What Is The Big Hurry?

These days, we can see big and beautiful billboards on the roads anywhere we go. We can see male and female models confidently smiling at us from the billboard. Although they appear to be relaxed and smiling, you can make out that they are following a very hectic daily routine that is causing them great stress. Every hour of their day will be filled from the time they wakeup at six till they go to bed late in the night. Before they go to bed, they will take a pill to take care of their headache so that they can get up fresh the next morning. And the advertisement board that they posed for will be for a headache pill!

These days, whatever moves faster is better. Communication is at the speed of light. The world has become a global village. E-mails have to be responded to within an hour. We all are always in a great hurry. What are we doing? Where are we all running? Rather, what are we all running for in such a great hurry?

We are all driven by greed and fear. Greed tells us that there is no time to lose. Fear tells us that we are going to lose. So, we hurry not knowing what we are going to lose, not knowing what its value is.

We cram more hours into a day, more years into a lifetime. We multi-live. We try to enjoy cerebrally without any joy.

And what is cerebral enjoyment? It is enjoying purely with the mind, either because we don't have the time to do things and enjoy, or because it has become a habit to enjoy with the mind.

A young man came to see me. He said, 'Swamiji. I have everything sorted out. I am building a house with a 25-year loan. By that time my daughter will be ready for marriage. My son will be in a good job. The house would be very valuable and we can get a lot of money by selling it. We will invest most of it and settle down with you in the ashram.' His daughter was a two-year old and his son was still a baby his wife was holding!

He had finished off twenty-five years of his life in just ten minutes. He feels that his calling is spiritual. Mortgaging the present for the future is not spirituality

This constant running is nothing but a reflection of our inner restlessness. At the end of it, we feel we have missed out on something in life. We ask ourselves if the running has been worth it.

The Greek emperor, Alexander, after he had conquered most of the world, felt very depressed. He was depressed, as he had nothing more left to conquer. His desire was to conquer the whole world. That is what prompted him to run without stopping and he achieved it also. But at the end of it, he felt only depressed! This is what happens when we are constantly in pursuit of material things. Your being will never be satisfied with these things; the vacuum or void or depression that you feel is the depression of your being which can never be filled by external pleasures and accomplishments.

A small story:

There was a king who lived in great comfort and luxury.

After many years, he became very bored and depressed.

He had all the comforts and wealth that life could offer him. But all the excitement had gone out of his life.

If you don't have something, at least you have the excitement and hope of attaining it. He had everything he could want. But he was so depressed that he would not even come out of his room. All his ministers tried everything; they brought him all the best things from all over the country to get him back to his original self.

Finally, they told him about an enlightened Master who lived in the forest.

They begged him, 'He has helped all kinds of people to come out of depression; please meet with him.'

The king agreed and he went to the Master with all his doubts and questions.

He asked, 'Can you give me something to get me out of depression?'

The Master said, 'If you can give me all your wealth in a gunny bag, I will tell you.'

The king got suspicious and thought to himself, 'Why should he ask for all my wealth? Yet, there is a certain grace about him that is beyond my doubt. '

If a person is Enlightened, he penetrates your being. He gets past your intellect and doubt.

He reasoned with himself, 'Anyhow, I am not happy with all this wealth. Maybe the Master can

at least give me back my peace of mind even if he takes all my money.' So, he converted all his wealth to diamonds and took them to the Master.

Without saying a word, the Master grabbed the gunny bag and ran.

The king couldn't catch him because the Master knew the forest well.

The king blamed himself for being such a fool to believe an unknown person and visualized himself being a beggar.

He shuddered at the utter poverty that lay in front of him.

When he was rich, he suffered. Now, he was poor and even now he suffered.

After a while the king stopped running. When the king stopped, the Master stopped. The king iumped on the Master and grabbed the bag back. The Master said. 'Fool! Now, take this and enjoy.'

Suddenly, the king felt like a rich guy and was happy!

You see: It is the mind that plays these tricks on us. Just with the mind, the king felt unhappy first with all the wealth, he felt miserable when the wealth was taken away and felt joyful when the wealth was restored. Between his first unhappy state and his final joyful state, there was no difference. The wealth that he had with him was the same wealth did not give him happiness first, but when it was taken away from him and restored, it gave him happiness! Nothing had changed except his mind! Not even a penny was removed or added to his wealth!

Our mind keeps us unhappy by playing these games on us and making us run. However much we achieve, it keeps driving us to newer horizons but the horizon recedes as fast as you try to reach it because it has no real existence. The horizon is only an illusion.

All our hopes of satisfying our desires are just like a mirage in a desert.

There is good reason to plan for tomorrow, it is important. However, we should not forget to live today. We need to learn to do whatever we do with total focus, with enjovment and to live that moment fully.

Lao Tzu calls this mindfulness Wei-wu-Wei, action with no action. It is to enter into each activity totally, playfully, spontaneously, in such a way that work is play and effort is fun. Activity with joy is action; action with no joy is activity. Each task can be an action if we enjoyed every moment without thinking of where to go next.

It is the way a child tackles her work enjoying each moment, not worried about how soon her work is to be finished, not worried about how the work is going to look after it is done. If you ask a child to wash a bowl, have you seen what he does? He will play with the water, blow bubbles with the soap water and what not. Finally he will wash the bowl and keep it. An adult mind can never do this. There is rarely enjoyment in what we do; there is just the attitude of getting it over with, even if it is doing something pleasurable. We are driven all the time, not knowing where to.

Actually if you notice, children can sit by themselves doing nothing sometimes. They will just be sitting and babbling something. It is we adults who find it difficult to sit not doing anything. We feel urgency all the time. What for? We are so afraid to sit by ourselves and do nothing for even a minute. I tell you, if you sit by yourself and touch base with yourself at least once, if you get a

taste of it just once. you will understand the purposelessness of life itself and you will stop running.

You will understand that life is not about any activity, any goal, any purpose, any achievement, but it is about enjoying the oneness with Existence, enjoying you center within. When you understand this. then, expressions of this enjoyment will start happening automatically. You will start doing things that are beautiful expressions of your experience within, which are expressions of your joy in feeling the oneness with Existence. That is the way things have to happen.

If things happen from your center, vou will not be in a hurry: you will not feel any hangovers. But if you do them without any feeling of being centered, then all your actions will be subject to feelings of no fulfillment, hangovers and what not. You will be caught in the cycle of pure outer world actions, one leading to the other.

A small story:

Once, there was a man who was sitting in a boat and needed to reach the other bank of the river in a hurry.

The boatman was doing his best to row the boat as fast as he could.

But, the man was getting impatient and started walking up and down inside the boat.

After some time, his pace quickened and started rocking the boat.

The boatman requested him to be seated and to allow him to row the boat.

The man replied, 'I have no time! I have to reach the other side soon!'

If we look at ourselves, this is what we too do most of the time. We run inside the boat! We have boarded the boat and the boat will take us to the other side if we sit and relax. Can we reach faster by even a minute if we walk inside the boat? In fact, we might slow down the process of reaching the other side by walking inside the boat. We don't have faith in the power of the boat. We feel we have to walk restlessly, only then can we reach the other side.

Ramana Maharishi often says a beautiful story:

Once, a man was traveling by train with his luggage on his head.

A fellow passenger asked him why he was carrying the luggage on his head when he could keep it in the train and sit peacefully.

The man replied, 'It will be too heavy for the train!'

The train is carrying him and his luggage already, but the man is in additional carrying the luggage on his head and burdening himself! In the same way, not only you, but also your mind is being taken care of by the Divine. Only you have to place a little trust on Existence and relax. Do your work in totality and relax; things will be automatically taken care of.

We keep running because we are afraid to stop and reflect on what we are doing and why. We are afraid to be with ourselves. To be silent can be terrifying as it makes one vulnerable to oneself.

People are afraid to meditate because of this fear to be silent. In Zen, meditation is about just sitting still and doing nothing, but consciously sitting still. Stopping the body and mind is like healing the body and mind. It is not any sin to stop the body and mind. Understand that first. You don't have to feel guilty about stopping the body and mind for a few minutes of introspection. The problem is we have been brought up with so much guilt that we feel guilty about virtually

everything. There is nothing wrong in introspection. Just try it once a day. You will become growingly aware of your core. When this happens, you will start to understand the whole show and all your feelings of guilt will also dissolve with it.