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The ordinary mind wants to take more and more from the world; from everywhere, from every direction and dimension. The ordinary mind is a great taker, it is a beggar, and the begging is such that it cannot be satisfied – it is infinite. The more you get, the more the longing arises; the more you have, the more you desire. It becomes an obsessive hunger. There exists no need for it in your being, but you are obsessed, and you become more and more miserable because nothing satisfies. Nothing can satisfy the mind which is constantly asking for more. The ”more” is feverish, it is not healthy, and there is no end to it.
The ordinary mind goes on eating, in a metaphorical sense, not only things but persons also. The husband would like to possess the wife so deeply and so absolutely that it is a sort of eating her; he would like to eat and digest her so she becomes part of him. The ordinary mind is cannibalistic. The wife wants the same: to absorb the husband so totally that nothing is left behind. They kill each other. Friends do the same; parents to children, children to parents do the same; all relationship of the ordinary mind is of absorbing the other completely. It is a sort of eating.
And then there is the extraordinary mind, just the opposite to the ordinary mind. And because of the ordinary mind, the extraordinary mind has come into existence. Religions teach about it. They say, ”Give, share, donate!” All the religions teach basically that you should not take, rather on the contrary, you should give. Charity is preached. This is preached to create an extraordinary mind.
The ordinary mind will always be in misery, because the longing for the ”more” cannot be fulfilled; you will find him always depressed, sad. The extraordinary mind the religions have been cultivating – you will find him always happy, a certain cheerfulness is there because he is not asking for more; on the contrary, he goes on giving – but deep down he is still the ordinary mind.
The cheerfulness cannot be of the deepest being, it can only be of the surface. He has totally turned around and become just the reverse of the ordinary. He is standing on his head, he is in a SHIRSHASANA, but he remains the same. Now a new desire arises to give more and more and more; again there is no end to it. He will be cheerful, but deep down in his cheerfulness you can detect a certain quality of sadness.
You will always find that quality of sadness in religious people. Cheerful, of course, because they give, but sad because they cannot give more; cheerful because they share, but sad because it is not enough. Nothing will be enough.
So there are two types of miseries: the ordinary misery; you can find those miserable people all around, everywhere. The whole earth is filled with them because they ask for more and it cannot be fulfilled. Then there is another misery which has a face of cheerfulness; you will find in the priests, monks, in the monasteries, the ashrams, people who seem to be always smiling, but their smile carries a certain sadness behind it. If you observe deeply you will find they are also miserable – because you cannot give infinitely, you don’t have it!
These are the two types of people easily met. This religious man is cultivated by Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism. It is better than the ordinary mind but cannot be the final word about consciousness. It is good to be miserable in a religious way, better to be miserable like an emperor, not like a beggar.
A very rich man was dying and he had called me to be near him when he died, so I was there. At the last moment he opened his eyes and he told his son – that that had been always in his mind, he had told me many times: he was worried about his son because he was a spendthrift and he loved material things, and this old man was a religious man. The last word he said to the son was, ”Listen: money is not everything and you cannot buy everything with money. There are things which are beyond money, and money alone cannot make anybody happy.”
The son listened and said, ”You may be right, but with money a person can choose the sadness of his own liking” – it may not purchase happiness but you can choose the sadness of your own liking, you can be miserable in your own way.
A poor man has to be miserable through no choice; a rich man can be miserable through his own choice – that’s the only difference. He chooses his own misery, there is a certain freedom. The poor man’s misery simply happens to him like a fate, a destiny; he has no choice. The religious man has chosen his misery, that is why he is a little cheerful; and the nonreligious man is suffering his misery because he has not chosen it. Both live in the same world of the ”more,” but the religious man lives like an emperor, sharing, giving, charity.
Buddhism, Jainism and Tao, they have created a third type of mind which is neither ordinary nor extraordinary; in fact, which is not a mind at all. To give it a name it will be good to call it a no-mind. So try to understand the classification. Ordinary mind, extraordinary mind – just the opposite of it, but still in the same dimension of more – then no-mind, which Buddhism, Jainism, Tao have created. What is this no-mind? – the third approach towards reality.
Buddhism and Jainism don’t preach charity, they preach indifference. They don’t say, ”Give!” because giving is part of taking, the same circle. In taking you take from somebody, in giving you give to somebody, but it is the same circle. Dimensions don’t change, only direction changes. Buddhism preaches to be indifferent, to be nonpossessive. The emphasis is on nonpossession, not on giving. You should not possess, that’s all. You should not try to possess things or persons; you simply drop out of the world of possessions. There is no question of taking or giving, because both belong to the world of possessions. You can give only that which you possess; how can you give that which you don’t possess? You can give only that which you have acquired before; you can give only that which you have taken before – otherwise, how can you give it? You come in the world without anything, with no possessions; you go out of the world without any possessions.
In the world you can be on these two sides: either on the side of those who long for more and more, to take more and more and absorb more and more, and go on fattening themselves; and then there is another side who go on giving and giving more and more, and become thinner and thinner and thinner. Buddha says you should not possess; you should not choose either side. You simply be in the state of nonpossession.
This man, this third type of man, whom I call the man of no-mind, will not be as happy, cheerful as the extraordinary man. He will be more silent, he will be more quiet; he will have a deep contentment – but not cheerfulness. You will not even find a smile on his face; you will not find a single statue of Buddha smiling or of Mahavira smiling, no. They are not cheerful, they are not happy. They are not miserable, of course; they are not happy – they have dropped out of the world of misery and happiness. They are simply at rest, indifferent to the things and the world of things; nonpossessing, they are aloof, detached. This is what ANASHAKTI is: detachment, indifference. This man will have a certain quality of silence around him – you can feel that silence.
But Tilopa goes beyond all the three; Tilopa goes beyond all three, and now it is difficult to classify him. Ordinary mind, asking for more; extraordinary mind, trying to give more; no-mind, indifferent, unattached, neither giving nor taking – then what to call Tilopa’s mind? Tilopa is of the fourth type, and the fourth is the last and the highest, there is no beyond to it. It is not even a no-mind, it is not a mind at all – because in the no-mind also, negatively the mind is present. The emphasis is still on being indifferent to the things and the world of things, but your focus is on things: Remain indifferent, unattached! You are not possessing things, but you have to be alert not to possess; you have to remain detached, you have to move very alert so you don’t possess anything. Make a clear point of it: the emphasis is still on things – be indifferent to the world!
Tilopa says the emphasis should be on your own self, not on the things. Rest in yourself; don’t be even indifferent to the world, because that indifference still is a very subtle bridge with the world. The focus should not be on the other. Turn your lives completely inwards. You don’t bother about the world, not even to be indifferent to it. You neither ask for more, you neither try to give more, nor are you indifferent to the world either... as if the world has simply disappeared. You are selfcentered, sitting inside, doing nothing. Your whole focus has turned, taken a total about-turn... as if the world has completely disappeared. There is nothing to give, nothing to take, nothing to be indifferent about. Only you are. You live in your consciousness and that is your only world. Nothing else exists.
This is the state of beyond mind AND beyond no-mind. This is the suprememost state of understanding. Nothing is beyond it. And I would like to tell you: never be satisfied unless you attain this. Why? – because man is miserable, the ordinary man. He asks for more and it can never be satisfied, so continuously the misery is there, and the misery goes on becoming more and more and more.
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