Nothing to get
You’re all awakened. It’s very beautiful to realise that you’re already complete, you’ve already got everything, there’s nothing more to get from the outside. In fact the only thing to get from the outside is not to look so much on the outside and to look more on the inside.
As soon as you start to look on the inside then you discover you have everything. This is very simple, even though it’s taken me fifty years to know that! For many years I would, like everybody else, do all kinds of practices, believing that if I became a good meditator then wonderful things would happen to me. So this is actually very relaxing because during this retreat you can come to an acceptance of how you are, and who you are.
In order to come in contact with who you are and what you are, you simply stay quiet. Anything I’m going to say in the next three weeks is just an excuse to keep you here so that you can become quiet. That’s what a retreat is; it’s just an excuse to get you quiet enough to realise who you are.
Unfortunately, in our everyday lives we have become so busy and so outward looking that we never have time to meet our own essence. This is not a very useful teaching when you have lots of energy to do stuff, and so of course there are all kind of spiritual practices you can do until the cows come home. Maybe they will improve the quality of your daily life in some way, but they won’t bring you something that you already have.
Papaji was my teacher. Somebody going back to Munich said to him, ‘Well I’m leaving in a few days and my friends in Munich will ask me what your teaching is. I’ve been here three months, and I don’t know what to say.
Papaji said his teaching is ‘Be Quiet’. And when you be quiet you discover everything. It’s very beautiful to discover the depths of who you are.
While you stay in the mental energy, while you stay talking a lot, relating a lot, while you stay busy thinking, you keep all your energy up in the head.
If you want to meet who you really are then something has to go deeper inside. You just let yourself fall down deeply inside and then amazing things will happen by themselves. This is very simple but it’s not easy to do it because, of course, we have relentless patterns of behaviour.
We have to relax this power; we have to allow the mind to become still. Still is a little bit different from quiet. Silence in a library means not to talk.
Stillness is something more than not talking. It’s a place where there is not even movement – a still point inside you where there’s no movement. Silence is a good beginning and stillness is a deeper realisation of silence.
4 Responses
Thanks a lot! <3
hello Saraswati.
We all go through years of conditioning. One of the strongest,is that when we feel a lack, usually of love, we look outside to receive love from someone.
Its not so easy to change this automatic behaviour. By meditating regularly you move this automatic around inside. Gradually you connect deeper inside.
The automatic changes so the inside takes over from outside.
At the same time you can develop your awareness. This is also not so easy. Gradually as the awareness increases you can get glimpses of a place inside yourself which nourishes you. Gradually you can rely on that place inside you.
See that the world around you and particularly emotions stirred up by those close to you, continuously disturbs the awareness and inner stillness.
Be patient. You have taken a huge decision by joining a community of fellow travellers, leaving a known lifestyle in Berlin.
Love to You
John David
For me is this really difficult. In Vipassana no problem, but as soon as I go back to daily life, my focus is changing more to the outside and I see how I want to grab or want to get something from somebody, e.g. a man etc. How can I change this? How can I be satisfied with myself, focused on myself, have the most interest in me not in others and the outer world?
I can observe that my mind is never content with the now, the mental and emotional part of me always thinks that it will be better in the future. When I can relax this striving and land in the present moment, there is silence and even stillness. It needs power to stay there and not fall into the habits again. You call the patterns relentless, and I see how much focus I need to resist this relentless danger to get lost.