A person who grows on the spiritual path cannot ignore Gautama because his presence has become so dominant. In his lifetime, he had 40,000 monks who went out to spread the spiritual process. In his own silent way, he changed the world forever.
He has been one of the greatest spiritual waves on the planet. Buddha Purnima has always been significant in the yogic culture and an auspicious day in any spiritual aspirant’s life, but today, in commemoration of Gautama Buddha we named it after him. On that full moon evening, over 2,500 years ago, a man blossomed into a being.
Though people generally associate the word Buddha with Gautama, he is not the only Buddha. There have been thousands of Buddhas on this planet and there still are. ‘Bu’ means buddhi or the intellect, ‘dha’ means dhadha or one who is above. One who is above his intellect, one who is no longer a part of his mind, is a Buddha.
Right now, most people are just a bundle of thoughts, emotions, opinions and, of course, prejudices. Please see, what you consider ‘myself’ is just a jumble of things you have gathered from outside. Whatever kind of situations you were exposed to, that is the kind of nonsense you have gathered in your mind.
Your mind is society’s garbage bin because you have no choice about what to take and not take. Whoever goes by, throws something into your head. You can enshrine this nonsense as divinity if you want, but it will not become divinity; it is just the mind.
There is another way to experience life and go beyond the process that you call mind. To do this, you need to shut the garbage bin and keep it aside. The mind is a phenomenal instrument, but it will take you on an endless ride if you get stuck to it. If you are in the mind, your suffering will be non-stop—you cannot help it. Suffering is inevitable.
Maybe when you are watching the sunset, it is so beautiful that you forget everything, but your suffering is sitting right behind you like a tail. The moment you look back, it is right there. What you call ‘my happiness’, are those moments when you forget your suffering. As long as you are in the mind, fears, anxieties and struggles are inevitable. That is the nature of the mind.
Because people cannot bear the torture of the mind, they have devised many ways in society to go below the mind. Excessive eating, alcohol, excessive indulgence in physical pleasures... these are all ways to go below the mind. People use them and for a few moments, they forget the torture.
You hit the bottle and sleep. For a few hours, your mind does not bother you anymore because you have gone below the mind. There is a great pleasure and it is so relaxing because suddenly, the tortures of your mind are not there. So you get deeply addicted to it.
But the nature of the evolutionary process is such that this being, which was below the mind, has now evolved into the mind. The only way to become free is to go beyond the mind. There is no such thing as going back. If you go below the mind through chemicals, life always catches up with you with more intensity after that is over.
It is always so. Suffering intensifies. The process of yoga is to see how to go beyond the mind. As long as you are in the mind, you are a crowd of people, you are not yourself. Only when you are beyond the mind can you really be yourself. Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org
Right now, most people are just a bundle of thoughts, emotions, opinions and prejudices. What you consider ‘myself’ is just a jumble of things you have gathered from outside.