Can there be a method to attain enlightenment?
Question: I have been reading Buddha and Kabir for long, and both are my favorite. While reading them I realized that both had different methods to get enlightenment.
Buddha said, “Renounce the world and be a monk.”
While Kabir said, “Don’t renounce the world, be in this world, face challenge and get enlightened.”
Please explain that as per your spiritual experience, who is right and what is the right method to get enlightened, how-can-enlightenment-be-one-objective-thing. In today’s world, if we follow Kabir, it looks hard to meditate in this fast world.
We are so used to be inclined in the outer world that even when we sit on meditation we think about outer world and solving our problems. Outer world and its responsibility look so real and so enticing. I am very confused. What to do? How to proceed in the spiritual world?
Reading spiritual books or brimming mind with lots of philosophical idea do not look good to me. It just satisfies my ego that – “I know something about the spiritual texts.” However, I want to experience/feel the real inner peace, by any method. Please guide me.
Answer: Dear Surya,
There are not many spiritual methods. There are not even two spiritual methods.
Who talks of the method? The mind. The restless mind.
Mind is the entity that is always seeking methods. Mind is restless, and faithless. And mind wants a method – a method within the mind’s own domain – that will take the mind beyond its domain.
Now, understand this: whatever comes from within the mind, will keep the mind within its boundaries. No method thought of by the mind will have the capacity to help the mind transcend itself. After all, the method is just a baby of the mind itself.
So, all methods are destined to achieve the exact opposite of what they want. Methods are devised with the intention of taking the mind out of its boundaries, whereas all methods actually steadfastly keep the mind within its limits.
But the mind knows nothing, except methods. So, it keeps trying its clever methods because it has no other recourse. The mind has too much confidence in its own abilities, and no faith in the Truth.
After all, it is just the poor mind.
There is, however, another recourse. The mind may, in deep attention, in clear realisation of its own limits and failures, drop its confidence in its clever methods. The mind can get rid of its obsession with methods.
Mind is methods.
To lose confidence in methods is to drop mind itself.
To lose confidence in mind-made methods is to surrender to the Truth.
To see the inadequacy of methods is Gyaan . To leave oneself – without methods, without maps, without armours, without hope – to the grace of existence is Bhakti. Gyaan and Bhakti come together, but only after one’s trust in his own self gets dropped.
When you will see the sheer stupidity of devising methods and the sheer arrogance of believing that your methods can redeem you, you will be home.
– Based on my interactions on various e-media.
Dated: 30th May,’15
