Meditator: Yes it is true, existence has no purpose. Life is unbounded by purpose. No reason is needed. Life is for living. And that is what increases the beauty of life. Life is like love. When you give reason to love it becomes impure, conditional. The real beauty is in love which is without any reason. Life is like that. You are free and unbounded by any reason. Feel the freedom. Liberate yourself from the clutches of the self. Yes there are suffering, diseases, betrayal, death and losses. Yes there is also happiness and pleasure in connection, love, relationships, toys and gains. Most of the humans are stuck in the cycle of happiness and suffering. The law of pendulum. Happiness is followed by same amount of suffering. The happier you are the more you will suffer when time will come. When a child desires a candy, after eating it, he will desire more. But if he eats too much he will get bored of it and want something new. And if desire remains unfulfilled sufferings appear. Hope is as shallow as fear. Hope may give some comfort but it is no real way to defy suffering, and when the outcome is not as hoped, even more distress appears. This is the age of machines and technology. Life is becoming more and more comfortable. New medicines are appearing yet diseases are increasing. There is more physical comfort yet mental stress is increasing. Mind is turning more unstable. Pettiest things make people depressed today. Humans had mastered the outside world but losing the inner battle. Every search for happiness is misery. In this wretched age Truth is the thing of least importance. Fantasies are taken as truth. As the roads get broader the mind is getting narrower. There is a void within all of us. Everything is done in the world in order to escape the inner unsatisfactoriness or the void. But the unsatisfactoriness never truly escapes. Humans goes on entertaining themselves through mundane means. Humans do not really grow up. Only their toys grow. Humans are naively seeking happiness by chasing behind the impermanent materials. Foolishly they think that happiness achieved by depending on impermanent materials is going to be permanent. They are always in fear, they try hard to defend their possessions. But in this transient world loss is inevitable. If you value something, it will tear you apart when you will lose it. In the end it is all just striving after the wind. In this age the average mind is extremely weak, strip someone out of all his companions and entertainments and watch how easily it breaks apart. Humans are going on searching for happiness with vain means but when the base of the mind is so weak, all these are of no use. Today humans wants to know programming, robotics, mechanisms of various machines and science but have no interest in knowing who they themselves truly are. Sufferings arise due to ignorance about our true self. Today humans are so shallow that they define themselves by likes, and dislikes and superficial appearances. The sense of self for which so many things are done is in the end only a sense and nothing more. The sense of ‘I’ is just an imaginary concept. The mind is nothing but a culmination of habit and memory with incredibly complex mechanisms involved, and works largely depending the external stimuli, impulses and conditionings. Millions of neurons are working together in a vast network to create the sense of one ‘I’. The mental sense of a continuous self is the greatest delusion. You die every second. Dislike, like, belief, personality anything can change any minute. In an accident you can you turn lunatic. Any continuity of this sense of mental self is an illusion. I myself have changed so drastically so many times. A great deal of suffering is caused by naively having too much attachment to the ‘I’ that don’t even exist.
Stick man: I know what you mean. True self is no self. Everything is impermanent and trying to find happiness from any of the impermanent material is just striving for the wind. There is no permanent essence. This table right here is a table now but after some hours it may be break into pieces and won’t be a table anymore. Same for the human body and mind. None of it has a permanent identity or self. All is changing forms, identities and their nature. The only truth is the Void. Only the Void remains.
Meditator: Once a Zen student said something like that. His master hit him and the student said ouch. Then the master asked, if there is no self then who got hurt? Sense of self is true but only as a sense. What is that continuous thing that keeps the illusion of continuity of sense of self? Every change takes place on an unchanging background. The divine self which is your true self is that unchanging background which lies beyond the mind, and both physical and spiritual bodies. The divine self is the ultimate creator! The mind and body is just like a machine, running on impulses and memories and habits. But the divine self which is the source of the pure state of awareness lies beyond it. The path to divine self is through negation. You have to figure out what you are not first to understand the divine self. You are not the body, the mind, the feelings, the emotions, the senses, the beliefs, the likes or dislikes or anything that you perceive yourself to be. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not that because you are the perceiver. Actually what I just said is not completely true. They are a part of you surely but a very tiny part of you, and they are not your primary self or your deepest core. This world is nothing but a play of consciousness. Your divine self is the dream and the dreamer. The divine self is reflecting itself in infinite mirrors creating an illusion of separation. What you perceive yourself to be is merely a reflection not what you truly are. You are the infinite, the divine creator, without beginning and end. You are all that is, was and ever will be. Why is bad, bad? Why is good, good? Why is pain painful? Why is pleasure pleasant? Why is purposelessness depressing? It is all because the mind interprets to be like that. Both happiness and suffering arises from the mind. To transcend beyond suffering one have to transcend beyond the mind. Enlightenment is not learning something magical but it is the utter annihilation of everything you believe to be true. And when nothing remains, you meet the divine self. Just wake up, be aware and see the reality as it is without letting your mind interpret it with abstract concepts you have learned since birth and you will be enlightened. We exist and there is suffering. There is no purpose, no meaning, but there are relative purposes, and responsibilities. It is most logical to find the best way to live your life instead of crying about it. There is a way to end mental suffering. Physical suffering cannot be avoided but when the mind is strong, it can even be happy in any form of physical suffering. The way is detachment. There is no use in attachment with the parts of a transient world. The first cause is actually an unthinkable matter. If the first cause is uncaused then indirectly everything is. Things ‘just’ happens. They come and go. There is no use of crying for the loss or gripping on to what you have. All these urges for control, power and possession only adds up stress. There are many spiritual materialists seeking behind supernatural powers, altered states of consciousness, supernatural bliss and channeled knowledge but all of these seeking are useless, just spiritual materialism and will bring no true peace unless the mind is enlightened. Truth is what that remains when all seeking end. There is nothing to chase, nothing to seek, nothing to become. Recognition, fame, power, control only strengthens the prison you are in. Heaven is here and now. Kingdom of God is within you. Just ‘be’. Nothing else is needed. Just ‘be’. Being is our true nature. In the end all we do is for peace and satisfaction. But we need to do nothing but just ‘be’ to be in peace. It is because we always think that we have to become something and do something for peace we never gain peace. Wake, up, become aware, just remain aware of everything for at least 30 second and see the magic of life. No need to resist anything not even resistance. Accept what comes, let go of what goes. Let life unfold itself. Just observe everything from a detached perspective. Just surrender to the flow. No need to worry or fear or predict. Just ‘be’. It feels much better if you let life unfold itself without any effort to control, without any hope, expectation, fear or prediction. Control is an illusion most of the time anyway. A lot of things you do is just mindless, reflexive, stimuli based, and controlled by the unconscious mind. Who is making your heart beat? Who is sustaining your organs? Lot of your actions are spontaneous or unconscious. If notice time to time you do things without even being aware. You may have regrets based on your choice but may be you didn’t really have a choice but an illusion of choice. Instead of crying over the loss enjoy the freshness caused due to impermanence. Follow the path of least mental and physical resistance. Sometimes there is less physical resistance but more mental resistance. Find the balance and follow where the flow takes you. The mind blocks the life. People is seeking to add years to their life but not life to the years. Open your mind. Let go of all the belief systems, all at once and let life enter you and fill the Void within. The sense of separation between you and your perception is abstract. There is no difference between you and what you experience. What is an experience without an experiencer? What is an experiencer without experience? The answer to both is nothing. Experience is the experiencer. The mind perceives then interprets and then creates an abstract sense of self and then overall, an illusion of an ‘I’ perceiving something. All sufferings comes from all the interpretation of mind and the formation of the sense of self. The best moment is spend when you get lost in the moment. A work is done best when you become lost in that work. Those types of work are also effortless. The best arts are formed when the artist gets lost in their own art while creating it. You truly live in the present moment only when you become the present moment itself. True happiness is here and now in the present moment. But alas! Most of the people waste their whole life anticipating and worrying about the future or regretting the past. The masters do their work without doing because they don’t need to, because they become the deed while doing. Do that in which you can get lost, in which you can be completely mindful and be without the hindrance of the sense of self and constant interpretations, judgments and chatters of the mind. Life is a show. Just enjoy the show. Enjoy the pain and pleasure. There is nothing to be serious of. Let go. Be free. By telling you to just be and all that I am not promoting inaction. You must fulfill your duties and do what you truly love. Find your true will. ‘Become’ but become by only ‘being’. ‘Do’, but without any expectation. All is interconnected. All is one. Whenever you hurt someone, you hurt a part of yourself. You are not in the world, the world is in you. Those who strive by hurting others, are never truly happy. As they say, misery loves company. Those who are miserable within seek for misery in others. There are no bad or good guys. Trying to extinguish fire of hatred and revenge with hatred and vengeance will breed even more hatred and create and endless cycle of war and conflict. Anger is just a poison of mind. Most of the time when you act irrationally with anger or stupidity, you are not aware of your actions until it is too late. Then the mind performs backward rationalizations to explain the irrational actions by making up false stories. Expressing angers on some inanimate thing don’t really solves the problem. Just become aware of yourself. When the unconscious reactions takes place become aware so that the choice to how to react comes down to your conscious self. It is love that nullifies fear, hatred, shame, anger and everything else like that. Love is the highest way to live by. Love is what makes everything possible. Love unites people and makes birth of life possible. Be it love for power, love for money or be it love of recognition it is always love. But most of the types of love in the modern age is just ego related, conditional, or just desire to possess. If you love a flower and pick it up in order to possess it, it will die. Because of all the impure forms of love, there are wars in name of love, there is jealousy arising from love and all other things. Love creates and love destroys. But the most pure form of love transcends everything. It is unconditional and universal love. When you get access to the true love which is your divine self itself you can accept every fate and be it ghost, demon, beggar, rich, poor, killer, savior, saint or psychopath you can feel the same divine love towards everyone. But first you have to love yourself. Those who love others also love themselves. It is generally those who hate their true self, hate others too. Yes, be selfish. Being selfish is beautiful. Those who are truly selfish, those who truly love their divine or true self don’t hurt others. Most of the people don’t love their true self but their body. Love everything. Be nice and peaceful to everyone. And then one day you may achieve the enlightening experience of cosmic unity and see the ocean of consciousness. We are the drops in the ocean yet also the ocean itself. Some of my words may be contradicting. Make your own balanced mixture from what I said and use it on your life to gain the ability to face pain and loss without suffering.
Stick Man: Why care for all these? Why love? Will it even matter if I kill and burn everyone? Why be nice to anyone?
Fat Man: Because everyone outnumbers you by like 6.5 billion.
Stick Man: Good point.
