Zen: The Art of Nothing

I’ve been on a few religious and spiritual forums lately, and it is very interesting to observe the concepts of God that people carry in their minds. Some people are even afraid of hell!

People seem to believe that there is a God somewhere, who’s looking at us and deciding whether what we are doing is right or wrong, and whether we should be punished or forgiven. Some have lost faith because ‘God’ did not help them, and claim they don’t believe in God anymore, silently hoping in their heart somewhere that ‘God’ feels ashamed at losing a devotee and starts answering their prayers.

This, I believe, is one biggest disadvantage of religion. All religions. They humanised God. And man, with that gigantic ego of his, will obviously be more than pleased to be told that God is someone who looks and thinks just like him, only in a more ideal fashion. If that is the concept of God for you, God does not exist.

There are others who believe God can be seen. I, for instance, know people who have seen Lord Shiva, Ma Kali, and other God appear before them. These people believe they have seen God, and they are blessed. But these are not Gods! These are just superior spirits, who can help us when we pray to them. If you start praying to Mahatma Gandhi today with all your devotion, it is only a matter of time before his spirit will come before you and give you advice. I repeat that these are not Gods. They are spirits. Vibrations. Deities.

For all those who believe that God looks like man, lets do a reality check here. Look at the ocean. Or the sky. And try to feel your significance. Do you realise just how small a spec you are, on earth, leave alone the universe? And do you think God could be someone like you?? Or maybe you think that God is like you, only much much bigger, like maybe thousands of feet tall. Please, gimme a break! Religious leaders projected God as human so that men with poor imagination will have someone to respect and fear, but preachers took it a bit too seriously. God is not human!

So what is God? When you breathe, your lungs fill with life, and pass it on to the rest of your body – that is God. The vibration in each atom of your body, is God. The vibration in each atom, in every single object on earth, is God. That is why we are all one. The whole universe is nothing but a combination of mass and energy. It was nothing but energy initially (and it is said this energy vibrated in ‘Om’, which is why the sound has such power even today), and it started culminating into matter with the big bang. Since then, the universe is evolving. That universe is God. God, is evolving.

God does not watch, God does not punish – because God is not separate. You are God. You are the doer. And the universe follows the ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ rule, so everything you do, comes back to you. You throw a ball up, it comes down. You do something good, something good happens to you. You do something bad, something bad happens to you. So it really isn’t punishment – it is just a return of your actions. Everything you do comes back, and if you don’t like the outcome, you say that you are being punished.

If you truly want to get in touch with the God that you are, meditate. Religious books will only take you so far, and you will have to walk on your own beyond a point. So why not start right away?

I tell my students that Reiki takes you further in the direction which you want to head, and that other aspects of life may or may not see any changes. But I think that this is a concept that can be applied to life itself. The aspects in which you want to progress, go ahead. The others stay stunted.

A lot of people want money. Those who are truly dedicated, end up with half a dozen houses and enough money to last an equal number of generations. There are others who are dedicated to their work, who master their fields to great extents with time. Different people want different things, and most of them achieve them in the long run.

But the question is, what happens when they achieve it?
We don’t realise that there is always a hidden reason behind our great desire to reach these pinacles.

Those who want money, are insecure. Particularly in a country like India, survival is an instinct hammered into our psyche since childhood. Everyone here just wants to horde money for the rainy day, and that attitude sometimes overwhelms all our senses and leaves us with only one goal – to earn a lot of money.

Those who totally immerse themselves in their work and forget the rest of the world are in fact running away from themselves. They just cannot stand being alone – because they cannot stand themselves. A lack of self-love is the cause.

Therefore, when they actually reach the pinnacles and achieve their goals, they are truly at a loss. We all run after things to fulfill gaps in our personalities, but the strange thing is, the possession of those things does not fill those gaps!

What truly makes you whole is detachment, faith, love. Love yourself first – no, it is not selfish – when you love yourself, you treat others better because it is not in your interest to mistreat others. Have faith in your destiny that everything does work out for your best in the end. And be detached! I’d like to quote The Geeta over here – What belongs to you today, Belonged to someone else yesterday, And will be someone else’s Tomorrow.

Earn money, be the best at your job, indulge yourself, yes, do all of these. But not out of an internal compulsion. Not because you don’t know what else to do! Choose to be the person you are, and welcome any change – in yourself, and in your plans.

But first, ask yourself What am I running after?

The last day of my recent trip to Tiruvannamalai, Jacqueline discussed tantra, sex and spirituality. I must mention before I begin that I’m mostly just quoting what I understood from the satsang that day, but I felt the need to share the information, so here it is.

Tantra is always thought of in relation with sex, and often looked down upon by most other ‘spiritual’ people. Ofcourse, anyone who knows anything about Tantra knows that sex is merely a small fraction of it, and it encompasses so much more. But looking at it from the aspect of physical desires, tantra isn’t about encouraging the ‘evils’ at all – far from it! The sanskrit word for desires based on greed or other vices would be ‘vasana’. Tantra isn’t about vasanas at all, it is about transcending them, so that the actions associated with those vasanas become meditation, not a fulfilment of the cravings of the mind. So in this regard, Tantra is really about taking the ‘sex’ out of sex!

When I first heard that Osho said there are hundreds of meditations, it confused me. As I know it, there is really only one meditation – witnessing. But I now realise how all these meditations – the dancing meditations, the walking meditations, make sense. Meditation isn’t a ‘doing’, its not something you sit down to do, and get done with, in 15-20 minutes to then get on with the rest of your day. Meditation is a state of being, remaining in awareness all the time, throughout all activities.

So if remaining in meditation is really your goal, you want to be doing it all the time. What better way than to practice it in small bits, like walking, or dancing, for example? You gently get used to it, and then go on to do it all the time in ‘real’ life.

While it is not too tough to remain in meditation in calm and serene moments, I’ve observed that my awareness goes straight out the window when I find myself in an intense situation, either a happy or a difficult one. So any extremely happy or sad situation is really just a test of your meditation – could you meditate through this event? For most people, sex is one of the most intense things they experience. Can you maintain your awareness throughout it, and not get carried away?

She read out a piece by Osho, in which he said that the temples of Khajuraho were not an education or encouragement for perverted activities, but a way of transcending them. Ofcourse there is no way I can verify this information, but it just feels right when I hear it. He talks of how a student wasn’t allowed to enter the temple initially. One had to meditate – yes, meditate – on the sculptures outside the temple, one sculpture at a time, until all they saw in the sculpture was art, and nothing else. There was no excitement, no sexuality left in that sculpture anymore, just art, just meditation. It took a student about 6 months to go around the temple and when he or she finished, he was finally allowed inside, into an empty space – because once you transcend the most intense excitements of life, nothing else is left, just bliss.

Now I can see why Osho’s teachings were taken out of context, because people could easily interpret this as oh well, then we just do what we want until it stops exciting us. That is not how it works, not in my understanding. This is the FINAL test! Tantra is no tantra without meditation and one has to be very proficient in meditation before one attempts a tantrik relationship. As I understand it, a tantrik relationship also involves deep commitment and plenty of meditations together, using the combined energies to heal and lift both people up together.