I was talking to my mother recently. During our conversation she mentioned that she heard in a story that Venerable Sariputta was able to count the rain drops one by one when it's raining. The moment I heard this I realised that there was something very profound in what he was able to do that we ought to investigate and extract for ourselves. It wasn't figuring out how we can develop the ability to count rain drops but more importantly how we ought to slow our minds down so we can see truth, in its purest form.
You know how it is with our minds....forget about counting rain drops, most times we can't even remember our previous thought. Our minds run around so fast that we can't see what it thinks, until we see the results of our thinking. For example, some of you might have found that you have said or done things which have not worked out well for you...maybe you hurt someone or maybe you blurted out things that you should not have said or done....but you simply didn't know why you did what you did....sometimes someone else has to point it out to you....sometimes you are taken up by surprise that you actually did or said what you did....why is it that we are not aware of what we do and say?!
It is because we are not aware of what we think!
The root of all of our actions and words is the thought. If we didn't think first and foremost, we could not have said or done what we did and said. But surprise..surprise we don't' remember, or we haven't got a clue most of the time. Isn't that why it always becomes the other persons problem.?!!! Anyway, we are not aware of our thoughts because we simply cannot see them...not because they are not there. Its like the muddy waters...when the water is muddy you cannot see what's in the water....just like that our minds are too busy.....busy doing things, living life as we call it, to notice the thoughts that drive it. We pay little attention to the most important ingredient of our lives. Yet we ask, why things go wrong for us? What do you expect?!! If you bake bread without flour, would you be able to eat bread?
In order to notice our thoughts we need to slow the mind first. Our mind is like a train that has left the station and has gathered lots of speed. You can't see the scenery properly because it moves so fast. So to see things, to read the signs properly you need to first slow down the train. In the same way we need to slow the mind down to understand why we do what we do. To slow the mind down, we need to train the mind to slow down. This is typically done in meditation.
Find a comfortable place to sit, close your eyes, stop thinking about the past or the future, focus on your breath and only on your breath. Watch it without commenting but just feeling the breath. Focus only on the feeling and not how you feel or how you ought to feel. If you do this properly, you will notice that you have nothing to think of, nothing to do and that you are only experiencing the breath. For once in your life you would have felt your breath (unless you have had asthma or experienced drowning).
When you develop this long enough you will also learn to notice your thoughts. I am talking about just noticing the thought and not getting carried away with it like we usually do. When you begin to notice your thoughts without any story telling involved, then you begin to see truth. Truth lies in us....unlike how we've learnt to believe that the 'truth is out there'...we begin to see that it's right within us and within our grasp but first we have to slow down.
Hope all of you will give this a try at some point in your life, earlier the better and easier. Remember the train simile......the older and busier your life gets, it become like the train that has gathered lots of speed...it takes time and hard breaking to slow it down. The world will be a wonderful place for each one of us, if each one of us learnt this. Please note that I said the world will be a wonderful place for each one of us, because, the responsibility of making it wonderful lies within you (not in your partner, parents, best friend, your pet or the Buddha) as well as the experience of it.
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