Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
24 September 2019
Patience (2)
“Understanding”
Man is not looking at the criterion patience in its true colour. The mind with thoughts, its first basic nature, is absent where life is. The mind with thoughts cannot squeeze into life.
The mind with thoughts cannot be present in life, but we believe it is present. So we become a slave to mind-games, with thoughts such as: ‘have patience’. The mind-games do not allow you to be patient with yourself.
If you are not patient with your own self, you will never meet life as it is. Life will not happen to an impatient man who is not patient with himself and who is looking at others to put a meaning of life into him or her.
The mind with thoughts functions where life is absent. It functions on the threshold of thunder after the lightning has passed away. When the lightning comes, there is no thunder in the lightning. Thunder functions not in the lightning; it functions after the lightning.
Similarly, life flows every moment and the thunder, which is the mind-game of thoughts, functions intermittently after life flows by. The mind with thoughts follows after life flows by, just as thunder follows after lightning flashes by.
So we lead life not at the optimum speed of life, but we always try to catch up with life. The mind with thoughts about life is illusory and not real. That understanding is the starting-point of patience to come to man.
The starting-point is to understand deeply that the mind in life with thoughts about life is illusory and not real. How often do you really know that you have a body? Can you recognise the body which is here and now every moment?
Understand that the body is changing every moment. Man cannot recognise the body that is changing every moment. The body which you recognise is a thought of the body which is not here and now. That is the illusion created by existence.
Understand that the mind thinks of the body which is not here and now. You do not live what life is. You do not live life as it is. You have concepts of life: how life should be. The concepts of how life should be make man impatient and patience is missed in life as it is.
The enlightened live life as it is in every moment. Living life as it is is patience.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2019
Editor’s Note:
The man with thoughts has no connection with life as it is, for he lives on the cusp of life. He does not even lag behind its every moment as it evolves. Thus, he lives a substitute or phoney life known as existence. It is a beautiful counterfeit gifted by the intelligence of life to occupy him. Accordingly, he takes himself to be the controller, the doer, albeit illusory, for he knows no other. Until that is..., until he meets an enlightened soul on his journey, if he is meant to. In their compassion for man’s welfare, the enlightened are revealing their wise understanding, as in this article by Dr Shankar, that man came into existence to find himself. Such is the grace of wisdom.
Julian Capper, UK