Seeker: Do you recommend any practice?
Guruji Sri Vast: Normally I do not give any practices, but
one of the good practices I give is not to practice anything
because in the Nature I don’t see anything practicing anything.
The trees are just busy in being trees; the flies are just
being busy in flying. Everything is just being the way it is.
All the time we are busy in practicing. You dress like a man
and you are trying to practice like a man, ‘I am a man’.
You dress like a woman, trying to practice like a woman.
Whatever you believe, you practice that belief. Someone at
school has rasta-hair and a guitar and sings
Reggae songs. He is practicing as a Rastafarian.
And someone puts on a suit, a tie and
polished shoes and he is trying to practice as
a gentleman. Everyone is busy in practicing
something. Knowingly or unknowingly you
are practicing. But your true nature is not
practicing anything, it is just being. Because
when you practice anything, ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ comes. One who is not doing the
same practice becomes the opposite of you.
And every practice you have brings certain
experiences. Sometimes you like that experience,
sometimes you may not like that experience.
Those experiences do not belong to
you; they belong to your practice.
Seeker: What is Liberation?
Guruji Sri Vast: Many times we use this language,
‘liberation.’ But the question is, how
much are we really interested in liberation?
If you are looking for this ultimate liberation,
you may not continue to do what you are
doing now, you will not continue that. Try
to understand: You are looking for some kind of comfort in
your struggle and you may call that freedom. You may be
looking for nothing else but a comfortable continuation of
your past. You have a struggle with your partner, in the
future you don’t want to struggle with your partner. What
else? Do you have something new? No, you don’t ask
anything new. You want the same thing, but comfortably.
You are trying to get freedom from your struggle. If you are
lonely, you like to have a partner. If you have economic
problems, you like to have a good economy. What do you
do in all your seeking? Is there anyone who is really doing
anything for liberation? If you want to liberate yourself, what
are you doing? Tell me. In one day, from morning till
evening, what exactly do you do for your liberation?
Seeker: Being aware.
Guruji Sri Vast: About what?
Seeker: About life.
Guruji Sri Vast: When you say ‘life’, what exactly do you
mean by that life? What exactly did you do today for your
liberation? Can you mark anything
and say, “This is what I
did for my liberation?”... Except
for coming here… (Laughter).
Most of the time, we think we
want liberation but we don’t
necessarily look inside of us.
We want to free ourselves from
the friction in our life. Liberation
is beyond the friction.
Only when the frictions are
settled the quest for liberation come. “I feel lonely”. Do you
hear any people say, “I am not able to relate with the tree
standing by the street?” How many of you have heard that?
No. You have frictions with a few things: Your economy,
your relationships, your sexuality, your comfort, your past.
You are trying to get free from that friction. Once you are
free from that friction, when nothing is there to fight against
or fight for; you are entering into a new stage. There your
quest is not about how you are going to manage your livelihood,
how you are going to manage your relationship.
When children build Star Wars with Lego, they believe it is
true, but as an adult you know this is not true. When a small
piece of that Lego is not there, the child cannot complete
the game. Then the child cries for it. Because he sees the
picture on the box and what the complete picture looks like,
he is missing something. But when you give the same Lego
without that picture to some children in an Indian village,
they may not miss something, because they don’t have that
idea about how this toy is supposed to look.
It is the same with your life. Somehow your toys are a little
bigger, that’s all. You also play the same Lego game; you
call it your life, your partner, job, house, car, cat or dog.
You put it together like different Lego pieces and make it to
a complete picture. When one piece is not there, you feel
something is missing. “I feel lonely.” Why? “I am living
alone.” What is wrong with that? Why do you feel that you
are living alone? So many millions of people live in this
world. Everywhere there are people; everywhere there are
so many beings, so many trees, why are you feeling lonely?
- Because one piece is missing in your Lego game. Without
that you don’t see the complete game. You may live alone,
but at your dining table you may have six chairs. When
one chair is broken, you may say, “I have to buy another
chair.” For whom? You live alone. Once in a while one
person comes to visit you but, according to your picture,
six chairs must be there.
Try to understand: What you call ‘life’ is just the deep imprint
of this Lego game. But I invite you to go beyond that
game because Life is more than that. When you are not
playing Lego, you tell the child, “Why are you so serious
about this? Why are you crying? There is no use for you to
fight, it is just a toy. Be calm.” In a way you are playing the
role of the Guru, because you are not playing that game
now. You are matured and ripened. In the same way, what
you call ‘life’, most of the time, is not necessarily the Life; it
is an idea about how your time between birth and death is
supposed to be spent, or how it is normally spent. What you
call as ‘life’ is created by the monocultured mind, and you
are trying to fit yourself into that. Some people fit nicely into
it. Some people can’t fit into it. When they fit, they look like
successful players. When they put the Lego pieces nicely we
say, “It is so great.” But for me it is not great. It is a copy of
something. It is trying to be correct according to the picture
printed on the box. Some children cannot copy it and we
say they failed. But when a child makes something totally
new out of it, with the same Lego pieces you may say, “No,
you should not make a dog out of it! See on the box, you
are supposed to make a car out of it.” When the child starts
to enjoy making a dog out of the same Lego, it has grown to
make something new out of the same components. You can
say that this child is liberated from this game.
You all have the possibility to experience the Life in a totally
unique way because you are not all the same. Six billion
people, six billion ways of exploring this Life. Life is not
one idea, not necessarily. I like to have minimum six billion
ideas about it. At least you are not part of the mass production.
You are totally unique. There
is one sun, one moon, one mother
earth and one you. You can’t be
replaced, substituted by someone
else or something else. We have
a great opportunity to experience
this life in a unique way. Every
spice in the soup has a function,
has a taste. Without that spice the
soup is not the same anymore. In
the same way you are all unique
spices. All these spices are there
and Life is happening. Most of the time you like to be the
same monoculture, thinking you are like anyone else. Be
authentic. There is no need to be correct according to anything,
so you cannot be wrong according to anything else
either. By the time you are trying to be correct according
to something, you become wrong according to something
else. Constantly you are busy feeling that you are right and
make others feel wrong, or feeling that you are wrong and
make others right. Constantly you feel wrong and hope that
one day you will become right, or one day this world will
become right. Everything is already perfectly right, whether
you want it or not.
I don’t want to give something to you, but remove what you
have within you. What you need is an empty space so that
you can arise within yourself. What you need is a little inner
silence so that you can hear some new music.
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