Chaos in Mind

- Ritvvij Parrikh
Mumbai, India

An old Zen teacher followed a practice. Whenever anyone asked him a question, he asked them to wait for a period of seven days. After such a long wait, he would finally answer his query. It is not that he needed seven days to answer the question but it was just that he wanted the questioner also to think over the question. If the question would have been a true query then the questioner would have waited for the period and wouldn’t have given it up.

With this story, I start talking about the concept of – chaos in mind.
99 out of the 100 questions that our mind asks are useless and mundane.

What is he thinking? Why did they do that? What is they mean? Why did he say that? Who was that who just passed by? How do these people stay in such huts? ….

99 out of 100, the questions that you ask – don’t make any STRATEGIC sense.

It is this chaos that generates nonsense continuously & unceasingly in our mind, not allowing us to give in our best. We ask our mind’s silly questions and crowd it with silly answers.

The human mind is highly capable. It is like a super-computer capable of computing at a rate of zillions. But we lack the necessary control unit within ourselves to harness that power. Thus, we barely use a fraction of our capability. And again, it is not humanly possible that we don’t use our minds. Our mind is never at rest. Thoughts flow within it as mellifluously as water in a stream. Then again if we are thinking so much then what is going wrong? We are letting our mind be crowded by unnecessary questions and answers. And so our mind gets locked in this cycle of questions and answers. It’s like a continuous monologue with oneself.

When you ask a question, you may be asking for many reasons. One may be just that you want a confirmation. You already know what the answer is… Then again some people ask questions to test how much other people know… Some ask questions to doubt the other… Some ask out of sheer curiosity…

And once you get an answer for that particular question, you will generate 1000 more questions from that answer.

This is CHAOS!

Chaos is born out of confused thinking.

Chaos is self created and quite groundless.

And again if you do want to ask a question… why are you not open to the answer?
You ask a question… and get an answer for that. You have been answered. But you are not open to that answer. You still remain closed. The answer does not penetrate you. The question continues to exist. What was the sense?

I have always heard people talk, when talking about success – talk about a lot of things from focus to resolve to planning and having a clear cut strategy. We are also advised about not wasting time doing unnecessary things like watching TV… Significant that it might sound, but I don’t find it so. Surprisingly, 24 hours in a day is a lot of time to do a lot of things. Then where are things going wrong? They are asking us to NOT to watch TV / movies, read a book, etc NOT to save time but to restrict the topics that the mind can have at hand to create CHAOS!

Thus, we need to be very selective about what has to be thought about and what not. Silly and mundane thoughts must not crowd our mind. And most of these unnecessary thoughts are nothing but things in our life that we can’t do anything about. And again, when a particular problem has been solved, we are so used to thinking about useless nonsense that we pick up more.

Only the objects change, the process continues unceasingly.

We need to kill that chaos, by not allowing certain things to affect us. It could be anything from a friend’s remark to a being late…

Most of our thoughts & thinking get stuck at the mind level. This creates a fog, a mist that goes not allow the intellect to think. Let’s see it with an example…A close friend back stabs you by poisoning the minds of your other friends. Or if someone insults you, then what happens. You feel angry! The agitation lasts for hours, days & for months sometime. This is because the thoughts are not crossing over to the intellect level from the mind level. And when the intellect is not involved… you are sure to jump to conjectures. And this event gets recorded as a negative happening.

Viewed again from a third side, had the mist not formed… the intellect would have stepped in and you could have shown the friend the double standards of the back-stabber. Thus, in any scenario… avoiding chaos is a very important thing.

Thus, identifying and killing chaos is very important. The fluctuations in the physical world must not disturb the inner peace and bliss

Just let things happen… let life pass by without questions and you will finally find your peace and with it… your answers.

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "May be," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "May be," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "May be," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. " May be ," said the farmer.

Don’t ask! Accept it…

A student went to his meditation teacher and said, "My meditation is horrible! I feel so distracted, or my legs ache, or I'm constantly falling asleep. It's just horrible!" "It will pass," the teacher said matter-of-factly. A week later, the student came back to his teacher. "My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so peaceful, so alive! It's just wonderful!'
"It will pass," the teacher replied matter-of-factly.

KILLING chaos!

1. talk LESS… understand MORE

We – our mind and our relationships are stuck in the exchange of words. There is no stillness. It is essential to bring some stillness into you and your close relationships. There is a distinct difference between hearing and listening. If something falls on your ears, you heard it. If you intentionally heard it… you listened. Generally our attention is more towards evaluating the words that the other person has used and when syntactically put together - the meaning. Post evaluation, we are preparing for the next thing that we will be saying. Then there is difference between listening and what I call as true listening. True listening is listening + assimilating the content. If you are true listening, you will talk less… as there is no time for it. True listening is another way of stillness. Now the words become secondary and the thing that is being indicated the primary. Now the other person is not the other and you become one with him. Your consciousnesses becomes one. Communication stops… The scope for misunderstanding eliminated! Because you can only misunderstand the words. Between understanding and non-understanding lies a thin line called misunderstanding. And thanks to your ego you will never accept that you have misunderstood. And misunderstanding is bound to occur when you talk by words.

2. STOP lying AND boasting

You can be graceful only when you are true. If you have a certain lie within you, that lie will disturb your grace, that lie will be poisonous to your beauty because that lie has to be hidden, suppressed. Nobody is to be allowed to know it. You cannot be open; you will be shut by that lie. If you deceive, you cannot be free and flowing. You will be stuck with your deception. So I don’t say that lies are bad because they are harmful to others – No. They are bad because you will miss your own grace. Deception are not bad because you deceive others; they are bad because they will disturb your flow and you will not be flowing. You will lose your grace; Hence the gospels clearly and appropriately call Jesus as – “truth and grace.”

3. STOP categorizing

Suffering begins when you mentally name or label a situation or an event as undesirable or desirable. Someone did something… why term it as negative or positive? Who are we to judge… Someone insults you… why term it as negative? There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students gathered to study under him. One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village. He was determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his strength he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus revealing a weakness and thus would strike with merciless force and lightening speed. No one had ever lasted against him in a match more than the first move .Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly accepted the young warrior’s challenge. As the two squared off for the battle, the young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit at his face. But the old warrior merely stood there motionless and calm. Finally the young warrior knowing that he was defeated without a battle, left feeling ashamed .The students were angry and puzzled at the master as to why he did not drive him away despite the insult. The master replied – “If someone gifts you something and you don’t accept it, whom does the gift belong to!” Why do you bother when someone insults you? Kill the feeling of pride when someone praises you (positive), and the negative of being insulted disappears. The day, you stop being flattered by praise, you will stop feeling insulted by insults. Kill the positive and the negative disappears. If you respect yourself, no one can insult you.

4. STOP trying to think WHAT OTHERS ARE THINKING

Don’t put yourself into another’s shoes and try thinking what they are thinking or going through… You can never achieve that. One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river. Looking the swimming fishes Chuang commented – “they are really enjoying themselves.” On this the friend replied – “How do you know that they are enjoying themselves? You are not a fish!” To this… Chuang replied – “How do you know that I don’t know that the fishes are enjoying themselves… You are not me!” disappears. The day, you stop being flattered by praise, you will stop feeling insulted by insults.

You have thoughts.... no THinking!

I believe this statement alone ll SUMMARIZES all i wanna SAY here....
YOU HAVE THOUGHTS... NO THINKING!!!
Unlike other animals, man has been born with a brain. A brain that can think... A brain that can analyze, compare, react, solve problems, decide... It has art in it as well as science within it. It can do whatever you want it to do. It has great potential. It is powerful than the most powerful computer. Your thoughts and ideas what you think are yours are actually not yours. Your religious belief, your views about people, your views about the country, your reasoning... everything belongs to someone else. As a child, your parents, teachers, friends... leave back some images in your brain. Probably you might have never touched something hot but since your parents told you that it will burn once you touch it, you dont touch hot things. If i ask you... Can you think? You ll immediately snap back - Yes! How do you know that you can think? May be even this is a borrowed thought. A true thinker will reject all external-born thoughts and develops his own. He will develop his own views and ideas about life. Thinking is structured generation of thoughts. This is something that rarely happens within our brain. Ideas as the governing factor of human action and of the universe. Ideas are the governing factor of human action because most of the things that each human does has some or the other thought process behind it. Ideas, again are the governing factor for the universe because from human point of view, the universe and this cosmos moves according to human ideas that are better called as the Laws of Nature. Whether these laws of nature hold true for nature itself is a question of doubt. Thus, ideas are a very important factor in human life… And ideas are generated from thinking…