Video Information: Acharya Prashant speaking on Lalleshwari at Shabdyog session at Zandvoort, Netherlands at 26th June, 2016.
Poem
The Naked Song
Awareness is the ocean of existence.
Let it loose and your words will rage
and cause wounds like fishing spears.
But if you tend it like a fire to discover the truth,
|you'll find how much of that there is in what you say.
None.
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Poem
The Naked Song
Awareness is the ocean of existence.
Let it loose and your words will rage
and cause wounds like fishing spears.
But if you tend it like a fire to discover the truth,
|you'll find how much of that there is in what you say.
None.
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 It's the ocean of existence.
00:07 Let it loose and your words will rage and cause wounds like fishing spears.
00:20 But if you tend it like a fire to discover the truth, you'll find how much of that there
00:32 is in what you say.
00:41 None.
00:48 Truth or awareness is the ocean of existence.
01:02 It is customary to say that a primal agency, God or truth or awareness created the universe.
01:23 It is always said by the one who wants to build up a God in his own image.
01:37 We create, we build, we do so many things.
01:44 The action that we do, the object upon which we act is always a little separate from us.
01:57 So when man builds up a God, imagines a God, in his sheer ignorance and arrogance, he thinks
02:07 that God works in the same ways as man does.
02:11 He would say God created the world.
02:16 God created the universe.
02:20 The mystic is fundamentally different.
02:23 He will not say God created the world.
02:26 He will say God is the world.
02:29 God is the world.
02:31 Because to say God created the world is more or less like saying that man built that road.
02:39 Or man raised this house.
02:46 This house is then the work of man.
02:48 Similarly, we have been accustomed to say that the world is a work of God.
02:56 That is not the way a mystic works, a lover works.
03:01 She says God is the world.
03:08 Awareness is the ocean of existence.
03:12 Awareness is the ocean of existence.
03:15 Now what happens?
03:18 Let it loose and your words will raise and cause wounds like fishing spears.
03:32 What are words?
03:38 Words are social instruments.
03:45 We have words as a medium of transaction between mind and mind.
03:57 All language is a social construction.
04:04 You know what words do.
04:07 Words come from the social mind and they maintain the social mind.
04:16 Words may have a certain practical utility.
04:20 If they have a certain practical utility, all that they convince you is that what you
04:25 consider practical is all that there is.
04:31 Words may please you.
04:32 If they please you, they enhance the ego.
04:37 Your words may hurt you.
04:40 If they hurt you, they enhance the ego.
04:45 In the case of pleasure, one says I got pleased.
04:48 In the case of hurt, one says I got hurt.
04:56 Words always have a subject and an object.
05:01 Words always come from somebody to somebody and help you therefore to maintain the assumption
05:08 that you are somebody.
05:12 But then there are the words of Lalla.
05:17 Lalla, the poet is, the mystic.
05:27 They do not help you remain yourself.
05:38 They have no business maintaining the whole order, the whole system that you already are.
05:48 Apparently, they are words.
05:52 Apparently, the whole language, the vocabulary, the construction is same as decided by, determined
06:01 by the makers of the language, the society, the tradition.
06:09 But only apparently, really Lalla's words are just like the dance of the one she worships,
06:23 Shiva.
06:25 They bring things to an end.
06:30 They dissolve.
06:33 That does not mean that they are agents of suffering.
06:38 Because suffering too is a continuation just as pleasure is a continuation.
06:44 Suffering inflates and maintains and continues the ego in exactly the same way as pleasure
06:50 does.
06:53 What Lalla gives you is not suffering.
06:56 She gives you a mortal wound.
07:01 A mortal wound, such a wound that is beyond suffering.
07:09 To suffer somebody has to be there.
07:14 The words of Lalla take even that somebody away.
07:20 One is reminded of Rumi.
07:22 He says, the wound is the place where the light enters you.
07:29 The wound is the place where the light enters you.
07:33 Further Rumi says that if you will be put off by every rub, how will you ever be polished?
07:48 If you will be put off by every rub, how will you ever be polished?
07:52 But a rub is such a small thing compared to what Lalla does to you.
07:59 If you must say that all that she offers you a rub, then it is such a strong rub that she
08:07 rubs you into disappearance.
08:12 Look at her words.
08:13 Let it loose and your words will rage and cause wounds like fishing spears.
08:24 Fishing spears, a spear right through your mind.
08:29 A spear that does not leave your mind intact and alive to experience suffering.
08:41 That does not mean that there is no pleasure in reading Lalla.
08:47 That does not mean that all that you get in contact with a mystic or a Lalla is wounds
08:54 and suffering.
08:55 No, it is not that way.
08:57 It is just that whatever you get when you are with a Lalla or a Kabir or a Hafiz or
09:05 a Zen master is so that you ultimately disappear.
09:16 Awareness is the ocean of existence.
09:20 But the ocean of existence is joyful to you only if it is seen in awareness and as awareness.
09:31 The world is wonderful only if it is seen as the world and as something beyond the world
09:40 as well.
09:42 Kabir used to be weaving cloth and singing his bhajans.
09:52 Not only that, he would be using the very metaphor of cloth, the very climate of weaving
10:00 to talk of Ram.
10:03 Even when he was engaged in a totally worldly activity and fully engaged, 100% committed,
10:09 he was a weaver.
10:10 He was earning his livelihood from weaving, from selling cloth.
10:16 Even when he would be 100% immersed in weaving, in the cloths, yet there would be something
10:24 of the beyond that he would be equally immersed in and there is no contradiction between these
10:29 two, none at all.
10:32 It is not an either or situation.
10:36 In the ocean of existence, you could fully belong to existence and be fully aware.
10:43 In fact, these two are not only not contradictory but actually these two are one.
10:51 You can fully belong to existence only if you first fully belong to God, the awareness.
11:02 She says firstly how it is and then she says what happens when it goes back to its original
11:18 nature.
11:19 The journey back is one of dissolution.
11:24 It appears to hurt, you feel afraid.
11:27 You feel afraid because whatever you have thought of yourself for so long seems to be
11:33 about to get lost.
11:36 The whole thing hurts you like a fishing spear.
11:39 A fishing spear as we said right through the core of your mind.
11:45 There is nobody who terrorizes you more than a guru and if a guru is a guru, really, at
11:55 some point you would feel mortally afraid of him.
12:00 You will feel like running away and if that never happens then you must know that you
12:06 are not talking to a lulla.
12:10 If all that you get from guru is consolations, pleasures and a continuation of our usual
12:16 way of living then the guru is just another conditioned creature.
12:24 His interactions with you will not take you beyond yourself.
12:31 You get this?
12:34 That however does not mean that carrying a fishing spear and poking people with it and
12:45 hurting people with it qualifies one to be called a teacher.
12:50 That would be sheer violence.
12:53 Yes?
12:55 But what one must also understand is that whatever may be the ways of the guru irrespective
13:04 of the ways of the teacher, irrespective of the ways of the mystic, of a Kabir, of a lulla,
13:10 ultimately the effect upon you would be that of dissolution and Maya is not an idiot.
13:18 She detects that something is being lost.
13:21 She comes to know that what you used to call as yourself, the I is under threat.
13:28 She comes to know that something is fundamentally changing within you.
13:34 The moment she detects that, when I say she, all I mean is your own hidden tendencies.
13:39 There is no woman outside of you who is coming to plot against you.
13:46 When you detect, when your fundamental tendencies detect that they are being threatened, that
13:54 very soon they may be annihilated, then they recoil.
14:00 There is a reaction.
14:07 This reaction is fear.
14:10 Not that the teacher has any intention of deliberately hurting you, but as I said, whatever
14:16 the teacher may do, if he is a real teacher, at some point you will feel a certain repugnance,
14:23 even a certain hatred because you are about to go away.
14:28 It feels like death.
14:32 You feel as if the teacher is here just to destroy you, just to play havoc with your
14:38 ways of living and your ways of living is what you are, are you not?
14:42 Your entire programming, your entire conditioning is what you are.
14:47 So the fishing spear is such an apt picture to convey the whole thing.
15:02 One of the things that keep us away from the truth is that we have images of truth.
15:12 One of the things that keep us away from the teacher is that we have images of teachers.
15:17 We expect the teacher to behave in a certain way, to confirm in a certain way and we also
15:23 expect the effect of teacher upon us to be only in a certain way.
15:30 We have heard stories that in the presence of the teacher, one feels a great peace.
15:35 I tell you that is all rubbish.
15:39 In the presence of a teacher, you are much more likely to feel a violent turbulence.
15:45 The teacher is like an agent of death.
15:49 You know Shiva, right?
15:50 You also know his Pralayamudra.
15:53 You know the dance of destruction, Tandav.
15:57 Yes, you would get moments of absolute peace, beauty, even laughter in the company of teacher.
16:06 At the same time, be prepared that at some moment you may found yourself shivering to
16:14 the core.
16:15 Do not run away from it.
16:19 That is your moment.
16:22 It is for that moment that you have travelled this far.
16:27 It is for that moment that you got all the happy opportunities with the teacher.
16:34 The teacher gave you all the acquaintance, all the nearness just so that one day he may
16:43 also strike you hard with the spear.
16:48 You may call it heavenly deception if you would.
16:52 He invites you, he caresses you, he makes you feel good.
16:55 He almost appears like a sweet daddy, somebody who is carrying candies and honey with him
17:03 and you feel betrayed when you discover that his effect upon you is that you are passing
17:09 away, that you are no more the same.
17:12 Then you suddenly get alerted.
17:14 You recoil.
17:15 You feel like rebelling.
17:16 You feel like saying, but this is not what I wanted from you.
17:21 Is the teacher there to fulfill your expectations?
17:25 Is he there to live up to your image of the teacher?
17:31 If that be so, then there are many others.
17:35 Have you written this?
17:38 Don't you ever wonder why Kabir talks of death so often and why he says that there is great
17:51 pleasure in dying?
17:55 Why Rumi must talk of the wound that we mentioned just a while back?
18:05 Are you getting this?
18:10 It is because being with the teacher is parallelly both the bliss of living and the agony of
18:19 dying.
18:21 You come alive, but not in the way you have known life so far.
18:30 With the teacher you really come alive, but not in the way you have been alive all your
18:37 so-called life.
18:40 This coming alive has a certain new quality to it and because it is new, hence the old
18:47 must go away.
18:49 When the old goes away, it is not pretty and when the old goes away, it will not announce
18:57 that it is going away.
18:59 It will not honestly say, I am the old, so I am going away.
19:03 What will the disappearance of the old look like?
19:07 This is an important thing.
19:08 Please go into this.
19:09 The disappearance of the old will always look like the loss of something important.
19:22 The old will not say that I am creaky and useless and junk, so I am going away.
19:30 The old will say I am important and valuable and I am that which gives sustenance to you
19:36 and if I am going away, then you are going away.
19:41 If I am going away, then it is your death.
19:43 That is what the old will tell.
19:46 Are you getting this?
19:48 The old, the conditioning, the programming is not going to come to you and honestly say
19:56 that listen, I was your burden and I am going away now.
20:01 It will say listen, I was your sustenance, I was your breath, I was your intelligence
20:08 and if I am going away, then you know what is going to happen to you.
20:13 You will be afraid, but do not be taken in.
20:19 Are you getting this?
20:23 If you have an image that the teacher must keep you happy, then you will get neither
20:34 happiness nor the teacher.
20:45 The fishing spear, do not forget that.
20:48 The wound, do not forget that.
20:50 Lalla is here with these words, not without a reason.
21:01 But if you tend it like a fire to discover the truth, by it she means awareness, but
21:10 if you tend it like a fire to discover the truth, you will find how much of that there
21:18 is in what you say and then to just make matters explicit.
21:25 Beyond ambiguity, she says none, because if she does not say none, it is likely that you
21:33 may say yes, yes.
21:34 What Lalla means is that there is a lot of truth in what I say.
21:40 So she formally makes it clear.
21:42 The last word is none, but if you tend it, awareness, but if you tend awareness like
21:49 a fire to discover the truth, you will find how much of that there is in what you say.
22:00 You use the same awareness that lies fundamentally at the root of this word, that lies fundamentally
22:11 as the juice of this word, that lies fundamentally as the very essence of this word, the fragrance
22:18 of this word.
22:19 To look deeply at yourself, you use your own honesty to look clearly at yourself.
22:33 You can call awareness nothing, but your own deep inner honesty.
22:39 If you use that honesty to look at yourself, all that you will find is that all that you
22:45 have been calling as existence is not at all what you have called it to be, thought it
22:53 to be.
22:54 There is hardly any truth in your ways, but that will be apparent only if you first tend
23:05 truth like one tends a fire.
23:09 Another image of destruction, fire, something that burns down whatever stands, the all-consuming
23:23 great fire that is awareness.
23:28 When it dances, first of all it burns down the very world that stands upon it.
23:39 It's a peculiar thing.
23:45 On one hand, the world is an expression of God.
23:50 On the other hand, when you are in God, then you do not see any world, the world has burnt
23:57 down all that you see is God.
24:05 It happened at Dharamsala where I was recently and there was a Shiva statue by my side and
24:12 somebody asked, why do you keep a Shiva statue by your side?
24:20 My spontaneous response was, where is the statue?
24:25 I see only Shiva, where is the statue?
24:33 That is what happens when you tend awareness like a fire.
24:36 The world burns down, the statue has been burnt down.
24:40 There is no statue here.
24:41 The statue is the world, the form, the name that is the world.
24:44 There is no statue here.
24:46 There is only that.
24:47 Now you do not know whether God sustains this world or whether he brings it down and that
24:54 is why the reason that in Eastern depiction, God is said to have three functions which
25:07 is quite strange because God is also a non-doer.
25:13 The three functions are creation, sustenance and dissolution.
25:19 You know of that, right?
25:21 Brahma as the creator, Vishnu as the maintainer and Shiva as the destroyer which is all really
25:32 one, all really one.
25:36 It depends on where you are.
25:40 God is not three, neither does God have three separate functions.
25:47 God has no function at all.
25:48 God is not even one, how can God be three?
25:54 But depending on your state of mind, most of us are too obsessed with continuing.
26:04 When you are obsessed with continuing, the only God that would be useful to you is the
26:11 God of destruction because only the God of destruction can bring you to an end.
26:16 When you say that you want to continue, you essentially mean that you want your suffering
26:21 to continue because a mass of suffering is what you are.
26:25 You will know that or not.
26:28 That is why in the pantheon of Gods, Shiva has a supreme place.
26:39 Not because the other forms are any inferior.
26:43 There are no forms, there is no plurality in Godhood.
26:47 There are no different Gods.
26:50 But it is just that given the way we are, we do not need creation.
26:56 We first of all need destruction.
27:02 Given the way we are, we do not need another beginning because we are already too full
27:08 of beginnings because there is already too much that is continuing in our life.
27:13 What we need is a stopping.
27:16 Hence Shiva is the primal deity because he brings things to a full stop.
27:30 This full stop is denoted by the last words of this verse, none.
27:38 None of that which fills up your mind deserves to survive.
27:47 None of that which fills up your mind deserves to survive.
27:51 Let it go away.
27:53 Let it go away.
27:56 Awareness is a fire.
27:57 Don't be afraid of that fire.
28:01 And remember awareness is not consciousness.
28:03 Awareness is not your normal thinking process.
28:07 Awareness is something far deeper.
28:09 And then do not start thinking that awareness is intuition.
28:13 No.
28:15 And do not start thinking that awareness is some deep heavenly feeling.
28:18 No, it is not.
28:24 Awareness is just the fire that destroys, burns down all these notions that you have
28:31 of awareness.
28:32 In fact, that is probably a very pithy description of awareness.
28:39 Awareness is the fire that burns down notions about awareness.
28:47 Right?
28:50 Yes.
28:54 God is the one who redeems you of your various gods.
29:04 God is the one who redeems you from your various gods.
29:18 He has also given you something to do.
29:31 He is saying tend awareness like fire.
29:37 That is probably the only responsibility or non-responsibility that one carries as a human
29:49 being, as a body.
29:50 That is probably our only obligation to tend awareness like fire.
29:55 Now that really is not an act of doing because awareness in itself is anyway a colossal fire.
30:06 You do not need to tend it.
30:08 Then what does Lalla mean by saying that you need to tend it?
30:11 He means to say that you do a lot of things to put out that fire.
30:19 You cover that fire with all your might, which is not much anyway, but you exercise all your
30:30 might to put sand and all blankets and all kinds of rubbish on that fire.
30:40 It is another matter that that fire is such a gigantic one that it will consume even that
30:48 which you used to cover it with.
30:53 That is another matter.
30:54 But your intention is never to let the fire blaze.
31:01 By saying that you must tend that fire, all that she is saying is stop your foolish attempts
31:07 to put out the fire.
31:11 Stop your foolish attempts.
31:12 One, you will not succeed.
31:15 Two, in your attempt to put out the fire, you are only harming yourself because that
31:21 fire is a helpful fire.
31:26 That fire indeed burns down, but do you know what it burns down?
31:29 It burns down all that which keeps you down.
31:35 It burns down, it melts down your fetters, your chains, it purifies you.
31:43 All your impurities are burnt down in it.
31:52 Let awareness be your only commitment.
31:57 You have no other priority.
32:00 You are not responsible to anything except the truth.
32:07 To put any of your commitments in the same bracket as truth is to dishonor truth and
32:14 to dishonor truth is to dishonor your very self.
32:21 Will you be joyful after that?
32:24 Let truth be your only priority.
32:27 I am fond of saying let the first be first and when the first is first, it determines
32:36 the rest.
32:37 When truth is your first priority, the truth will determine all of your other priorities.
32:47 So you need not be worried about the others.
32:52 The others will be taken care of by the first.
32:56 You just take care of one.
32:58 The one will take care of everybody else and everything else.
33:05 Is that not very easy then?
33:07 Does it not simplify things greatly?
33:10 Now I don't have a long to-do list.
33:13 My to-do list always has just one item.
33:18 What?
33:19 Tend the fire or simply write truth.
33:25 Or if you want to be even more exact, then don't write anything.
33:33 But we are creatures of expression.
33:36 We will write something.
33:37 So just write truth.
33:40 That's all.
33:43 That's all.
33:46 Never say that that is important to me.
33:51 This too is important to me.
33:54 I have to take care of the future.
33:56 I have to take care of the family.
33:58 What will happen to the wife and the kids?
34:00 What will happen to the neighbors?
34:01 What will happen to the entire world?
34:03 What will happen to all the great causes that I have taken up?
34:07 What do you think?
34:08 You will take care of your wife and kids.
34:11 What do you think?
34:12 You will uphold your nation.
34:14 What do you think?
34:15 You are the one through which all those great causes will be served.
34:19 You can only spoil all that you touch.
34:28 Whatever good takes place, takes place in your absence when you are asleep.
34:36 Things get done when you are asleep and when you wake up, you take credit for it.
34:43 Is that not only foolish, but also very ungrateful of you?
34:51 Awareness does the work, ego takes the credit and then ego also feels responsible.
34:56 That is the ego's punishment.
34:57 If you take credit for something, you will also feel responsible for maintaining that
35:01 thing.
35:04 Never think that you have tasks to fulfill, that you have responsibilities.
35:12 I repeat your only responsibility is the truth.
35:16 Be committed to that only and forget all else.
35:21 Faith means forgetting all else, knowing very well that all else will be taken care of.
35:27 How?
35:28 One need not bother.
35:29 How?
35:30 Sorry?
35:31 One need not bother about how.
35:33 How?
35:34 Okay.
35:35 Yeah.
35:36 Is it then just a way of having faith in the truth?
35:44 Like if we have a personal truth like Muslims have a personal truth of connecting with God
35:54 and Hindus have a book, anyway Christians, everyone claims this idea of truth of God.
36:05 That is what happens.
36:08 Truth is not one's opinion of truth, but you are right that is what happens.
36:14 In the name of truth, one builds a personal image of truth.
36:18 We all carry personal gods.
36:21 That is the reason why if one is asked to write about God, he will surely be able to
36:26 write something because you always have an idea of God and you can express that idea.
36:34 It is not about having faith in truth.
36:38 It is about just having faith because if you say I have faith in truth, that means the
36:42 truth is something.
36:43 Then you will say the truth means this and you will write a statement.
36:48 Then you will say the truth looks like this and you build an item.
36:52 Then you will say the truth has said this and you write a book.
36:56 The truth is not your opinions.
36:58 The truth, in fact, if you have an opinion, rest assured it is not the truth.
37:03 The moment you open your mouth to say anything affirmative about truth, you already miss
37:08 the truth.
37:09 The most that you can say about truth is neti neti.
37:13 It is not this.
37:15 And even in saying this, you have probably exceeded your limits.
37:20 So the best expression is silence.
37:22 But if you must say, then as the Upanishads say, just say neti neti.
37:27 It is not this.
37:29 It is not this.
37:30 It is neti neti.
37:31 It is not this.
37:32 Do not go beyond that.
37:33 Because if you go beyond that, this imaginative mind will only come up with very fancy stories.
37:45 It will raise a god robed in white, a heaven, fairies, angels, demons, rivers of milk, fountains
38:00 of honey and you know the rest of it.
38:06 Virgins waiting for you to arrive and deflower them, what else.
38:15 And all that you then go and get is suicide bombers, hoping for the virgins.
38:22 My brother and my man, my sister says always, I wonder if there are still enough virgins
38:32 available now after all these long weeks.
38:37 Or they have very good surgeons there.
38:40 Maintain the virginity even after.
38:44 We all could have had a good joke had it not been so tragic.
39:05 It is nothing short of a joke.
39:08 This whole concept of God, in fact is the mother of all jokes.
39:15 The idea of God, the image of heaven and the rest of it.
39:19 The whole thing regarding enlightenment and Buddhadharma.
39:23 Yes, the rest of it.
39:27 It is the mother of jokes and it is also the mother of your perceived.
39:36 Yes.
39:37 I refrain from joking about these things because so much of our suffering comes just because
39:50 of this fundamental mistake, the idea of God.
39:54 The joke reinforces that.
39:57 I don't know, I just don't feel like joking about it, though it is a big joke.
40:04 It is a very serious habit, you know, that inflicts so much injury and that you hardly
40:12 can joke about it.
40:13 You know, every single belief that we carry stems from the mother belief which is God.
40:22 All the separation and conflict that we see in this world arises from the first mistake
40:28 that man made and that mistake was God.
40:32 Man said God is and the moment you say God is, you have created a distance and a limited
40:38 God.
40:39 Distance between?
40:40 You and God.
40:41 The subject.
40:42 Yes, yes.
40:43 The you.
40:44 Yes, yes.
40:45 So, from that mother mistake, man has been committing blunder after blunder.
40:52 One does not feel like laughing at it.
40:55 Even while knowing that it is the most hilarious joke possible.
41:00 If today man and wife can't be together, neighbor and neighbor can't be together, nation and
41:09 nation can't be together, you know, man and deer can't be together, man and river can't
41:16 be together.
41:17 The reason is this, God.
41:18 God.
41:19 God.
41:20 God.
41:21 God.
41:22 God.
41:23 God.