The Root Problem
THE SONG CONTINUES:
IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE; IF WITH THE MIND ONE THEN
OBSERVES THE MIND, ONE DESTROYS DISTINCTIONS AND REACHES BUDDHAHOOD.
THE CLOUDS THAT WANDER THROUGH THE SKY HAVE NO ROOTS, NO HOME; NOR DO
THE DISTINCTIVE THOUGHTS flOATING THROUGH THE MIND. ONCE THE SELF-MIND IS
SEEN, DISCRIMINATION STOPS.
IN SPACE SHAPES AND COLORS FORM, BUT NEITHER BY BLACK NOR WHITE IS SPACE
TINGED. FROM THE SELF-MIND ALL THINGS EMERGE, THE MIND BY VIRTUES AND BY
VICES IS NOT STAINED.
The root problem of all problems is mind itself. The first thing to be understood is what this mind
is, of what stuff it is made; whether it is an entity or just a process; whether it is substantial, or
just dreamlike. And unless you know the nature of the mind, you will not be able to solve any
problems of your life.
You may try hard, but if you try to solve single, individual problems, you are bound to be a failure
- that is absolutely certain - because in fact no individual problem exists: mind is the problem. If
you solve this problem or that, it won't help because the root remains untouched.
It is just like cutting branches of a tree, pruning the leaves, and not uprooting it. New leaves will
come, new branches will sprout - even more than before; pruning helps a tree to become
thicker.
Unless you know how to uproot it, your fight is baseless, it is foolish. You will destroy yourself,
not the tree.
In fighting you will waste your energy, time, life, and the tree will go on becoming more and more
strong, far thicker and dense. And you will be surprised what is happening: you are doing so
much hard work, trying to solve this problem and that, and they go on growing, increasing. Even
if one problem is solved, suddenly ten problems take its place.
Don't try to solve individual, single problems - there are none: MIND ITSELF IS THE PROBLEM.
But mind is hidden underground; that's why I call it the root, it is not apparent. Whenever you
come across a problem the problem is above ground, you can see it - that's why you are
deceived by it.
Always remember, the visible is never the root; the root always remains invisible, the root is
always hidden. Never fight with the visible; otherwise you will fight with shadows. You may
waste yourself, but there cannot be any transformation in your life, the same problems will crop
up again and again and again. You can observe your own life and you will see what I mean. I
am not talking about any theory about the mind, just the "facticity" of it. This is the fact: mind has
to be solved.
People come to me and they ask, "How to attain a peaceful mind?" I say to them, "There exists
nothing like that: peaceful mind. Never heard of it."
Mind is never peaceful - no-mind is peace. Mind itself can never be peaceful, silent. The very
nature of the mind is to be tense, to be in confusion. Mind can never be clear, it cannot have
clarity, because mind is by nature confusion, cloudiness. Clarity is possible without mind, peace
is possible without mind, silence is possible without mind - so never try to attain a silent mind. If
you do, from the very beginning you are moving in an impossible dimension.
So the first thing is to understand the nature of the mind, only then can something be done.
If you watch, you will never come across any entity like mind. It is not a thing, it is just a process;
it is not a thing, it is like a crowd. Individual thoughts exist, but they move so fast that you cannot
see the gaps in between. The intervals cannot be seen because you are not very aware and
alert, you need a deeper insight. When your eyes can look deep, you will suddenly see one
thought, another thought, another thought - but NO MIND.
Thoughts together, millions of thoughts, give you the illusion as if mind exists. It is just like a
crowd, millions of people standing in a crowd: is there anything like a crowd? Can you find the
crowd other than the individuals standing there? But they are standing together, their
togetherness gives you the feeling as if something like a crowd exists - only individuals exist.
This is the first insight into the mind. Watch, and you will find thoughts; you will never come
across the mind. And if it becomes your own experience - not because I say it, not because
Tilopa sings about it, no, that won't be of much help - if it becomes YOUR experience, if it
becomes a fact of your own knowing, then suddenly many things start changing. Because you
have understood such a deep thing about mind, then many things can follow.
Watch the mind and see where it is, what it is. You will feel thoughts floating and there will be
intervals. And if you watch long, you will see that intervals are more than the thoughts, because
each thought has to be separate from another thought; in fact, each word has to be separate
from another word. The deeper you go, you will find more and more gaps, bigger and bigger
gaps. A thought floats, then comes a gap where no thought exists; then another thought comes,
another gap follows.
If you are unconscious you cannot see the gaps; you jump from one thought to another, you
never see the gap. If you become aware you will see more and more gaps. If you become
perfectly aware, then miles of gaps will be revealed to you. And in those gaps, SATORIS
happen. In those gaps the truth knocks at your door. In those gaps, the guest comes. In those
gaps God is realized, or whatsoever way you like to express it. And when awareness is
absolute, then there is only a vast gap of nothingness.
It is just like clouds: clouds move. They can be so thick that you cannot see the sky hidden
behind.
The vast blueness of the sky is lost, you are covered with clouds. Then you go on watching: one
cloud moves and another has not come into the vision yet - and suddenly a peek into the
blueness of the vast sky.
The same happens inside: you are the vast blueness of the sky, and thoughts are just like
clouds hovering around you, filling you. But the gaps exist, the sky exists. To have a glimpse of
the sky is SATORI, and to become the sky is SAMADHI. From satori to samadhi, the whole
process is a deep insight into the mind, nothing else.
Mind doesn't exist as an entity - the first thing. Only thoughts exist.
The second thing: the thoughts exist separate from you, they are not one with your nature, they
come and go - you remain, you persist. You are like the sky: never comes, never goes, it is
always there. Clouds come and go, they are momentary phenomena, they are not eternal. Even
if you try to cling to a thought, you cannot retain it for long; it has to go, it has its own birth and
death. Thoughts are not yours, they don't belong to you. They come as visitors, guests, but they
are not the host.
Watch deeply, then you will become the host and thoughts will be the guests. And as guests
they are beautiful, but if you forget completely that you are the host and they become the hosts,
then you are in a mess. This is what hell is. You are the master of the house, the house belongs
to you, and guests have become the masters. Receive them, take care of them, but don't get
identified with them; otherwise, they will become the masters.
The mind becomes the problem because you have taken thoughts so deeply inside you that you
have forgotten completely the distance; that they are visitors, they come and go. Always
remember that which abides: that is your nature, your TAO. Always be attentive to that which
never comes and never goes, just like the sky. Change the gestalt: don't be focused on the
visitors, remain rooted in the host; the visitors will come and go.
Of course, there are bad visitors and good visitors, but you need not be worried about them. A
good host treats all the guests in the same way, without making any distinctions. A good host is
just a good host: a bad thought comes and he treats the bad thought also in the same way as
he treats a good thought. It is not his concern that the thought is good or bad.
... Because once you make the distinction that this thought is good and that thought is bad, what
are you doing? You are bringing the good thought nearer to yourself and pushing the bad
thought further away. Sooner or later, with the good thought you will get identified; the good
thought will become the host. And any thought when it becomes the host creates misery -
because this is not the truth. The thought is a pretender and you get identified with it.
Identification is the disease.
Gurdjieff used to say that only one thing is needed: not to be identified with that which comes
and goes. The morning comes, the noon comes, the evening comes, and they go; the night
comes and again the morning. You abide: not as you, because that too is a thought - as pure
consciousness; not your name, because that too is a thought; not your form, because that too is
a thought; not your body, because one day you will realize that too is a thought. Just pure
consciousness, with no name, no form; just the purity, just the formlessness and namelessness,
just the very phenomenon of being aware - only that abides.
If you get identified, you become the mind. If you get identified, you become the body. If you get
identified, you become the name and the form - what Hindus call NAMA, RUPA, name and form
- then the host is lost. Then you forget the eternal and the MOMENTARY becomes significant.
The momentary is the world; the eternal is divine.
This is the second insight to be attained, that you are the host and thoughts are guests.
The third thing, if you go on watching, will be realized soon. The third thing is that thoughts are
foreign, intruders, outsiders. NO THOUGHT IS YOURS. They always come from without, you
are just a passage. A bird comes into the house from one door, and flies out from another: just
like that a thought comes into you and goes out of you.
You go on thinking that thoughts are yours. Not only that, you fight for your thoughts, you say,
"This is my thought, this is true." You discuss, you debate, you argue about it, you try to prove
that, "This is my thought." No thought is yours, no thought is original - all thoughts are borrowed.
And not secondhand, because millions of people have claimed those same thoughts before you.
Thought is just as outside as a thing.
Somewhere, the great physicist, Eddington, has said that the deeper science goes into matter,
the more it becomes a realization that things are thoughts. That may be so, I am not a physicist,
but from the other end I would like to tell you that Eddington may be true that things look more
and more like thoughts if you go deeper; if you go deeper into yourself, thoughts will look more
and more like things. In fact, these are two aspects of the same phenomenon: a thing is a
thought, a thought is a thing.
When I say a thought is a thing, what do I mean? I mean that you can throw your thought just
like a thing. You can hit somebody's head with a thought just like a thing. You can kill a person
through a thought just as you can throw a dagger. You can give your thought as a gift, or as an
infection.
Thoughts are things, they are forces, but they don't belong to you. They come to you; they abide
for a while in you and then they leave you. The whole universe is filled with thoughts and things.
Things are just the physical part of thoughts, and thoughts are the mental part of things.
Because of this fact, many miracles happen - because thoughts are things. If a person
continuously thinks about you and your welfare, it will happen - because he is throwing a
continuous force at you. That's why blessings are useful, helpful. If you can be blessed by
someone who has attained no-mind, the blessing is going to be true - because a man who
never uses thought accumulates thought energy, so whatsoever he says is going to be true.
In all the Eastern traditions, before a person starts learning no-mind, there are techniques and
much emphasis that he should stop being negative, because if you once attain to no-mind and
your trend remains negative, you can become a dangerous force. Before the no-mind is
attained, one should become absolutely positive. That is the whole difference between white
and black magic.
Black magic is nothing but when a man has accumulated thought energy without throwing out
his negativity beforehand. And white magic is nothing but when a man has attained too much
thought energy, and has based his total being on a positive attitude. The same energy with
negativity becomes black; the same energy with positivity becomes white. A thought is a great
force, it is a thing.
This will be the third insight. It has to be understood and watched within yourself.
Sometimes it happens that you see your thought functioning as a thing, but just because of too
much conditioning of materialism you think this may be just a coincidence. You neglect the fact,
you simply don't give any attention to it; you remain indifferent, you forget about it. But many
times you know that sometimes you were thinking about the death of a certain person - and he
is dead. You think it is just a coincidence. Sometime you were thinking about a friend and a
desire arose in you that it would be good if he comes - and he is on the door, knocking. You
think it is a coincidence. It is not coincidence. In fact, there is nothing like coincidence,
everything has its causality. Your thoughts go on creating a world around you.
Your thoughts are things, so be careful about them. Handle them carefully! If you are not very
conscious, you can create misery for yourself and for others - and you have done that. And
remember, when you create misery for somebody, unconsciously, at the same time, you are
creating misery for yourself - because a thought is a two-edged sword. It cuts you also
simultaneously when it cuts somebody else.
Just two or three years ago, one Israeli, Uri Geller, who has been working on thought energy,
displayed his experiment on BBC television in England. He can bend anything just by thinking:
somebody else keeps a spoon in his hand ten feet away from Uri Geller, and he just thinks
about it - and the spoon bends immediately. You cannot bend it by your hand, and he bends it
by his thought.
But a very rare phenomenon happened on the BBC television; even Uri Geller was not aware
that this is possible.
Thousands of people in their homes were seeing the experiment. And when he did his
experiment, bent things, in many people's houses many things fell and became distorted -
thousands of things all over England. The energy was as if broadcast. And he was doing the
experiment at a ten-foot distance, then from the television screen in people's homes, around the
area of ten feet, many things happened: things got bent, fell down, became distorted. It was
weird!
Thoughts are things, and very very forceful things. There is one woman in Soviet Russia,
Mikhailovana. She can do many things to things from far away, she can pull anything towards
herself - just by thought. Soviet Russia is not a believer in occult things - a communist country,
atheistic - so they have been working on Mikhailovana, on what is happening, in a scientific way.
But when she does it, she loses almost two pounds of weight; in a half-hour experiment she
loses two pounds. What does it mean?
It means that through thoughts you are throwing energy - and you are continuously doing it.
Your mind is a chatterbox. You are broadcasting things unnecessarily. You are destroying
people around you, you are destroying yourself.
You are a dangerous thing - and continuously broadcasting. And many things are happening
because of you. And it is a great network. The whole world goes on becoming every day more
and more miserable because more and more people are on the earth and they are broadcasting
more and more thoughts.
The further back you go, you find the earth the more and more peaceful - less and less
broadcasters.
In the days of Buddha, or in the days of Lao Tzu, the world was very very peaceful, natural; it
was a heaven. Why? The population was very very small, one thing. People were not thinkers
too much, they were more and more prone to feeling rather than thinking. And people were
praying. In the morning, they would do the first thing and that would be a prayer. In the night
they would do the last thing - the prayer. And throughout the whole day also, whenever they
would find a moment, they would be praying inside.
What is a prayer? Prayer is sending blessings to all. Prayer is sending your compassion to all.
Prayer is creating an antidote of negative thoughts - it is a positivity.
This will be the third insight about thoughts, that they are things, forces, and you have to handle
them very carefully.
Ordinarily, not aware, you go on thinking anything. It is difficult to find a person who has not
committed many murders in thought; difficult to find a person who has not been doing all sorts of
sins and crimes inside the mind - and then these things happen. And remember, you may not
murder, but your continuous thinking of murdering somebody may create the situation in which
the person is murdered. Somebody may take your thought, because there are weaker persons
all around and thoughts flow like water: downwards. If you think something continuously,
someone who is a weakling may take your thought and go and kill a person.
That's why those who have known the inner reality of man, they say that whatsoever happens
on the earth, everybody is responsible, everybody. Whatsoever happens in Vietnam, not only
are Nixons responsible, everybody who thinks is also responsible. Only one person CANNOT
be held responsible, and that is the person who has no mind; otherwise everybody is
responsible for everything that goes on. If the earth is a hell, you are a creator, you participate.
Don't go on throwing responsibility on others - you are also responsible, it is a collective
phenomenon. The disease may bubble up anywhere, the explosion may happen millions,
thousands of miles away from you - that doesn't make any difference, because thought is a
non-spatial phenomenon, it needs no space.
That's why it travels fastest. Even light cannot travel so fast, because even for light space is
needed.
Thought travels fastest. In fact it takes no time in traveling, space doesn't exist for it. You may be
here, thinking of something, and it happens in America. How can you be held responsible? No
court can punish you, but in the ultimate court of existence you will be punished - you are
already punished. That's why you are so miserable.
People come to me and they say, "We never do anything wrong to anybody, and still we are so
miserable." You may not be doing, you may be thinking - and thinking is more subtle than doing.
A person can protect himself from doing, but he cannot protect himself from thinking. For
thinking everybody is vulnerable.
No-thinking is a must if you want to be completely freed from sin, freed from crime, freed from all
that goes around you - and that is the meaning of a buddha.
A buddha is a person who lives without the mind; then he's not responsible. That's why in the
East we say that he never accumulates karma; he never accumulates any entanglements for
the future.
He lives, he walks, he moves, he eats, he talks, he is doing many things, so he must
accumulate karma, because karma means activity. But in the East it is said even if a buddha
kills, he will not accumulate karma. Why? And you, even if you don't kill, you will accumulate
karma. Why?
It is simple: whatsoever Buddha is doing, he is doing without any mind in it. He is spontaneous,
it is not activity. He is not thinking about it, it happens. He is not the doer. He moves like an
emptiness.
He has no mind for it, he was not thinking to do it. But if the existence allows it to happen, he
allows it to happen. He has no more the ego to