Getting Lost in Thoughts

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Getting Lost in Thoughts 

Someone has said, “I think therefore I am.” Is this really true? It is only because we exist that we can generate a thought, isn’t it? Our thought process has become so compulsive, and our focus has shifted from our existence to our thoughts to such an extent, that now we are beginning to believe that we exist because we think. Even without our silly thoughts, existence is and will always be. What can one think, really? Just the nonsense that one has gathered and recycled. Can one think something other than what has been fed into one’s head? All one is doing is recycling old data. This recycling has become so important that people even dare to say “I think, therefore I am.” And that has become the world’s way of life.

Because one is, one can think. If one chooses, one can fully be and still not think. The most beautiful moments in one’s life – moments of bliss, moments of joy, moments of ecstasy, moments of utter peace – were moments when one was not thinking about anything. One was just living.

Does one want to be a living being or a thinking being? Right now, ninety percent of the time we are only thinking about life, not living life. Have we come here to experience life or to think about life? Everybody can think up their own nonsense whichever way they want; it need not have anything to do with reality. Our psychological process is a very small happening compared to the life process, but right now it has become far more important. We need to shift the significance to the life process once again.

There is a story of Aristotle, a great thinker and intellectual who applied logic in all his discussions and Heraclitus. Heraclitus was sitting on a beach and had dug a small hole and was filling the ocean’s water in it with spoon. Aristotle asked him what he was doing and he told him the same thing – “filling the ocean’s water into the hole with a spoon.” Aristotle who was not known to laugh, laughed at the silliness of this and told Heraclitus this is impossible. Heraclitus replied saying his job was done, and when Aristotle asked him – “How?” Heraclitus replied, “What are you trying to do? Do you know how vast this existence is? It can contain a billion oceans like this and more, and you are trying to empty it into the small hole of your head – and with what? With tablespoons called thoughts. Please give it up. Its utterly ridiculous.”

This is the choice we have: either we learn to live with creation, or we create our own nonsensical creations in our head. Which option should we exercise? Right now, most people are living in thoughts, something in a psychological space, not in an existential space. And so, they are insecure, because it can collapse any moment.

The planet is spinning on time. Not a small event. All galaxies are going perfectly well, the whole cosmos is doing great. But we have one nasty little thought crawling through our head, and the day becomes bad because of that thought.

The mind is the cause of our suffering, we need to transcend the mind. When there is no fear of suffering, there is absolute freedom. Only when this happens, a man is free to experience life beyond his limitations. So, being a Buddha means that we have become a witness to our own intellect.

The essence of yoga and meditation is just this: once we have a clear space between the individual and our mind, we experience a completely different dimension of existence.