Going beyond togetherness
TRANSENDENCE BEYOND PAIN AND PLEASURE Taoshobuddha 1|Page
Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure leasure
MEDITATION LEADS TO ULTIMATE FLOWERING
Relationship Beyond pain and pleasure © 2009, Taoshobuddha All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the original publisher TAOSHOBUDDHA MEDITATIONS and TAOSHOBUDDHA. Printed and Published by: TAOSHOBUDDHA MEDITATIONS Cover design and graphics: Anand Neelamber,
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Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
Taoshobuddha
The word Taoshobuddha comes from three words, ‘tao,’ ‘sho,’ and ‘Buddha’. The word Tao was coined by the Chinese master, Lau Tzu. It means “that” which is and cannot be put into words. It is unknown and unknowable. It can only be experienced and not expressed in words. Its magnanimity cannot be condensed into finiteness. The word Sho implies, that which is vast like the sky and deep like an ocean and carries within its womb a treasure. It also means one on whom the existence showers its blessings. And lastly the word Buddha implies the Enlightened One; one who has arrived home. Thus, Taoshobuddha implies one who is existential, on whom the existence showers its blessings and one who has arrived home. The Enlightened One!
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Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
TRANSENDENCE BEYOND PAIN AND PLEASURE
Going beyond togetherness
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Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
H
uman relationship is very delicate phenomena. Each relationship is the way for the continuation of soul’s journey. Evolving out of the womb of the unconscious and subconscious (past) it journeys towards fruition. However all that happens in this process actually happens this very moment. This requires awareness, and understanding of many things. In the process of its journey each individual gets lost and fruition never happens. The pain or pleasure remains the outcome. Transcendence beyond these requires awareness. And unless transcendence happens one cannot really understand the purpose of relationship. For the purpose of understanding I divide relationships into two categories. 1. Static or Blood relationships This relationship is Static in nature. This is also known as Blood – relationship. This does not evolve. Your father, mother, brother, sister, and children remain the same. As a result the nature
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of such relationship does not envisage too many variations and changes. 2. Dynamic or Self – Chosen Relationships Particularly I am referring to ‘Self – Chosen’ relationships. This category includes male – female relationship within the parameter of marriage or where sex is also involved. Such relations are self chosen. In this category also comes friendship as this is self – chosen. This type of relationship I call Dynamic Relationship. The growth depends on your awareness. From awareness evolves your understanding. Your mind, dogmas, belief patterns etc come to play dominant role. The basis of each relationship is love and its understanding. Love remains nonchalant in static relationship. Things are taken for granted. Nature of love never changes. However in the dynamic relationship love undergoes through various stages. It begins from the gross and aspires to attain fruition. In fact dynamic relationship is the journey of transcendence of love from baser to the precious. It is journey from the worldly love to love divine. At its peak
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love becomes friendliness or the quality of your being. Then it does not remain relationship anymore. It is this aspect of the relationship that is the concern of humanity. This relationship is significant in many ways. It is not based on blood. Yet still it is the basis of all blood relationships. All blood relations evolve out of this alone. The existential energy as Shiva and Shakti; or Purush and Prakriti is at play as the basis of this energy field. In scientific terms we can say it is the interplay of positive and negative energies. The entire process of evolution takes place because of this interaction. As we are entering into this realm a few things have to be understood first. Self – chosen implies, the two persons guided by their sub – conscious and unconscious states of awareness have chosen the other as part of this relationship. This cannot be wrong when it comes to soul’s journey. Your sub – conscious and unconscious is part of total consciousness. This decision cannot be erroneous as far as soul’s journey is concerned.
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Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
Soul seeks evolution from this state. And it wants to attain freedom from the bondage of body-mind mechanism. It is the sub – conscious and unconscious that begins this journey. In the process you have to journey through dark caves of the soul. These dark caves are created by your dogmas, religious beliefs and the mind. The moment mind comes to play its role problem begins. This you need to understand. You have to trust your initial judgment. As you traverse through these caves many emotions, feelings etc emerge and mind fails to understand this for the continuation of the journey. In the absence of understanding we tend to abandon the one relation and want to take another course. Thus we remain throughout a traveler and never find a place of rest. In the desert of Misery, and pain you experience occasional oasis of pleasure or happiness. To transcend beyond pain and pleasure and thus attain to the state of bliss you need to understand certain things.
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Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
1. Start being honest and true when you enter into relationship. And only that allow the same to your partner as well. 2. Start dropping all deception, masks, faces. 3. They have become habit. So unless you drop them consciously and deliberately, they are never dropped and therefore continue to hang around the neck. And much pain will come this way. For example, you are going with her and you see a beautiful woman and you say to her that you are pulled by this woman and her beauty. A great desire to possess her has arisen in you. You are honest. Not that you are going to possess her, but the desire has arisen. There is fear in you. You are caught into two situations. If you are honest and there is lack of understanding in the other this will create a serious problem. To appreciate and encounter such situation is quite natural. In such a situation if you are honest problem comes and if you are dishonest that two will create problem. Ordinarily you feel it is better not to say such things to your woman. Even if she catches you
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Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
red-handed still you never confess. And she will catch you many times, because your eyes will show. When you look at another woman who is beautiful and attractive and suddenly a desire arises in you. Unconscious is playing its role. You cannot do anything right now about it. It is natural for such situations to arise. To do anything is possible only when it has arisen, not before it. But it has arisen now. You can repress it but you cannot do anything else. Even if the woman catches you, you would like to pretend that no, it was not that. You were looking at something else. Do not be untrue. Then you will be vulnerable to pain. And start by being vulnerable to pain because everybody wants to be open for pleasure and nobody wants to be open for pain. And the arithmetic is: if you are open to pain, only then can you be open to pleasure. They are directly proportional to one another. If you are not open to pain you cannot be open to pleasure. That is why there are so many people in the world, each hankering for pleasure, and everybody is in pain because they have taken a wrong step from the very beginning.
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And let her also be true, allow her truth. Do not force her to repress. Allow freedom. By and by you will learn the bitter-sweet taste of it. It is bitter and sweet both at the same time. And if you can become available to pain, nobody can prevent you from becoming available to pleasure or joy. You have earned it. By going into pain one earns and learns how to be in pleasure or joy. So just start opening by and by. And there is no need to do it all of a sudden and too much, at one time? Because that can destroy a relationship! Go in small doses slowly and slowly. Just show a little part of your real face and not the whole face at one time. By and by let the mask slip. Let the mask be loose. Then one day you can remove it totally. And she will also feel very happy by and by, because when you start becoming open, you help her also to become open. It works in a reciprocal way. She becomes open. You become more courageous. And when this opening brings pain you will see that it has brought a totally new quality to pain. Page 11
Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
It is a quality that is very refreshing. It is painful and yet cleansing, painful yet worthwhile. It brings something. It brings integration and some clarity too. And makes you more aware! Pain always makes people aware. When you consciously go into it and there was every possibility that you could have avoided it. The woman was not with you and you came home and you told her that a beautiful woman passed on the road and suddenly a great desire arose in you and you did not know from where. Now there was no need. She was not with you. You could have easily avoided it. But it is not good to avoid. When you have given your heart to a woman you have to share everything that arises in your heart. There should not be anything private. Everything should be shared. Pain and pleasure both should be shared. Normally this is not so. We only want to share pleasure. Purposely I am using the word pleasure because pain and pleasure go together as pairs of opposites. This authenticity will bring an intimacy which is not the ordinary intimacy of married couples. Married people are never intimate. They simply Page 12
Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
pretend to be intimate. Their intimacy has motives in it. Maybe to pretend to be intimate is good for the children. To pretend to be intimate is good for one’s own financial affairs, future securities, respectability in the society. But intimacy is not there. It is more a formal thing. It happens always like this in almost all the relations. There are no moments of silence between couples. As lover and beloved there have always been moments of silence. Then you could remain silent just holding the hands together and feeling the surge of refreshing energy. Or you can go on looking at one another. Such is the not the situation between husband and wives. They are always talking – no, no, no quarrelling all the while and they get silent only when they are angry after the wrestling bout. You may be fighting with your woman and a friend knocks on the door. Suddenly everything changes and you start smiling. The mind comes in and everything is going so beautifully. And just a moment before you were ready to kill each other! What happened? This is just a social face. You are not only deceiving the friend instead you are deceiving yourself too.
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So I am telling you to move into pain. It is arduous, dangerous in the beginning. One never knows what will happen but one thing is certain that if you can move through pain, pain will cleanse you of many impurities, of many gross elements in you. Certainly it will make you more subtle and more aware too. And through pain you will become available to pleasure also. When one is ready to suffer pain there is no point in repressing pleasure. We repress pleasure because we are afraid that if we allow pleasure to have total possession the pain will also come with it. It is its other side of the coin. It will come certainly. So people do not go into pleasure totally! They go very cautiously. Even while making love people do not abandon themselves. They remain in control. A subtle control, a remote control, they continue with. They keep the button in their hand somewhere. If something goes too far and they are crossing the boundary, they turn it off. But they never go to the very end of it. The fear is that if you go too much into pleasure you may be entering the forbidden territory of pain. It is always there. And this is the pain. Page 14
Relationship – Transcending beyond Pain and Pleasure
So start with pain. And if you can be open in pain! And if you want some time to cry, cry! Where else will you cry if you cannot cry before your woman? Forget all nonsense that has been taught that a man never cries. If a man never cries, he is not a man. Either he is inhuman or he is superhuman, but one thing certain: he is not man. Cry sometimes. Share your sorrow, your sadness. Weep like a child in totality. Crying will clear many suppressed emotions. Crying is therapeutic. And the same I am saying to your partner. She has to do the same. And by and by you will see that a great INTIMACY is arising which has nothing to do with society. And with that intimacy much happiness will happen. You will explode into happiness. But begin with pain, and always remember that everything has to begin in pain. Meditate together and open your hearts as they are. Sometimes wrong, sometimes rotten, and other times not worth showing to anybody yet still show it to your beloved. In this way you will also help her to show everything. And when all Page 15
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the cards are open you are not even holding a trump card a new kind of intimacy arises on its own accord. For me ‘Intimacy’ implies, ‘Before you I will be totally nude. I will not hide anything.’ That is what intimacy is all about. Intimacy is not biological nudeness. Intimacy is psychological nudeness. It is, ‘When you are in the room, I will be as if I am alone.’ Your presence will not make me repress something. Your presence will not make me change and show something else which is not there. I will be as natural as I am in the bathroom when I am alone! Then there is intimacy. There is a risk in it! One never knows what will come out of it. But one thing can be said certainly, whatsoever comes will be beautiful. If separation comes out of it, it will be beautiful, better, more beautiful than the so-called marriage. If marriage comes out of it, it will be tremendously beautiful. If there is existing relationship it will continue its journey for fruition.
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