Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
5 December 2019
Anxiety (8)
“Impatience”
Every day when you do something, it is different from yesterday as a thought in the mind. It is not identical, it is just similar as a thought in the mind, but not as an actuality in life.
Then you will understand, hey, if I do a technique when I am nineteen years old and, if I remain the same, if I do the same technique when I am eighty years old, I will still remain the same. Nothing is going to happen to me.
Then you will know that it is the thought doing that is keeping you in bondage of doing, but not in freedom of doing. Because of this conviction that, if you repeat, if you practise you will get enlightenment or freedom, you become anxious in life. Anxious and impatient.
Every man and woman is anxious. Why? Because you believe in practice. Practice is repetition. You believe that you have to repeat. The moment you understand that life happens to you, repetition to get enlightenment will not happen to you.
You will understand you are simply moving in every moment. Because you repeat, you become anxious. You will become anxious, because you are expecting something. Yet, what can you expect when you are simply moving every moment?
Now look at the question of anxiety. Man and woman are in anxiety. Is it not so? You will do many techniques to get out of anxiety. That very technique will make you more anxious, not less anxious.
How do we understand why life has put anxiety in the mind? You have understood anxiety comes because you repeat. You believe in repetition. You do not believe in an adventurous happening.
You believe in repetition because you think life is robotic. You believe in repetition because man has not understood that life unfolds itself. It does not require any help from the mind.
Mind does not bring the morning in. Mind does not usher in the night either. Morning comes by itself, the night comes by itself. The waking up happens by itself; the sleep happens by itself. In between somehow man is made to think that he can control everything.
That you can do or achieve in between morning and night by repetition is what you believe. But you do not understand that, because of repetition, you are in anxiety and are impatient.
A wise man and woman understand that life is a singular, spontaneous, uncontrollable and unpredictable movement and, therefore, it is ridiculous to be anxious and impatient.
The enlightened live life no matter how life happens.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2019
Editor’s Note:
The most remarkable things may happen in daily life when they are not expected or predicted or regulated by man. As a matter of fact, whatever happens, remarkably, happens without any input from man, as the wise proclaim again and again. If things happen as man has hoped and planned, he will be pleased and may earn merit or promotion. His ability as a manager has been confirmed. If they do not, the consequences may not benefit him. Either way, it is by the intelligence of life. Man, fearing the adventurous life, has become a virtual robot, a machine controlled by a computer. It has been said that life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing. Every child enters life without a mental portfolio. With understanding, man too may be free of his mental portfolio and realise life’s adventure.
Julian Capper. UK
German Translator‘s Note:
The thought that something specific that happens today is the same as something specific that happened yesterday makes the mind believe that life is repeating itself. The insight that life is fresh and unique in every moment, as here contained in the hint that life is a singular, spontaneous, uncontrollable and unpredictable movement, frees man from the idea that exact repetition is possible at all. And this very repetition, which he believes in in order to attain enlightenment, is clearly recognized by understanding as illusory. The wisdom of this article makes man aware of the impossibility of a real repetition of practices and techniques and frees man from the mental recurrence of the same into the spontaneous, living thoughtless Here and timeless Now, that is, into real life.
Marcus Stegmaier. Germany.