Become Watchful

 

Photo Credit: Facebook||Osho - the Dhammapad

Become Watchful

Don’t consider what is right and what is wrong, because if we consider what is right and what is wrong, we will be divided, we will become hypocrites. We will pretend to do the right and we will do the wrong. And the moment we consider what is right and what is wrong, we become attached, we become identified. We certainly become identified with the right.

For example, we see a hundred-rupee note on the side of the road; it may have fallen from somebody’s pocket. Now the question arises: whether to take it or not? One part says, “It is perfectly right to take it. Nobody is looking, nobody will ever suspect. And this is not stealing - it is just lying there! If I don’t take it, somebody else is going to take it anyway. So why miss it? It is perfectly right!”

But another part says, “This is wrong - this money does not belong to you, it is not yours. In a way, in an indirect way, it is stealing. You should inform the police, or if you don’t want to be bothered with it, then go ahead, forget all about it. Don’t even look back. This is greed and greed is a sin!”

Now, these two minds are there. One says, “It is right, take it,” the other says, “It is wrong, don’t take it.” With which mind are we going to identify ourselves with? We are certainly going to identify with the mind which says it is immoral, because that is more ego-satisfying. We are moral persons; we are not ordinary; anybody else would have taken the hundred-rupee note.

In such times of difficulties, people don’t think of such delicacies. We will identify ourselves with the moral mind. But there is every possibility we will take the note. We will identify ourselves with the moral mind, and we will disidentify ourselves from the mind which is going to take the note. We will condemn it deep down; we will say, “It is not right — it is the sinner part of me.” We will keep ourselves aloof from it. We will say, “I was against it. It was my instinct, it was my unconscious, it was my body, it was my mind, which persuaded me to do it; otherwise, I knew it, that it was wrong. I am the one who knows that it was wrong.” We always identify ourselves with the right, the moralistic attitude, and we disidentify from the immoral act - although we do it. This is how hypocrisy arises. 

This is the conflict; this is how one becomes troubled. The key that can take us out of all identification is not to be identified with the moral mind - because that too is part of the mind. It is the same game: one part saying good, another part saying bad - it is the same mind creating a conflict in us. Mind is always dual. Mind lives in opposites. It loves and it hates the same person; it wants to do the act and it does not want to do the act. It is conflict, mind is conflict. Don’t get identified with either.

Become watchful. See that one part is saying this, another part is saying that. We should realise that we are neither this nor that — we are just witnesses.” Only then is there a possibility that understanding will arise. To go beyond judgments of good and bad is the way of watchfulness. And it is through watchfulness that transformations happen. 

This is the difference between morality and dharma. Morality says, “Choose the right and reject the wrong. Choose the good and reject the bad.” Dharma says, “Simply watch both. Don’t choose at all. Remain in a choiceless consciousness.”