Don’t let your opinions create separation

Words SORAYA SARASWATI

Christmas is coming up, and we’ll no doubt be spending time with family. There is nothing like family to ignite our unresolved and often subconscious conditioning or samskaras. This may offer an opportunity for great healing if we can practise the art of conscious observation or mindful witnessing. This may not be easy as deep hurts and fears are covered by patterns of behaviour that ignite selfperpetuated thoughts, opinions and judgments that disturb our mental calm. Through honest awareness, we begin to notice the mental ripples or tsunamis this reactive behaviour causes us, disturbing the quiet mind and throwing us into turmoil.

Anger, judgment, jealousy and other disturbing thoughts and emotions may arise. We have all argued a point blindly or stubbornly defended a belief. This very ego defensive mechanism has created wars between countries and deep divides in loving families. So let’s look at how mindfulness developed through authenticity can assist us in overcoming the vrittis of the mind (the disturbances or ripples) with a zen story.

A monk decides to meditate alone, away from his monastery. He takes his boat out to the middle of the lake, moors it there, closes his eyes and begins his meditation. After a few hours of undisturbed silence, he suddenly feels the bump of another boat colliding with his own. With his eyes still closed, he senses his anger rising, and by the time he opens his eyes, he is ready to scream at the boatman who dared disturb his meditation. But when he opens his eyes, he sees an empty boat that had probably untethered and floated to the middle of the lake.

At that moment, the monk achieves self-realisation, and understands that the anger is within him; it merely needs the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him. From then on, whenever he comes across someone who irritates him or provokes him to anger, he reminds himself, “The other person is merely an empty boat. The anger is within me.”

Watch out for the empty boats that ignite emotions that are our own to deal with – learning the art of nonreactiveness is the key to happiness. It is important to clarify here that this does not mean we should suppress our emotions. All reactive behaviour is teaching us about ourselves, not others. Our reactive behaviour becomes a wonderful opportunity to ‘know thyself’ and thus become master of this mind we all share.

As we begin to observe the unfolding moment, we notice that all disturbing thoughts come from an attachment to ourselves as a separate patterned I-dentity developed from childhood and influenced by culture, family, education and the story of me called his-story. But this is not who we truly are. So how do we become the stillness in the centre of the cyclone or the ‘impartial witness’? Firstly, understand it is not our separateself or ego-self that is the witness; it is the empty unchanging space of consciousness that is the witness and the container of all things. Follow this and discover who you truly are.

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