Meditation Photography

Photo Copyright Suresh Gundappa 2006
There is never trust in your prayer, because when there is trust there is no need to pray. All prayers arise out of doubt. But sometimes — it is just a coincidence — some prayers happen to be fulfilled. It is just a happening, it is just a chance; there is nobody to fulfill them. But when they are fulfilled, the priest can exploit the situation. He can say, “Look — you prayed deeply, trustfully, your prayer is fulfilled.”

But this happens only once in a while. Ninety-nine times in a hundred your prayer is not fulfilled. But you know yourself that there was not trust; doubt was there. Even when you were praying, there was doubt whether there is a God, whether he will hear, whether he will listen, whether he will oblige — all kinds of doubts. In spite of all these doubts you say, “Why not try? What you are going to lose? Give it a try. Maybe, perhaps….” You know it. So when it is not fulfilled, the priest can always say to you, “Your trust was not total.”

God is a lie as a person. God is a quality, not a personality. You cannot pray to God. You can be in prayer, but when the prayer is really there it is only a quality of love, nothing else. No words to express it, nobody to address it, it is simply a song, a wordless song in the heart, just a stirring of the deepest in you.

People love lies. Truth is arduous. And people also love lies because they make them feel good. You must lie about somebody else: you meet A and you lie about B and you make a feel good; then you meet B and you lie about A and you make B feel good. When you lie about others to people you give them the idea that they are better than others. You can play this game, and if you play it cleverly, cunningly, you can exploit very much.

People are living in enormous ignorance; they have not lit the candle of light that is there in their hearts. Their interiority is full of darkness. They don’t know even themselves — what else can they know? Hence you can lie easily and they will believe it, and you can exploit their belief. The politicians have been doing it, the priests have been doing it, and it has been done down the ages.

When you go in a temple and do a prayer, it is not prayer; but when, after compassion, gratitude arises, the whole existence becomes the temple. Whatsoever you touch it becomes a prayer; whatsoever you do it becomes prayerful. You cannot be otherwise. Deeply rooted, anchored in meditation, deeply flowing into compassion, you cannot be otherwise. You become prayer, you become gratitude.

Whatsoever you do with happiness is a prayer: your work becomes worship; your very breathing has an intense splendor to it, a grace. Not that you constantly repeat the name of God — only foolish people do that — because God has no name, and by repeating some assumed name you simply dull your own mind. By repeating His name you are not going to go anywhere. A happy man simply comes to see God is everywhere. You need happy eyes to see Him.

Let me emphasize the fact. You can do your prayer every day unconsciously; then your prayer is a sin. You can become addicted to your prayer. If you miss the prayer one day, the whole day you will feel something is wrong, something is missing, some gap. It is the same with smoking or with drinking; there is no difference in it. Your prayer has become a mechanical habit; it has become a master over you. It bosses you; you are just a servant, a slave to it. If you don’t do it, it forces you to do it.

Prayer is spontaneous meditation; meditation is prayer with effort. Prayer with technique is meditation; meditation without technique is prayer.

Peace to you all,

Love and lot’s of it dear ones

Suresh

photo copyright suresh Gundappa 2006

In New York, at least 30 of the people cannot sleep without tranquilizers. Psychologists believe that if this condition prevails for the next hundred years, not a single person will be able to sleep without medication. People have completely lost sleep. If a man who has lost sleep were to ask you how you go to sleep, and your answer were, “All I do is put my head on the pillow and fall asleep,” he will not believe you. He will find this impossible and suspect there must be some trick to it he doesn’t know–because he lays his head on the pillow, too, and nothing happens.

Americans are showing interest in meditation because they have lost sleep. They think that perhaps meditation may bring their sleep back, that it may bring some peace into their lives. That’s why they look upon meditation as nothing more than a tranquilizer.

The reason that yoga’s popularity is growing so much in America is not because people want to be yogis–the lack of sleep is the real cause. People’s sleep is in a mess, and consequently life in America is filled with heaviness, depression and tension. And so we see the growing need for tranquilizers–somehow to bring sleep to people.

You will not believe how closely, how deeply, we are connected to sleep. How a person will live his life depends totally on how he sleeps. If he does not sleep well, his entire life will be a chaos; all his relationships will become entangled, everything will become poisonous, filled with rage. If, on the contrary, a person sleeps, there will be freshness in his life–peace and joy will continuously flow in his life. Underlying his relationships, his love, everything else, there will be serenity.

When you are just falling into sleep at night, just ready to fall into sleep, go backwards through the memories of the whole day–backwards. Do not start from the morning. Start right from where you are, just on the bed–the last item, and then go back. Then go back by and by, step by step, just to the first experience in the morning when you first became awake. Go back, and remember continuously that you are not getting involved.

For example, in the afternoon someone insulted you. See yourself, the form of yourself, being insulted by someone–but you remain just an observer. Do not get involved; do not get angry again. If you get angry again, then you are identified. Then you have missed the point of meditation. Do not get angry. He is not insulting you, he is insulting the form that was in the afternoon. That form has gone now.

You are just like a river flowing; the forms are flowing. In childhood you had one form, now you do not have that form. That form has gone. River-like, you are changing continuously. So when in the night you are meditating backwards on the happenings of the day, just remember that you are a witness; do not get angry. Someone was praising you; do not get elated. Just look at the whole thing as if you are looking indifferently at a film. And backwards is very helpful–particularly for those who have any trouble with sleep.
If you have trouble with sleep, insomnia, sleeplessness, if you find it difficult to fall into sleep, this will help deeply. Why? Because this is an unwinding of the mind. When you go back, you are unwinding the mind. In the morning you start winding, and the mind becomes tangled in many things, in many places. Unfinished and incomplete, many things will remain on the mind, and there is no time to let them settle at the very moment that they happen.

So in the night go back. This is an unwinding process. And when you will be getting back to the morning when you were just on your bed, to the first thing in the morning, you will again have the same fresh mind that you had in the morning. And then you can fall asleep like a very small child.

So many persons suffer a particular disease, and nothing psychological, nothing medical helps; the disease continues. The disease seems to be psychological. What to do about it? To say to someone that his disease is psychological is no help. Rather, it may prove harmful because no one feels good when you say his disease is psychological. What can he do then? He feels he is helpless.

This going backwards is a miraculous method. If you go back slowly, slowly unwinding the mind to the first moment when this disease happened, if by and by you go back to the first time you were attacked by the disease, if you can unwind to that moment, you will come to know that this disease is basically a complex of certain other things, certain psychological things. By going back, those things will bubble up.

If you pass through that moment when the disease first attacked you, suddenly you will become aware of what psychological factors contributed to it. And you are not to do anything; you are just to be aware of those psychological factors and go on backwards. Many diseases simply disappear from you because the complex is broken. When you have become aware of the complex, then there is no need of it. You are cleansed of it–purged.

This is a deep catharsis. And if you can do it daily, you will feel a new health, a new freshness coming to you. And if we can teach children to do it daily, they will never be burdened by their past. They will not need ever to go to the past. They will be always here and now. There won’t be any hangup; nothing will be hovering over them from the past.

Love and lot’s of it dear ones

Suresh

Photo copyright Suresh Gundappa 2006

it is so difficult, to be in a state of let-go — because it has been always condemned as laziness.
It was against the workaholic society. Let-go means you start living in a saner way. You are no longer madly after money, you don’t go on working continuously; you work just for your material needs. But there are spiritual needs too! Work is a necessity for material needs.

Let-go is necessary for spiritual needs. But the majority of humanity has been completely boycotted from any spiritual growth.Let-go is one of the most beautiful spaces. You simply exist, doing nothing, sitting silently, and the grass grows by itself. You simply enjoy the songs of the birds, the greenness of the trees, the multidimensional, psychedelic colors of the flowers. You don’t have to do anything to experience existence; you have to stop doing. You have to be in an absolutely unoccupied state, with no tensions, with no worries.

In this state of tranquility you come into a certain tuning with the music that surrounds us. You suddenly become aware of the beauty of the sun. There are millions of people who have never enjoyed a sunset, who have never enjoyed a sunrise. They cannot afford it. They are continuously working and producing — not for themselves, but for the cunning vested interests: those who are in power, those who are capable of manipulating human beings.

Naturally they teach you that work is something great — it is in their interest. And the conditioning has become so deep that even you don’t know why you cannot relax.

Even on holidays people go on doing something or other. They cannot enjoy a holiday, just relaxing on the sea beach and enjoying the ocean and the very fresh and salty air. No, they will do any stupid thing. If they have nothing to do they may just take their refrigerator apart — which had been functioning perfectly well — or they may destroy an old grandfather clock, which had been functioning for centuries; they are trying to improve upon it. But basically they cannot sit silently; that is the problem. They have to do something, they have to go somewhere.

On every holiday people are rushing towards health resorts, sea beaches, not to rest there — they don’t have time to rest, because millions of people are going there. Holidays are the best time to remain at home, because the whole city has gone to the sea beach. Bumper to bumper, cars are going… and by the time they reach the beach it is full of people; they cannot even find a small place to lie down. I have seen pictures of sea beaches. Even the ocean must be laughing at the stupidity of these people.For a few minutes they will lie down, and then they need ice cream and they need Coca Cola. And they have brought their portable television sets and everybody is listening to his transistor. And then the time is over, because again there is the marathon race back towards home.

On holidays more accidents happen in the world than on any other days: more people are killed, more cars are crashed.It is strange! And for five days in the week — the working days — people are hoping, waiting with great longing for the holiday. And in those two days which are the weekend, they are simply waiting for their offices and their factories to open.
People have completely forgotten the language of relaxation. They have been made to forget it.
Every child is born with an inner capacity; you don’t have to teach the child how to relax. You just watch a child — he is relaxed, he is in a let-go. But you won’t allow him to enjoy this state of paradise. You will soon civilize him.

How can you relax?
Laziness can make you Intelligent provided you are not lazy all the time. To be Lazy all the time is stupid. because every time you rest for no reason. You have accumulated positive energy. You are not restless anymore. After every rest if you can pour all your energy to work then your energy will make your work creative. Your energy will add a new dimension to your mundane work. learn the art of being lazy and restful. While being Lazy learn to watch and Meditate.

I am not against work; work has its own utility — but only utility. It cannot become your life’s all and all. It is an absolute necessity that you need food, that you need clothes, that you need a shelter. Work, but don’t become addicted to work. The moment you are out of work, you should know how to relax. And it does not need much wisdom to relax; it is a simple art. And it is very simple because you already knew it when you were born; it is already there, it just has to be made active from its dormant position. It has to be provoked.
All methods of meditation are nothing but methods to help you to remember the art of let-go.

Love and lot’s of it dear ones

Suresh

Photo copyright Suresh Gundappa 2006

Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous you immediately start smoking. It is a way to avoid nervousness; you become occupied with smoking. Really it is a regression. Smoking makes you again feel like a child - unworried, nonresponsible - because smoking is nothing but a symbolic breast. The hot smoke going in simply takes you back to the days when you were feeding on the mother’s breast and the warm milk was going in; nipple has now become cigarette. The cigarette is a symbolic nipple.

Through regression you avoid the responsibilities and the pains of being adult. And that’s what goes on through many many drugs. Modern man is drugged as never before, because modern man is living in great suffering. Without drugs it will be impossible to live in so much suffering. Those drugs create a barrier; they keep you drugged, they don’t allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain.

The first thing to do is close your doors and stop any kind of occupation - looking at the TV, listening to the radio, reading a book. Stop all occupation, because that too is a subtle drug. Just be silent, utterly alone. Don’t even pray, because that again is a drug, you are becoming occupied, you start talking to God, you start praying, you escape from yourself.

Just be yourself. Whatsoever the pain of it and whatsoever the suffering of it, let it be so. First experience it in its total intensity. It will be difficult, it will be heart-rending. You may start crying like a child, you may start rolling on the ground in deep pain, your body may go through contortions. You may suddenly become aware that the pain is not only in the heart, it is all over the body - that it is aching all over, that it is painful all over, that your whole body is nothing but pain.

If you can experience it - this is of tremendous importance - then start absorbing it. Don’t throw it away. It is such valuable energy, don’t throw it away. Absorb it, drink it, accept it, welcome it, feel grateful to it. And say to yourself, “This time I’m not going to avoid it, this time I’m not going to reject it, this time I’m not going to throw it away. This time I will drink it and receive it like a guest. This time I will digest it.”

It may take few days for you to be able to digest it, but the day it happens, you have stumbled upon a door which will take you really far far away. A new journey has started in your life, you are moving into a new kind of being - because immediately, the moment you accept the pain with no rejection anywhere, its energy and its quality changes. It is no longer pain. In fact one is simply surprised, one cannot believe it, it is so incredible. One cannot believe that suffering can be transformed into ecstasy, that pain can become joy.

But in ordinary life you are aware that opposites are always joined together, that they are not opposites but complementaries. You know perfectly well, your love can at any moment become hate, and your hate can at any moment become love. In fact if you hate too much, intensely and totally, it is bound to become love…

Love and lots of it dear ones

Suresh

Photo copyright Suresh Gundappa 2006

A mother has to be loved in a totally different way. She is not your beloved — and cannot be. If you become too much attached to your mother, you will not be able to find a beloved. And then deep down you will be angry with your mother — because it is because of her that you couldn’t move to another woman.

So it is part of growth that one has to move away from the parents. It is just as your being in the womb and then having to come out of it. That was leaving your mother, in a way. . . in a way, betraying her. But if inside the womb the child thinks that this will be a betrayal — ‘How can I leave my mother who has given birth to me?’ — then he will kill himself and the mother also. He has to come out of the womb. First he is joined with the mother completely. . .then the cord has to be cut.

He starts breathing on his own; that is the beginning of growth. He becomes an individual; he starts functioning separately. But for many years he will still remain dependent. For milk, food, shelter, love, he will depend on the mother; he is helpless. But as he becomes stronger, he will start moving further and further away. Then milk will stop, and then he will have to depend on some other food. Now he is going even further away. Then one day he has to go to school, has to make friends.

And when he becomes a young man, he falls in love with a woman and completely forgets the mother in a way, because this new woman overwhelms him, overpowers him. If it doesn’t happen, then something has gone wrong. If the mother tries to cling to you she is not fulfilling her duty as a mother. It is a very delicate duty. A mother has to help you go away — that’s the delicacy of it. A mother has to make you strong so that you can go away from her. That’s her love. Then she is fulfilling her duty. I

f you cling to the mother, then too you are doing wrong. Then it is going against nature. It is as if a river starts flowing upstream… then everything will be topsy-turvy. The mother is your source. If you start floating towards the mother, you are going upstream. You have to move away. The river has to go away from the source to the ocean. But that doesn’t mean that you are not in love with your mother. So remember that love for the mother has to be more like respect, less like love. Love towards your mother has to be more of the quality of gratefulness, respect — deep respect. She has given you birth, she has brought you into the world. Your love has to be very very prayerful towards her. So do whatsoever you can do to serve her.

But don’t make your love like the love for a beloved, otherwise you are confusing your mother with the beloved. And when goals are confused, you will become confused. So remember well that your destiny is to find a lover — another woman, not your mother. Then only for the first time you will become perfectly mature. Because finding another woman means that now you are completely cut away from the mother… the final cord has been cut now.

That’s why across the globe there exists such a tension between Mother and wife of her son. It does’t matter where you go but you will find that tension is same irrespective of where you are and which religion you belong to. Every son end up expecting Mother from his wife subconsciously. He has always been used to Motherly love and h expects wife to fill up the same. But wife is not Mother she wants to be treated like a lover. With great pain she tries play a role of Mother. Unless both son and mother understand their roles and responsibilities the friction between daughter in law and Mother will continue forever.

there is a subtle antagonism between the mother and the wife of her son; a very subtle antagonism — all over the world. It has to be so, because the mother feels somehow that this woman has taken her son away from her. And that’s natural in a way. Natural, but ignorant. The mother should be happy that some other woman has been found. Now her child is no more a child… he has become a mature, grown-up person. She should be happy, mm? So you can be mature only in one way — if you go away from the mother. And this is so on many levels of being. A son has someday to revolt against the father — not without respect… with deep respect. But one has to revolt. This is the delicacy: revolution is there, rebellion is there, but with deep respect. If there is no respect then that is ugly. Then the rebellion is not beautiful. Then you are missing something. Rebel… be free. but be respectful, because the father, the mother, is the source.

If you cling to the home you will remain crippled. You will remain juvenile. You will never become a man in your own right. So what I say to you is to go away with respect. Whenever they need, serve them, be available. But .

Love lots of it dear ones

Suresh