘everywhere’, but it does not get you anywhere really in your skills, in your capacities, in your commitments. You cannot expect much development and improvement and after a while you may get tired of doing that also, and then maybe understand – life brings many lessons in this way. You will say, ‘Hey, if I want to do this, obviously I have to invest that kind of time and energy and that kind of commitment. If I do not, I will only know that much.’ That also is a progression over time, it is a development. You may begin with saying, ‘Okay, I do this much now and then take a break and have a little holiday, then come back,’ gradually developing your commitments, progressively increasing your practice in that way. You have to make it progressive, even commitments are progressive. But then you have to be consciously making this choice. That is why you have to understand your priorities; otherwise you do not become a musician, if it is music that you pursue. Only a few become musicians because of lack of commitment. Today it is increasingly like that. So the quality of the music depends on your virtuosity which depends on your commitment and practice, or your music remains of poor quality. People are doing that: they learn a little bit and suddenly they want to be on stage but their music will be of average quality because they have not gone further. It will have no depth, no soul. You have to see your limits, work with your limits – that is why I keep talking about exceeding your limit. Your capacity to work may have a limit beyond which it may start to get too much – so try to exceed that and then work with your freedom in that way, like taking little breaks and then coming back. That is the way to do it, so you develop it in that way.

(A long silence)

One has to decide for oneself, obviously. You may learn how to cook, but you may not be as good as a chef who has spent a long time cooking. You cannot equal that because of his or her commitment. It is all based on commitment and putting in the time and effort, which is sadhana, which is work. You will not be able to compare to that, and it is your personal choice. But the sadhana here is subjective with you the subject as the objective – while that is all objective. To be a musician, to be a cook, etc., is something that is external to the realisation of what you are which is subjective, although done in a certain way they could be a means to the subjective. Our sadhana is directly subjective, that is, the real subject, you. It requires you therefore to commit yourself to that kind of sadhana – and this requires a lot of time. Either you gradually build it over many lifetimes so you do a little in this lifetime, next life you do again, and you build it up like this, or if you have that kind of intensity, conscious choice, then you say, ‘No, what should I wait for, why should I do anything else? Because this is the very basis that governs my life and everything else, so I give it the priority that it deserves.’ So you decide. Somebody else cannot decide for you finally. Others can try to convince you about it, but ultimately it is you who will have to say yes or no to it – you will have to say it.

A.: I am always so insecure about my decisions that in the end I drop them. I let external situations lead me.

Ultimately that has to change. This is how it is for most people most times, actually. Most people are like that, that is why it is so important, this particular thing of being master of your own life is so important. Now you are basically slave to the outside – situations, environments, others, and so on – in your choices and decisions. Therefore this is so important – this particular thing which is all about you – that you become finally the decider and not the situation. Then you rule the situation instead of the situation ruling over you absolutely which is how life is lived ordinarily.

A.: I always thought that freedom was deciding…

It is all relative, outer freedom is all relative. It is never absolute. That freedom is situation specific which can change because things can change, situations can change, you know. You may want something in a certain way, but then the situation decides and sometimes – most times – situations are decided by somebody else… Where then is it your freedom to decide? Now for example, S. went to get a visa for six months but he got three – who decided? He did not, he would have preferred six months, but somebody sitting in some office somewhere decided, ‘No, we are not going to give you six months, we are going to give you only three months’ – finished! So the situation here and your freedom of choice to decide is governed by somebody else, and it could be unreasonable and even on a whim but you can do nothing about it except fret helplessly.

Where is the absoluteness of your freedom? It is all situational, time-bound and person-bound – all relative. Again the situation may be that you are born in Italy and that is why you need a visa to come here, if you were born here you would not need a visa. This is again a situation: geographical, national and racial one at that. The situation governs your life, so what freedom do you have? Now you would like to have the freedom to be here longer, but you cannot. Somebody else is deciding that. So what do you do? You have to accept it. Then you do whatever you can manage to do under those circumstances and situations. Can you change that situation and how much? You can think about it and try to change the situation to suit yourself, sometimes you manage sometimes you don’t, all relative, nothing absolute: with all situations it is like this. Some things you can manage to change, some things you cannot. Somebody else may manage a situation while you may not. It then comes to capacities, skills, reach, power – and whatever.

This is exactly how the Reality of the outer freedom is, simply put. To know that and to find what and who you truly are and to reach to that true inner freedom, the inner mastery, that is the prime objective of life. But most times people do not know that, and they continue life after life just being carried by the flow, by the tide created and limited most times by somebody else, enjoying their relative freedom unaware of the absolute freedom available to them within themselves. This is how it happens.

So – (laughing) what is freedom?

As long as things go your way you think that you are free, but the moment obstacles start to happen then you realise, ‘Hey, this is not really complete freedom.’ It is all relative, relative to the situation, relative to your own skills and capacities. So if you want to increase in freedom you have to increase inwardly. That is the first priority, then can follow all other priorities if need be, but that is the first and supreme priority. If you have that you have everything.

And it needs to be progressively pursued and developed, if not completely taken up at the outset because only then can you also improve exponentially and completely with increasing perfection in whatever you take up. So it is not that the variety of skills is denied you; it is not that you cannot be skilful in many other aspects. We in fact emphasise that you should be able to have as many skills as possible in the outside, but the first basic skill, the mother of all skills is to know yourself, on which your entire life should be founded. From there everything else follows. And besides that, while you are yet working towards self-knowledge and self-realisation, you can also have all the other skills as a means to and expressing of That. But then this skill of all skills, the supreme pursuit, is the priority; so you always give first priority to this while you yet do other things at times, because you cannot commit yourself completely yet. That needs to be developed also over time. But it has to be well thought out and really consciously done, otherwise that also becomes habitual.

There is the story of one of the disciples of the Buddha who had been with him for twenty-thirty years, now that is commitment one would say. But after twenty-thirty years he says to the Buddha, “I have had enough of you, I am going.” (Great laughter) And do you know what the Buddha said? He said, “How many lifetimes will you keep doing this? You have done this in the past – every time you come to this point you leave.” He had formed a habit of leaving. This is not twenty days or twenty minutes, this was twenty-thirty years…

A.: So it is a matter of exceeding the limit.

Yes, exceeding your personal limits, your personality, basically the conditionings of your mind and the way you have been.

It is a renewal and recrafting of yourself, basically a change of yourself so that you may commit yourself. It is different for different people, depending on their past. Some may have already done some preparation in the past. It is like this.

You see the Buddha’s life – You know the Buddha’s life? Really you do not know it?

You have a name like Ameeta, Shanti Ameeta. The ashram you come from is full of great names, they even have the Buddha Hall, and you see the Buddhas from there that are here! (Laughing) Everybody was a Buddha over there, and they used to sit in the Buddha Hall and they used to pronounce it ‘budda hall’. Budda means an old man actually. They say they did not get it actually: if they got it actually they may have got enlightened! But they were all looking for budda, so now they are getting old – (uproarious laughter) that is all they are getting. And being with them I also become budda! And my fault is my commitment, so it can have the negative side also, watch out! If you want to become a buddi, old woman, over here, be careful… Then it is better to run away!

So anyway, the Buddha left home at the age of twenty-nine. That was His commitment: he left his young wife; he left his six-month old child, Rahula. Somebody would say, ‘What about this commitment to family?’ But for Him that commitment to enlightenment had priority – this is an example – otherwise he could have easily meditated in the house. What house! He had a palace, he would have been the future king, he could do anything he liked. He could have easily said to his people, ‘I do not want to be disturbed for this amount of time, I need to meditate’ and made for himself a convenient and comfortable arrangement. He could have had it all. He could have been, like these people, (laughing) ‘Zorba the Buddha’, so much more, rather than just The Buddha. These people they were burning the candle on both sides but they ended up burning themselves, so now they are all burnt out. Look at them!

But the kind of intensity He had, it was developed through many lifetimes – so he just left. He wanted to know the truth about life, about Reality, where we have come from, where will we go. He wanted answers. He could have easily done it at home, but it is just indicative of his commitment, his intensity. I am not talking about imitating Him, for basically each one has his or her journey to make. I am talking about commitments. So He was very committed, he just could not stay at home. There was a blazing fire in Him awakened, a fire nobody and nothing could put out. His destiny to become the Buddha had come knocking on the door of his life.

So long as the mind continues to seek this and that while yet you do this, it is a compromise and a slow progress but it is a beginning and most people may have to begin in this way. So initially do that also which the mind asks for a while so the mind becomes quiet, then come back to this again and again, progressively developing the intensity for it. You have to develop it over time. For the Buddha there was no such thing: the moment he saw what he saw and the meaninglessness of life, immediately he decided, ‘I have to know the Truth.’ There was no other thought. His intensity was of the highest degree. He had to reach his destiny.

Now people are different, they have too many things in and on their minds that is why the teachers of music like Chaurasia and Jasraj are complaining. They made a Gurukula for music learning, but most people are just not committed because they have so many other things to do in their lives. If you cannot commit yourself to music and its practice then you cannot reach the level that the teachers have reached, how much ever you may wish for it. They want to do and be everything all at once without commitment to the required practice, and then they end up having girlfriends and boyfriends, and that takes up half of their time if not most of the time (laughing), because not only have you to decide for yourself what you want but for the other also! So instead of carrying yourself you have to carry two: both are carrying each other. Not that it should be so but it only increases the problems. You would have thought when people come together it would reduce the problems, because you would share the problems, but most times it ends up creating more problems for each other. (Great laughter) And in all this you hope to develop skills, especially difficult ones like music and the most difficult one of meditation and self-mastery! Good luck! You will need it and lots of it and even magic if you can get it, for without practice and commitment you are not going to get it! You can wish for them as much as you like! Wishing does not require much practice but no wish-fulfilling tooth-fairy is going to be of any help even if you were to offer all your teeth and anyway that is what you reluctantly helplessly do and lose in the end when old age catches up with you with nothing to show for it. So anyway it is all a working out, nothing is denied you – but it is a working out. How much you invest in it that much you will gain from it. This is so with everything, but that choice has to be made; however you make it, whether you make it over time, slowly and gradually, quickly, or right away like the Buddha. Buddha decided right away, no hesitation, it was instantaneous– “I am going.” Very rare, those are very rare occasions in the history of humankind, rare things, rare person. He could have thought about what will happen to him, thinking of the future – ‘Will I get, will I not get? Will I lose my life and time without getting anywhere? I could do so many other things.’ But He doesn’t. He did not know he would become the Buddha; he was only Siddhartha the prince. He went into the unknown: that requires great strength of mind, but that is developed over time with practice. It is so with anything: if you want to be an achiever you need inner strength, and that has to be developed.

That is what we are doing, this sadhana is all about that. You have to become strong inwardly and that comes from commitment. Without commitment you cannot grow strong. And so it is with Siddhartha, that is why he could hold on. He did not know where he was going. His destiny was leading his steps. He was giving up a luxurious and comfortable existence of one who would be king: he leaves everything and everybody and walks away barefoot, in simple clothes. He did not know where he was going – (jokingly) neither did he consult a travel agent nor did he carry a sleeping bag with him – where was he going to rest his head? No money, no security, nothing, just walks off, to make the most difficult journey of anyone’s life. Wow! He is already awake! Destiny awaits him. Enlightenment awaits Him. If you can just visualise this then you would know what commitments are. Just going out into the unknown, just like that, He has exceeded himself; he has exceeded everything that is finite. He is really free, he is already free at that moment – enlightenment will follow. It is not about freeing Himself from the wife because she is a nag, or escaping all the responsibilities of his life in the world because he is a weak man. No, it is nothing of the kind. In fact He takes on the responsibility of the world rather than just that of a small family, a small principality and a small kingdom. That is why He is a great man and therefore his achievement was great. Even after thousands of years He is still remembered. People die like flies otherwise, mosquitoes and flies, and nobody remembers them. They have not done anything, rather most times they have created or added more problems in the world; the world increasingly is a worse place to live in because of them!

A Rinpoche – Rinpoche means teacher in Tibetan – was telling the Americans that were there, “The westerners are in many places at once, (laughing) that is why they do not get very far.” This moment they get very excited about something and they want to do that but then they cannot keep it going, next moment they are led away by something else. This is what happens. They move on when something else attracts them. Modern youth all over have now become like this. It is so even in the East and in India now, maybe even more so. But the East had a tradition where one understood the commitment to sadhana. Sadhana means disciplined practice, and it could be lifetimes of practice because you are committed to your objective and therefore you could enter deep into it, not just superficially. You respected it, you revered it and you worshipped it. Now there is no worship, there is no attitude of that kind. Most times, if not almost always, it is a wishful whim and fancy. Therefore everything has become profane, not profound. If you want to really find the profundity of things then you have to stand committed until you achieve it, however long it may take. That is your worship. Your practice and your commitment is your worship. You must see it as that.

And see the Buddha: he is not even thinking in terms of long-time or short-time, he is going into the unknown, inside and outside, – ‘This is it, even if I were to die trying.’ With this commitment He sits under the Aśwattha – the Peepal tree is called the Aśwattha tree in Sanskrit – he says, “I am not going to get up from here: even if I die trying I am going to seek it.” That requires great commitment. And He attains it. So this is developed through many lifetimes; He has depth. Today in the world there is not much depth rather there is much superficiality.

Yes, you should be able to be like that in all things, in all purposes, but that is a quality of your being, you see. Once you have developed it, if you take up anything you will seek it in depth because that is your basic nature. It is not by doing many things that you will become deep. You will be touching many things but you may not be deep. But if you have discovered your depth then you can take up anything and everything, you will be deep in it. You see, I have never studied architecture, I have never studied carpentry, I have not done these things, but you ask M. and the other construction workers: I have an insight into all these things. S. has done carpentry all his life, but I can still teach him a few things about it. This is why in the Indian culture this is called Mahāvidyā, the mother of all knowledge, and all the other branches of knowledge are subsidiary to this. They are its offspring. And with it, if you were to take up anything – music, art, academics, driving, cooking, etc., whatever, – it is so much easier and quicker to learn those things.

So it does not mean you stop the variety of learning other skills, that is not so, but to understand the place of commitment, in anything for that matter, is indispensable for success. You will not go far in anything if you do not commit yourself to it. But that is your choice and a choice you have to make. I mean, you can decide, ‘Okay, no, I want to spend only one month on this.’ Yes, that may be your choice. So you have one month of commitment and therefore only that much of development. But if you were to do anything that requires, say, one year of study and you only do one month, at the end of it you will not get any diploma or degree. For that you have to do one year and you have to pass an exam.

That is why I keep saying, do some and do a little more, each time, so then you will increase in everything, exceeding yourself. One always works or does whatever up to the point of one’s comfort level. To go a little more than that means becoming uncomfortable, and no one likes that but in life if you want to increase in something you will always have to exceed the limits of your comfort zone and into levels of discomfort. You have to exceed the comfort level if you are to increase your capacities, whether it be at the physical level, emotional level, whether it be at the mental level, whether it be at the spirit level, whatever it may be. If you want to be comfortable then you remain within your present limits and capacities but then you do not go further, you do not increase. Say if you take up for example the yogāsanas, postures, now you can only manage so much of the posture, but if you want to increase you have to put in the effort and extend yourself further. That is why it is called extension. You have to extend, then you increase; but when you extend there will be some discomfort. For being more you have to break out of your comfort zone, and for that what do you require? Your commitment: ‘I want to extend myself so I will have to commit myself to doing more.’ If you say, ‘No, I want to keep it comfortable,’ then you stay there. If you say, ‘I cannot manage,’ then you stay wherever you are: you will not go any further. You are not extending yourself, you are comfortable. Again, it is your choice. You want to remain within that comfort zone. Fine, no one can stop you. But you will not grow more, you will not increase.

Life does though, because life is there for a certain reason, a destination to make: it will make you uncomfortable. It is good it makes you uncomfortable, because it will make you extend yourself. (Laughing) That is why it is better to decide by yourself beforehand, otherwise again situations will decide for you. That is why Life is considered Mother; Nature is considered Mother because she is always trying to push you to grow more.

You can see it in the animals, you can see it in the birds. The mother bird pushes the fledgling bird out of the comfort zone of her nest. The fledgling does not want to leave the nest because she loves being with the mother, she feels secure, she feels comfortable. The nest is there, so safe, so secure, so comfortable – food is given in the beak, no effort is required; it is so comfortable and warm, so cosy. And left to herself she does not want to fly to reach and taste the joy of that great freedom of flight that awaits her, which she was born for, because she wants to remain in the comfort zone of the nest. But the mother knows what it is to fly, for flight is life for the bird while remaining in the comfort of the nest is death. What does the mother do? She pecks and pushes her out of the nest. The fledgling resists taking to the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable but the mother is insistent and keeps pecking at her until she makes the jump out of the comfort zone of the nest and takes flight, discovering her wings and soaring into the sky of infinite joy. That is the thing to understand. Otherwise she would have been very comfortable, she would have remained and died a comfortable little fledgling, but no more than that – no more than that. Somebody with average intelligence would say, ‘How cruel this mother is,’ but she is not. She is breaking the fledgling out of her comfort zone and pushing her out into the insecure and the unknown – but then she flies into infinity. She finds a greater freedom, a greater joy, a greater life – otherwise she would never.

Of course it is a working out, so it is an ongoing process, but you have to understand the principle behind it and that is being conscious. Then you can make conscious choices, conscious decisions. That is why a disciple once asked his Master, “If there are two paths leading to the same place which one should I take?” The Master said, “Take the difficult one, not the easy one; because you grow in the difficult one, not in the easy one.” The time comes when you realise this and you put yourself into difficult moments so that you may grow. Look what I did, I put myself in this business! And because I have this temperament of standing by my commitment, when I decide on something then I stick with it to a fault, you may say. Now I say, ‘Oh God, what have I done?!’ I would like to do music, I would like to dance, I would like to be a dancer for I love Bharatnatyam. I would like to be elsewhere when these guys are in their bad moods. (Laughing)

Why do I have to suffer this? Why do I have to construct all this when I could roam free in the mountains whenever I feel like? I required no roof over my head when I lived on my own, but now I am involved in construction so people can have a roof over their heads to do their sadhana.

So, that is my commitment. Now I am caught and I cannot leave because my nature is such that I cannot give up my commitment. So I say, okay, when this body goes this commitment goes, that is fine. For this body this commitment is there, so I will do it. Next life I will never get caught, whether it is the computer mouse that people keep breaking, or somebody is banging the pots, or somebody has run away with the mobile. I was not even bothering about my own food. I lived like that, I was so free – not just inner, outer too – not dependent on anything outside. Now I have to be worried about who is eating what, and whether people have enough food; besides somebody is worried because they are getting too much chilli to eat, somebody is saying he has diarrhoea while somebody else is saying he has a wind problem and is constipated. I was never bothered about and by these things for my own self, it is amazing – and then not to get any thanks for it also! How many people would stand this and stay? They would have left long time back, especially one who has lived like I have. But I stand committed, I said I would take this job, I decided and I am going to stay there till it is required. I will be the last person standing.

(Looking into his water mug) I got a fly in my soup. (Laughing) Can you please call the manager? There is a cockroach in my soup! You know the joke? There was this fellow, he got a cockroach in his soup, so he called the waiter, ‘Come here! What is this cockroach doing in my soup?’ The waiter after looking in said, ‘It is doing backstroke!’ (Uproarious laughter) Then you have to develop a lot of humour. If you decide to stay here for a period of time you have to have humour, otherwise it is better to run away, I tell you!

So basically sadhana is all about developing our being, our depths and our heights. And then you have everything and you can be everything, all the things you want to be. But this sadhana deals with you, it is totally subjective. Then that will reflect in whatever you do outside, whatever it may be. So it is a basis of all the other things, this is to be understood. Therefore it requires the first priority. That is how it used to be in this culture, the education began like this. This was the first thing taught to the child, and then they could be whatever else afterwards. They could take up as many things as they liked, but this was the basis of their existence. That is why Buddha gave that the priority over all else. So live everything but keep this as the basis, keep this as the first. And again, as I said, it is a process, so you have to develop it over time. Your mind will come in, you have to work it out – sometimes you have to please the mind also. Ordinarily everybody is pleasing the mind, no? The mind says, ‘Do this,’ and you do it. You always go with your mind; you never go against your mind. Only here you have to do this, then it gets uncomfortable and (laughing) the mind gets very upset and if you identify with the mind then you get upset.

It is a really horrible place, I tell you. I do not know how these guys are hanging around; they were used to so much freedom of pleasures. Now they have ended up in a dry hole! (Great laughter) That is why I have developed the sense of humour: that is the only way to keep them smiling. So I have gained from that: my humour has developed, actually I always had it, I came prepared in anticipation of this. Although it does not need much: when you look at them you want to laugh actually, because how much would you want to cry anyway? I decided it is better to laugh than to cry, otherwise I would be crying all day. It is better to laugh all day, it is healthier!

Do not worry too much about it, because when you start taking this commitment idea too seriously then the mind gets very worried. Just relax and take each moment as it comes, that is the best way. Otherwise the mind will create all kinds of anxieties. You have to be cleverer than the mind. If you start thinking how long and of everything that will be required of you, it will get very tedious and bothersome even before you start and you won’t last very long. That is why I say not to think about commitment; just say, ‘I am staying for a while.’ That is why you have to be very clever. Then the mind says, ‘Okay, it is not for too long, yeah, I can go whenever I feel like it, I am free.’ You agree and say, ‘Yes, you are very free; you can go right now if you like.’ ‘No, no, no, please stay,’ the mind will say! (Laughing) This is reverse psychology; you have to do it, you have to be clever. You have to be smart, but that’s the problem: you guys are not very smart, even though you think otherwise. But for that first you have to realise you are not the mind. Only then will you learn to be smarter than the mind. If you become the mind then you cannot be, because you have become the mind! You cannot get smarter than it.

Just relax, enjoy life and do your sadhana – no problem. Do not get into the kind of words like ‘commitment’ and things like that. Just keep these words out! (Laughing) It is all right for academia, for discussion, not for reality. We can discuss it, but you do not have to consider it important enough to make it part of your thinking reality. The less you think the better it is! Only those should think who know how to think! Needless to say you people do not in any way come in that category, even though you may think so. That is the important thing, then it goes easy. I also have to learn this because I have taken it too seriously – this commitment and everything – that is why I am still hanging around. If I did not take it seriously I would have left a long time back and enjoyed myself! And seriously, I was told to be here. It is my commitment. Otherwise I could say, ‘Hey, You tell me to stay here but why should I stay here? It is uncomfortable.’

I have developed in a certain way and now I am basically a prisoner of my own development. That is why you have to be very clever how you develop. Now this development has been from many lifetimes, like the Buddha’s. Then it becomes your first nature, it becomes your being – you cannot do anything else. You only act according to your nature. That is why in the Gītā, Krishna says, “Even enlightened people behave according to their nature.” So if you make commitment part of your development then that becomes your nature. I say, do not do that! Rather relax: have a good time, do anything and everything. Follow your feeling. That is K. (Laughing) In his dictionary there is no such word, commitment or anything like that! He just follows his feelings. As is his feeling so he does. That is what he has been taught. And the only time he was getting committed I saved him, (great laughter) because he was getting into the wrong kind of commitment. That is what happens with people who do not know anything about commitment, then when they do get committed they end up in the wrong kind of commitment! Then, if you are lucky, you have somebody who can help you out and you get saved.

K., he never wanted to know anything about commitment. And then somehow in his old age he has lost his teeth – budda. Instead of Buddha, budda he became! He had his guard down and he almost got committed. Then we had to save him; we had to return him back to the right commitment. But for next life I cannot take that responsibility. (Laughing) That is his business then. And I have some very bad news for him, but what is to be done? I told him. Karma is karma; you cannot escape the fruits of karma, the consequences of your actions. Past actions – future consequences: they are all connected. So for that he will have to work it out himself. Anyway, ultimately there is always the learning. It is just that it gets painful at times… And the worst is when you do not even know: you think that pain is actually pleasure. (Great laughter) It is like the story of the camel often repeated by Ramakrishna: camels eat these thorny plants in the desert where only plants with thorns grow. He eats these thorns and he enjoys it and keeps eating it because of the taste he gets in it, but really when he chews on the thorns the mouth starts to bleed and he gets the salty taste of blood. The camel thinks that the taste is in the thorns, but actually it is his own blood that he tastes! So he is bleeding and keeps eating and bleeding in turn, and he thinks that the pleasure is there, but it is actually pain and drain! He is draining and dying, the poor fellow, because he is bleeding internally but knows it not.

(A long silence)

So that was your question sorted out – for the moment.

A.: Then we have to put it into practice.

Yes, but as I said, do not worry about it. Things will take care of themselves. Just hang around.

Arya Vihar

7 Apr 2008