Be Still

During leisure, the mind seeks distractions to keep it engaged, in other words, to keep it alive. Being does the opposite and starves the mind. This is why the mind comes up with billion excuses whenever you are staying or planning to stay still.  Whenever the world is not demanding your attention, go to your bed, or a couch, or a chair, or on the floor and just be. Just exist. No thinking, no planning, no worrying, only existing. Very highly likely the mind wants you to check notifications, scroll, look up new pointers, or perhaps books or documentaries on  advaita . They are none of your business. They appear in the mind and has to do with it only. You are That in which all these appear.  It will be hard to not act under the sway of the mind. But the more you get swayed, the more momentum you give to the mind. Think of it like a train going fast in the wrong direction. You have to push the hardest in the beginning towards the right direction to get it to slow down, stop...

Ram Dass said that  jñāna yoga  means to use the mind to beat the mind. Exercises that are labeled as self-inquiry, self-investigation, self-attention, tracing the "I," holding the "I," being aware of awareness, or any other way you can translate ātma vichāra  refer to just this. Due to our age-old visaya vāsanās [tendencies], the mind is constantly outward focusing on objects. As one matures in the practice of traditional object meditation, where one is to hold an object such as breath, a sound, or a mantra and ignore all else, at some point, he achieves one-pointedness of the mind. This is when he is able to attend to only that object, without being swayed by distractions.  Then, he will be drawn to investigate the subject of the experience, which is investigating to whom this experience is arising. He constantly practices this to come to the stillness that "asking" such questions brings the mind to. Eventually, the practice itself becomes the hurdle sin...

Our identity as this body and mind complex makes us want pleasure and avoid pain. We wake up every day and repeat what we did the day before, and will repeat it all the following days. What is it all for? Why are we here, and why do things happen to us? But most importantly, who are we? This... is the question that reveals it All. But to get to this point, like Ram Dass always said, for one to become a Nobody, one has to first be a somebody. This somebody means having full identification with body and mind and going about your life with a strong sense of doership, or the ego. One believes he is who he thinks he is and chases after his dream to be happy. He strives to do well in school, get a beautiful woman to marry and have children with, buy a house to live in, fulfill all the needs and wants of himself and his family. All of this to be happy. Sure, he may achieve all that. But does he get happiness with it? A permanent one? No.  It takes him countless lives and iterations to arr...