Be Mindless

Osho, based on what I heard, had this sign at the entrance to his Pune ashram: Please leave your footwear and your mind here as you enter. Osho reflected Zen and Upanishad philosophy better than many spiritual masters did. Zen speaks of the no mind concept. I call it the mindless state. D.T.Suzuki and other great Zen masters of recent times have written a great deal on this concept that derives from Buddhas concept of sunya. Somehow this mindless concept has morphed into the mindfulness concept expounded by Thich Nhat Hanh and later by Jon Kabat Zinn and others. I am very certain that these masters understood what Buddha taught. However, those who read and interpreted them trivialized the mindful experience to the raisin in the mouth experience. Place a raisin in your mouth, the New Age Zen pundits advise, and savor the taste, feel the contours and you become mindful. For how long? If mindlessness is the Ph D level of spiritual awareness, mindfulness is the kindergarten stage. Perhaps in the underdeveloped education space today kindergarten is a must to Ph D, but not in the spiritual space. It may mislead and misdirect. A child learning to walk my need a finger to hold, learning to cycle a third wheel, or learning to swim floaters. It will be counter productive if it persists with these after becoming competent. Sometimes, these devices may keep the learner incompetent. How much better if the initial risk of some hurt can be taken?

Mastery of the skill would be so much faster. So it is in spiritual progress. Dont be mindful; just be mindless. Buddhas sunya is also wrongly interpreted as denial of god; not so. The nothingness or emptiness the word conveys refers to the ego mind state, not even to the absence of thoughts. Buddhas sunya is no different from Shankaras purna and Yogas Samadhi. When the ego state is absent the mind body retreats to allow our inherent and innate energy to fill us and fulfill us, the state of purna, Isavasya Upanishad and Shankara expounded on this as our true state of consciousness and existence. In this state, we realize the energy state, what the sages termed as self- realization, the realization of our true nature. No mind state is not a no-thought state. Thoughts can never leave us as long as we are in the body. We can only distance and disengage from thoughts. Patanjali refers to this mindless state as the Samadhi state. Many I train in meditation complain initially that thoughts keep intruding and they cannot meditate. Of course they will, as long as they breathe. Patanjali defines dhyana , meditation, as focusing on one thought, not no thought. Keep coming back to that anchor, a mantra or much better your own breath, each time you are aware of a thought. The trick is persistent and determined practice. The movement from dhyana to samadhi happens when you disengage from the thought itself, merely watching it without engaging. This may seem simplistic till you experience it for yourself. There are those who tell me that they experienced the thoughtless state when they practiced sunya meditation, whatever it may be. My simple question to them

is that if they were in a thoughtless state how can they remember what then happened? How can you retain memories of a thoughtless zone? They think I am making fun of their spiritual masters. I believe they are being made fun of by their spiritual masters who teach them sunya meditation. Some one needs to tell the emperor he is wearing no clothes! 3000 years before Buddha, the Mandukya Upanishad defined the no mind state. In its 12 verses, four states of consciousness were defined. In the first Awake state, we stay aware or conscious of the gross physical mind body, and we think. In the second Dream state, we move into the subtle body, in which we think, but do not convert the thoughts into gross body reality. For instance, someone attacking us in the Dream state causes us to wake up in a nightmare, but with no physical manifestation of an attack. In the third Deep Sleep state, we move into the causal state of no thoughts and no memory awareness, seemingly a void. Ironically as it may seem, Mandukya Upanishad refers to this state as the true state of awareness within the mind body space, called prajna, a state beyond thoughts and emotions, which if accessed leads to what it terms simply as the Fourth State, the state of Mindlessness, also called nirvana or samadhi or enlightenment. In the Deep Sleep state, through meditation techniques, we can access thoughts and emotion in seed form and cleanse them, reframe them, or just become aware of them and accept them. As we learn to accept whatever thoughts arise as normal, we move into Turiya, the Fourth State of disengagement, or Mindlessness, the supreme state of individual and collective consciousness. Time and space boundaries limit awareness. At best, we become aware of the here and now. That is what we experience when we are mindful. Mindlessness expands us beyond

time and space. Doing expands into Being. Our ultimate state of 'being' rests in Mindlessness. Meditation can be a powerful technique to reach this state of Mindlessness.

In order to reach the Fourth State of mindless awareness, one needs to traverse the path of gross physical body awareness and subtle mind awareness, and then transcend these experiences. For most people being mindful involves focused attention on the action in hand and being result oriented. In mindlessness there is no focus on result, merely being in the process of being disengaged. We shed the internal mind chatter. With stillness of mind, which according to Patanjali is the end objective of Yoga, we can reach a state of total awareness of all that is around us with clarity. Great listening and great insights happen. If we wish to, we can observe thoughts as they arise and modify them. We can script and create our future. My entire book on Shankaras Bhaja Govindam happened as a mindless transmission. As a practicing coach, I move into mindlessness as much as possible to be aware and present. As a trainer of coaches my entire approach is through mindlessness. The being state of mindlessness does not lead to inaction; it results in perfect action.