Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academ-advaita.com
The Netherlands
20 January 2020
Appreciation (1)
“Knowledge and wisdom”
Normally you go to any place with preconceived ideas and beliefs. That is your problem. Your marriage is preconceived; you go into a marriage with beliefs, into friendship with beliefs, into work with beliefs, into market with beliefs, into cinema and theatre with beliefs.
You go back home with beliefs: how your wife should be or how your husband should be. How much do you really see life? How much is it significant to you by observation? Not through your beliefs.
You cannot observe life when you see life through your beliefs. If you see your life through your beliefs, you will not observe. You will conclude what life should be which you will appreciate.
But you think you observe life. If you observe life, you will not conclude. You will appreciate life as it is and not what life should be. If you observe life, you will understand that life is a transforming process.
It is a wonderful life and that is the life you are living every moment. Neither can you live it, nor can you attempt to live it - you are already living life. But it does not appear wonderful to you or to mankind.
There is no need to hide, no need to cry. But you are crying. You are hiding. Why is it so? You want to do many a thing in life. You have not understood whether you are able to do, or is it possible for you to do in life, or did you do it at all?
Life is a singular process. It is a one-way street. It is one way. No rehearsals. The past is never separate from you. It is right here in the now for you and as you. The boy of the past is the adult in the present. Whenever anyone is with you, live with him or her. Live with him or her, not with your thoughts about him or her.
If you approach life as how life should be and expect it to be, it will never be a wonderful life for you to appreciate. It will be a wonderful life to you only sometimes when you like it, but not in every moment to appreciate it.
Life is entirely different from what the mind says it is. Whatever the mind says about life, it is not life. Life has got nothing to do with words. It may sound illogical to you.
It is nevertheless logical, because life is a beginningless and endless process which is a spontaneous, uncontrollable and unpredictable flow. The process is manifested by the intelligence in life, meaning consciousness and not by you or anyone.
Wisdom reveals that you do not make any moment in life. Wisdom reveals that the moment was in life much before you were in life. Wisdom reveals the content within any moment cannot be other than what is within any moment.
Wisdom reveals that in any moment there is only light, sound, colour and a single movement. Wisdom reveals that light, sound, colour and single movement appear as what is within a moment.
When this wisdom cements in your mind, you will appreciate what is within any moment, whether you like it or not, because you will understand that neither you nor anyone makes the moment or what is within it.
The enlightened appreciate every moment because they are in it. The enlightened appreciate that something is in any moment, whether they like it or not.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2020
Editor’s Note:
There are no outsiders in life or apart from life, never mind the appearances.The wisdom of this article reveals that mind has never known life and that mind can never know life. Furthermore, mind’s beliefs and convictions are not known to life. Knowledge and understanding are worlds apart - they cannot meet. Thus, it follows that wisdom understands the continuous flow of each moment in which only that which is meant to happen happens.There is no hand or mind of man here, nor of any other agency, for they do not exist, save in the imaginations and beliefs of man. Such is the appreciation.
Julian Capper. UK